Jockey Alberto Delgado retires after 43 years * The Racing Biz

Jockey Alberto Delgado is retiring after 43 years

“It’s funny because I used to joke about these athletes when they retired, and you saw the speech and they were crying,” Delgado said afterward. “I’m like, I can’t believe he’s crying. Now I’m in those shoes and I know what it feels like. It’s hard. It’s something you’ve done your whole life, and to walk away from that, it’s kind of hard.”

Delgado made his first career start on March 16, 1982. Between then and now, he recorded 2,951 wins while accumulating more than $42 million in purse earnings. He won the Eclipse Award as outstanding student of 1982 after winning 245 races in just nine months.

Delgado won ten different stakes in his career and is perhaps just as famous for his two near misses. In 1995, he piloted the Maryland-bred Oliver’s Twist, trained by Bill Boniface, to a second-place finish in the Grade 1 Preakness, closing late to finish just a half-length behind winner Timber Country.

More recently, Delgado had the mount on California Chrome early in that runner’s career. Delgado, whose brother Willie was Chrome’s practice rider, rode Chrome to his first record score and to a victory in the Graduation Stakes. But trainer Art Sherman replaced him aboard Chrome after a sixth-place finish in the Golden State Juvenile.

With Victor Espinoza in the irons, California Chrome went on a six-race win streak, highlighted by victories in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness.

“It was bad racing luck, bad luck is everything,” Willie Delgado told it ESPN prior to the 2014 Belmont. “But [Alberto] understood why something had to change.”

“The first [horse I think of] is California Chrome, because that was the first time I worked with him, and I knew he was a super horse, and he stayed that way.” And he did. He was just something wonderful.”

Delgado, the son of jockey Alberto Ramos, is originally from Puerto Rico. He was only 17 at the time and started riding professionally in 1982. He won for the first time with just his fourth horse, aboard Keelo Prince on April 12, and quickly took the riding world by storm.

On August 16 of that year, Delgado won seven races: five at Delaware Park and then the late double at Timonium.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he told the newspaper WashingtonPost. “Something like this only happens once in a lifetime.”

He finished that season with 245 wins to lead all apprentices and earned more than $1.7 million in earnings. It was the first of five consecutive seasons in which Delgado won 200 or more races.

In 1995 he had his best year in terms of income. His 163 winners that season helped him earn nearly $2.8 million in earnings. That year, Delgado and Oliver’s Twist won the Grade 3 Federico Tesio en route to their near miss in the Preakness.

In the Tesio, Oliver’s Twist prevailed by a neck after a lengthy battle with 8-5 favorite Western Echo.

“I can still remember it now, it was actually who wanted it the most, like a championship fight,” Delgado told the MJC press office in 2022. “Everyone was just throwing punches at each other and whoever could knock the other out [would win].”

In 1999 and 2000, Delgado earned the mountain aboard the Paul Fout-trained Colstar. The duo went on to record victories in three Grade 3 events, the Martha Washington Stakes and the Gallorette and Locust Grove Handicaps.

These were the last victories of his career.

In 1982, Delgado told the Washingtonpost that he didn’t ride for the money, but rather, “I do it because I enjoy it.”

Today he said: “I still love it. But at some point you have to step down and stop this madness.”

As for advice to young riders, Delgado, who said he plans to train a few horses in the future, offered the following:

“Run every race hard, like it’s your last, because we really don’t know. Ride every race like your last.”

LATEST NEWS