Horse racing notebook: Jockey Cruz Mendez’s friends hope for a ‘miracle’ ...Middle East

This week at Los Alamitos Race Course, all the talk is about the man who isn’t there.

Cruz Mendez, a much-admired quarter-horse jockey at the Orange County track, remains in a nearby hospital after a fall in a race Saturday night left him with a spinal cord injury and paralysis in his legs.

Mendez underwent surgery Sunday, and since then friends and friendly rivals have been trying to stay optimistic that the 40-year-old rider’s condition will improve once swelling subsides.

“Hopefully he’ll get a miracle from God and he’ll be able to walk again,” said trainer Jose Flores, who has been winning major races with Mendez since 2012. “People are calling (me), asking how they can help. It’s a little bit heartbreaking right now. But we have to go on.”

Mendez was injured riding the 3-year-old filly Imm Relentless. The horse fell near the finish of a 400-yard race after apparently sustaining a back injury. She had to be euthanized on the track.

Some spills – as racetrackers call them – look horrific but jockeys walk away, and some look relatively routine but turn out catastrophic. This one looked as bad as it proved to be, said Tom Ward, one of the Los Alamitos stewards.

“The horse really didn’t give him any warning. That’s the way it is with those lumbar injuries. (The horse) just kind of dropped out from under him. He hit (the ground) hard,” said Ward, who said Mendez was unconscious until he was being lifted into an ambulance.

Mendez has led Los Al quarter-horse jockeys in wins five times between 2012 and 2023, and ranks in the top dozen for wins (1,175) and stakes-level wins (98) at the track that opened in 1951. His highest-earning mounts have also been Flores’ best horses, including 2015 Champion of Champions and multiple futurity and derby winner Heza Dasha Fire, major futurity and derby winner Matabari and two-time futurity winner Ima Fearless Hero.

Beyond statistics, quarter-horse jockeys’ stories often aren’t as well known as their thoroughbred-world counterparts’. Flores said Mendez is from Puebla, Mexico, and lives near Los Alamitos, which is in Cypress. He has a wife, Amber, and a 19-year-old daughter, Nancy. He didn’t ride competitively until he was 26.

“He has the ability to get horses out of the gate (quickly),” Flores said. “He’s aggressive when he needs to be. He’s gentle when he needs to be.”

Henry Reynoso Lopez, the 2025 champion quarter-horse jockey in Los Al’s year-round Saturday and Sunday night racing, said Mendez is as good with people as with horses. When Lopez, a 24-year-old native of Menifee in Riverside County, was on his way up, it was Mendez whose encouragement meant the most.

“He said of the younger riders, he liked the way I was doing my work,” Lopez said this week. “When someone like that gives you a compliment like that, it gives you a boost. He’s real down-to-earth and real humble. He’s selfless.”

Mendez received the 2024 Sam Thompson Memorial Jockey Award, which annually honors a rider for his career and personal character. The award is named for a jockey who was killed in an accident at Los Al in 2008.

“You can’t replace a person like (Mendez),” Flores said. “I’ve never heard him say anything bad about anybody. He doesn’t drink. He doesn’t smoke. He’s a great father.”

Flores said Mendez had been talking about riding for five more years, and starting a cattle business or feed lot. Mendez owns a small ranch in Phelan in San Bernardino County.

When people ask how they can help, Flores said, he suggests prayer and support for what Mendez pursues after riding.

“He’s a very positive person,” Flores said. “When things don’t go right in a race, he says, well, we’ll do this or that different next time.”

Having visited Mendez in the hospital every day, Flores said he’s trying to stay positive in the face of his hardest challenge.

“He’s ready to work hard (to recover),” Flores said. “I’ve told him he’s not alone. A lot of people are here to help.”

RISPOLI SIDELINED

Umberto Rispoli, leading Santa Anita’s jockeys in wins in the meet’s first month, will be out of action indefinitely after suffering fractures to an ankle and shin when he was thrown from Unconquerable Keen in the stretch of the Gulfstream Park Turf Sprint in Florida on Saturday.

Rispoli’s fellow Italian jockey, Antonio Fresu, is reported getting close to returning to competition. Fresu had won with two of his first three mounts of the Santa Anita meet before he broke a toe when Amner Hall was crowded into the rail in a downhill sprint Dec. 28.

AT SANTA ANITA

Wtih Rispoli out, Hector Berrios takes the reins on Pony Express, the 9-5 morning-line favorite in the San Pasqual Stakes at Santa Anita on Saturday. The 5-year-old trained by John Sadler could be the speed of the speed against Getaway Car (2-1, Juan Hernandez), Midnight Mammoth (9-2, Armando Ayuso), Bartholdy (4-1, Tyler Baze) and two others.

In the eight years since the San Pasqual moved to this spot on the calendar, the Grade II race at 1⅛ miles for 4-year-olds and up has sent winners Accelerate (2018) and Express Train (2022) and three second- and third-place finishers on to victories in the Santa Anita Handicap. The Big ’Cap is March 7.

DERBY FAVORITE OUT

Ted Noffey, the unbeaten 2-year-old champion, is off the Kentucky Derby trail because of bone bruising, the Daily Racing Form’s David Grening reported Thursday. Trainer Todd Pletcher hopes the colt will be back this summer, Grening wrote.

Saturday’s Holy Bull Stakes at Gulfstream Park in Florida, worth 20-10-6-4-2 Derby qualifying points to top finishers, will test Pletcher’s Nearly (John Velazquez) and Brad Cox’s Cannoneer (Irad Ortiz Jr.) for stamina at 1 1/16 miles against Riley Mott’s Street Sense Stakes winner Incredibolt (Jaime Torres).

The Southwest Stakes at Oaklawn Park in Arkansas has been postponed from this Saturday to Friday, Feb. 6, as the harsh winter weather shakes up racing schedules in much of the nation.

SHORTENING UP

• California veteran Tyler Baze is one of five nominees for the 77th George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award, voted by the nation’s jockeys and presented by Santa Anita for on- and off-the-track distinction. Also on the ballot: Julien Leparoux, Alex Birzer, Jareth Loveberry and Timothy Thornton. The winner will be named in March.

• Santa Anita postponed the Las Virgenes Stakes for 3-year-old fillies from this Sunday to Sunday, Feb. 8. Nominees include winner Explora and others from the Santa Ynez Stakes, itself postponed from Jan. 3 to 10 during the track’s early-season rainouts.

• Skippylongstocking, White Abarrio and Full Serrano, 1-2-3 finishers in the Pegasus World Cup Invitational in Florida on Saturday, all are 7 years old. Horse Racing Nation’s Ed DeRosa said it’s the first time since at least 1991 (as far back as data is easily accessible) that the first three in a Grade I flat race were 7 or older.

Follow horse racing correspondent Kevin Modesti at X.com/KevinModesti.

SANTA ANITA LEADERS

(Through Sunday)

Jockeys / Wins

Umberto Rispoli / 15

Kazushi Kimura / 14

Emisael Jaramillo / 14

Juan Hernandez / 13

Hector Berrios / 9

Edwin Maldonado / 8

Trainers / Wins

Doug O’Neill / 12

George Papaprodromou / 10

Bob Baffert / 9

Mark Glatt / 9

Jeff Mullins / 8

Phil D’Amato / 7

Michael McCarthy / 7

UPCOMING STAKES

SANTA ANITA

Saturday

• $200,000, Grade II San Pasqual Stakes, 4-year-olds and up, 1⅛ miles

• $100,000, Grade III Megahertz Stakes, fillies and mares, 4 and up, 1 mile on turf

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