Where SoFi Stadium stands majestically today, a stadium that has become the epicenter of sports, an important racecourse, Hollywood Park, existed for a long time. And next to that legendary race track many times a boy named Diego Herrera was looking at the horses.
That boy has today 17 years, but he no longer just watches the horses, but rides them as a professional rider. A couple of months ago, the young Hispanic from Inglewood fulfilled a day that sounds incredible: 12 races on the same day, at two different tracks and victories at both.
“I don’t know, maybe it’s youth”, he laughs when asked how he managed to run so many times. “I really like this sport, I think it’s in my blood.”
That January 2, Diego Herrera ran five times at the Santa Anita Racetrack, which is located in the Los Angeles city of Arcadia, at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains. He then ran nine times at Los Alamitos, which is near the coast in Orange County. In his carrer 14, the young jockey was a last-minute replacement and won ‘Kiss Thru Fire’ in the Charger Bar Handicap for a purse of $107,000 Dollars.
Gentry Farms’ Kiss Thru Fire wins the Charger Bar Handicap and is the first repeat winner in this race since champion Quirky in 2015-14. Jockey Diego Herrera also wins his first G1 stakes. Juan Aleman trains the multiple G1 stakes winner Kiss Thru Fire. pic.twitter.com/auhZk16X4M— Los Alamitos Race Course (@losalracing) January 3, 2022
Herrera, who will comply 12 years in the month of May, runs this March 5 the largest event of its history: the Santa Anita Handicap, which is one of the most important horse racing competitions in California.
The thoroughbred that Diego will ride has an attractive name with which Herrera will try to make more noise: ‘I am Tapatío’. “We already have some wins. He is a very noble horse, special to me. I have a lot of love for it and I hope it goes well for us”, comments the son of Mexican immigrant parents.
“I think it is a race that is very difficult to win. If you look at history, only the best riders have won it, but I have confidence in the horse that it will run well”.
Diego Herrera started riding horses when he was 3 years old
Agustín Herrera, Diego’s father, is in the gardening business. But when he was still in his native Aguascalientes, Mexico, he worked on a ranch where he was always involved with horses and other animals.
Diego Herrera says he still remembers the first time who got on a horse when he was only 3 years old, when he visited a ranch with his family: “From then on I loved it. After that we always went to the ‘pony rides’ with my dad.”
When Diego was about 7 years old, his dad, who had already made racehorses, bought him a pony. One thing led to another: the children of other horse owners rode their own ponies in the Los Alamitos corral area and started racing friends; the children were secured with a belt or in small saddles, according to him. The taste for racing horses began to become a vocation for him.
“When my Dad knew I was ready, he gave me the opportunity to get on one of his horses and it was with him that I won my first race in the pairs”, indicates Herrera about his beginnings in a lane called Jardín Rancho Los Alamos. in the city of Hesperia, northeast of Los Angeles. He had 12 years.
“The horseman could not arrive, there was no one else because he was very early. My dad told me: ‘Well, you’re going to have to raffle it off.’ Me willing as always, and yes, we started from the gates for the first time, it was my first race. I took it as a normal race, a job, well, and we won… It was something very special for me”, says Herrera.
It can be said that a race jockey was born that day of the years becomes a nice and interesting story.
By the way, Herrera, who has three sisters and a brother, reveals that his mother did not agree with him running horses when he was so young, but says: “There he could not say anything, it was already a thing of the moment”.
Víctor Espinoza believes that Diego Herrera has a great future
Diego Herrera’s first victory on a racetrack track he achieved it at 000 years riding ‘Tomasino’ in Los Alamitos, which is like his second home. Óscar Casillas, the horse’s owner, gave him the opportunity to race it.
His process of learning from him as a jockey took him from the fourth mile races at Los Alamitos to the longer distance ones . This Saturday’s Santa Anita Handicap, with a purse of $650,000 dollars, it is 1 1/4 miles.
“It is a very different thing”, he comments Herrera on his arrival in Santa Anita. “Here we are competing with the best riders in the world, I have to be in a strong mentality and ready to compete”.
The young jockey’s mentality from Inglewood was put to the test last year when he raced through the season at Del Mar Race Course near San Diego without scoring a single win.
“It was something that put me to the test and helped me a lot to improve myself and not give up,” comments the young man he has in the current season 100 started on thoroughbred horses with 17 first places, 21 seconds and 22 third parties, and earnings of $782,395 Dollars. In his career he accumulates 300 starts, 61 wins and total winnings of more than $1.9 million dollars (only a fraction is for the rider).
“This The guy works really hard”, says the legendary Mexican jockey Víctor Espinoza, winner of the mythical Triple Crown in 1400 riding American Pharoah. “He looks like he has a great future”.
Herrera expresses his admiration and gratitude for legends like Espinoza or Puerto Rican John Velázquez.
“ They have helped me a lot. There are times when I make mistakes in races and they tell me what I could have done differently. They are very classy riders and they like to help riders who are just starting out”, says the apprentice rider, who gives special credit to Óscar Andrade, a rider who taught him a lot of what he knows and who sadly saw his career cut short two years ago. decades after suffering a terrible accident that left him paralyzed.
Herrera has grown up surrounded by horses and the adrenaline rush of speed it is an important part of his life, but he understands how dangerous his job is. Last year he suffered an accident that later caused the fall of six other fellow riders.
“That taught me how to be more careful, because it’s just my life, it’s the life of others and we all have to take care of each other”, says Herrera, who then got up to continue running.
“I’ve always said that whoever he is afraid he should not get on the racehorse, it is not because he speaks ill of anyone. I think that running horses is very dangerous and when someone puts something on their head, you don’t ride the same”, he says.
The jockey Diego Herrera riding ‘Soy Tapatío’. This March 5th they are going for something big. /Photo: Courtesy Santa AnitaDiego’s goal this year: to buy his parents a house
Diego Herrera says that from a very young age he knew who wanted to be a horse racer and is already doing outstanding things for someone so young. But anyway he already graduated from Lennox Academy high school, it was remote due to the pandemic. “I put it in my mind that I had to do that for my parents and thank God we got ahead,” he says.
And then, when talking about his goals for this one 2022, Herrera says: “Keep making noise and take care of myself; to be healthy. But a very big goal that I have this year is to buy a house for my parents and have them in a house where they feel comfortable, right now we rent…”.
This Saturday’s races at Santa Anita will be televised live on CNBC from 1-3 pm PT. The stellar race where many eyes will be on the young prodigy Diego Herrera will be at 5 pm and can be seen on TVG, channel 552 from DirecTV.