Jockey Javier Castellano wins 6,000th race in North America
Hall of Fame jockey Javier Castellano notched his 6,000th career victory in North America on Wednesday at Saratoga Race Course, guiding the Michelle Nevin-trained Starship Lizzy to a half-length victory in the Race 8 finale, a seven-furlong maiden claimer for New York-bred fillies and mares.
“Thank God I’ve been blessed – like I always say, thank you Lord, God, Jesus Christ for giving me the amazing skill of being a jockey and participating in the high level in my career with the best jockeys in the world,” Castellano said. “Especially doing it at Saratoga, the biggest stage in the world… so many great jockeys went through here, and to be my age competing with this generation to keep delivering and winning races and people supporting me is amazing. I’m very grateful and blessed to be around them.”
Starship Lizzy saved ground along the rail in third position behind Forever to Go and Hanna’s Hideaway through an opening quarter-mile in 22.90 seconds and a half-mile in 46.07 over the fast dirt.
Once straightened for home, Castellano angled Starship Lizzy out and bumped with the closing All Bright near the eighth pole. The pair continued to make contact before Starship Lizzy edged past and then inched clear of Hanna’s Hideaway to post the narrow score in a final time of 1:26.08.
A stewards’ inquiry involving Starship Lizzy and third-place finisher All Bright resulted in no change to the order of finish.
“6,000 [wins] and I still have to sweat out my result! Nothing’s easy in this game, for sure,” Castellano said, with a laugh. “I believe I was straight and my horse drifted a little bit, but I corrected her and kept my course. The outside horse hit right behind my horse, and she kept me sideways. I knew it wasn’t my fault, and that’s why I felt comfortable. But you never know, you have to see the ‘official’ first to count 6,000 races.”
Retired Hall of Fame jockey Ramon Dominguez, who competed against Castellano in Venezuela, Florida and New York, reflected on their relationship as both competitors and friends.
“He takes pride in everything he does,” said Dominguez, who is now neighbors with Castellano in Saratoga Springs. “Everything is super organized and he takes his riding assignments with so much responsibility. He came to the United States so much more prepared than I was, or maybe he just had more raw talent. I was struggling to get by and was riding a horse here and there, and Javier from the get-go was riding good horses and doing very well, so it’s not surprising that it did not take him long to make the decision to go to New York. When our careers went different ways, we always stayed in contact. I’m super proud and happy of his accomplishments, and I know he was of mine. When we went to Lone Star in 2004 to ride in the Breeders’ Cup, and on the same day we both won our first Breeders’ Cup race. I first won the Turf with Better Talk Now, and then he won the Classic with Ghostzapper.”
Hall of Famer John Velazquez, Saratoga’s all-time leading jockey by wins, expressed similar sentiments.
“A really cool guy, easy to get along with,” said Velazquez. “I have a lot of respect for him, and I know he respects me. I appreciate everything he has done in his career and the way he has mastered the way he rides. As a friend and a competitor, I appreciate the way he rides and the way he uses it. A bunch of riders, including some who are much younger than we are, appreciate what he has done with his career and how he approaches family and everything else.”
Hall of Fame trainer Mark Casse shared his thoughts about Castellano, with whom he has won races like the 2023 Grade 1 Beverly D. and E. P. Taylor with Fev Rover, and most recently won the Grade 2 Ballston Spa presented by STIHL with And One More Time on Saturday here.
“A great, great rider, one of the greatest of all time,” said Casse. “That’s proof; you don’t easily win 6,000 races, especially where he is riding. More importantly, he’s a wonderful person and a gentleman and he represents our sport like no other.”
Castellano, 48, was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2017 and won four consecutive Eclipse Awards for Outstanding Jockey 2013-16. He leads all jockeys with seven victories in the Grade 1 Travers, including Keen Ice’s upset score over Triple Crown winner American Pharoah in 2015, and will ride The Puma in Saturday’s Grade 1, $1.25 million DraftKings Travers. His most recent Travers triumph came aboard Arcangelo in 2023, a dual Classic-winning year for Castellano, who also captured the Belmont Stakes aboard Arcangelo and the Kentucky Derby aboard Mage.
Castellano hails from Maracaibo, Venezuela and began his riding career in 1996 at Santa Rita and La Rinconada racecourses in his native country. He came to the United States in 1997, winning his first race in North America on July 31, 1997 aboard Phone Man at Calder Race Course. He was based in Florida until January 2001 when he moved his tack to New York to compete at Aqueduct Racetrack. He rode year-round in New York until the winter of 2004-05, when he began riding seasonally at Gulfstream Park, and he continues to split his time between Gulfstream in the winter and New York the rest of the year.
“I began in 1997 at Calder Racetrack and started my first [race], and I couldn’t imagine to be a Hall of Fame jockey winning Eclipse Awards, the Breeders’ Cup Classic… I’ve been very blessed,” Castellano said. “A lot of people put a lot of pieces together to be [one of the] amazing jockeys in the world, winning amazing races, especially my family and my wife, Abby; my children, Kayla, Sienna, Brady; and my mom, my brother – they all support me in my career, and it’s a tough game.
“Mentally, it’s really, really tough. It looks easy, 6,000 races, but you’ve got to go through almost 40,000 races to win 6,000,” said Castellano, who has made over 33,000 starts with over $420 million in purse earnings. “Can you imagine how many losses you have to go through to win 6,000? There’s a lot of disappointment, and I thought about it for a moment to quit being a jockey, because you go through those slumps and you don’t think [it will get better]. Thank God I’ve been very lucky and fortunate to be strong, disciplined, dedicated, hard-working, and it paid off.”
Castellano won the 2006 Preakness and Travers with Bernardini and 2017 Preakness with Cloud Computing. He has won 12 Breeders’ Cup races, with his first coming in the 2004 Classic aboard Hall of Famer Ghostzapper. He was the leading rider at Saratoga Race Course in 2013 and 2014, and received the 2019 Mike Venezia Memorial Award and the 2023 George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award.
“To win the Kentucky Derby, and to participate in it for [more than] 15 years [is amazing]. Talk about disappointing – I thought I was going to walk away without winning the Kentucky Derby,” Castellano said of his best racing accomplishments. “Thank God we got lucky and God blessed me with the amazing gift to win the Kentucky Derby, and then the Belmont Stakes in the same year. Two Triple Crown races in the same year with two different horses. It’s hard because one horse can carry you to another level and through the other legs of the Triple Crown, but to find two different horses in the same year, you have to have very amazing luck. I’ve won seven Travers in my career, but I’m not done yet [laughs]!”
