Ateam's TDN Weekend Piece: Puerto Rican Next Wave

[Kasept]

Great piece from Oey on Angel, Johnny V and their heirs...

http://www.thoroughbreddailynews.com...s-taking-over/

Puerto Rico’s Young Guns Taking Over
By Joe Bianca

Take a look at the top of the current Belmont Park spring/summer meeting jockey standings and you’ll quickly recognize a few common threads. For one, Jose Ortiz (63 wins), Irad Ortiz, Jr. (43) and Manny Franco (43) are all under 24 years old. More importantly to Angel Cordero, Jr. though, they’re all natives of Puerto Rico.

Cordero was a pioneer for Puerto Rican jockeys in the United States at a time when the vast majority of riders were either native-born or hailed from South America. He won over 7,000 races, was the first jockey from the island commonwealth to capture all three jewels of the Triple Crown and, in 1988, became the first Puerto Rican to be elected to racing’s Hall of Fame. 24 years later, then a jockey’s agent, Cordero watched with pride as his longtime student, friend and client, Puerto Rican pilot John Velazquez, was enshrined.

Now 73, Cordero has a new reason to be proud of the trail he blazed, as the Ortiz brothers, Franco and 19-year-old Eric Cancel have begun to usher in an era of achievement for Puerto Rican jockeys unlike anything their sport has ever seen.

“Those four guys are the future of racing,” Cordero predicted. “Two to three years from now, they’ll be the ones at the top. There ain’t no doubt about it. They’re the most talented, the youngest, and the ones who want it the most.”