'Feels Really Good': Antonio Gallardo Rides Five Winners Sunday At Tampa
Antonio Gallardo
With a chance to ride five winners on a single card at Tampa Bay Downs for the fifth time in his career, leading jockey Antonio Gallardo went into the eighth race brimming with confidence.
Everyone could see why after first-time starter Chart ran away and hid from her six rivals, posting a 5 ¼-length victory in a snappy time of 1:10.19 for the 6-furlong distance. The eighth was the Cody’s Original Roadhouse Race of the Week.
Gallardo, a four-time Oldsmar jockey champion, is the only jockey to ride five winners at Tampa Bay Downs more than once. He has 40 winners at the current meeting through 30 racing days.
Gary Contessa trains Chart, a 3-year-old filly who is owned by the father-son team of Leonard C. Green and Jonathan I. Green.
“I really liked this filly today. I’ve been breezing her the last three or four times, and each time she kept improving,” Gallardo said. “I tried to breeze her off the pace last time with another horse in front and she did it really easy, and today after she got the lead and started to get a little bit lost, I let (eventual runner-up) Shari’s Tune go to the front and my filly felt really comfortable.”
So comfortable, in fact, she blew past Shari’s Tune at the top of the stretch en route to an eye-catching triumph.
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The 32-year-old Gallardo, who was 5-for-7 with a second and a third, got going early with his first mount in the second race, Das Da One, a 5-year-old Florida-bred gelding owned by Bruno Schickedanz and trained by Nick Caruso.
In the third race on the turf, Gallardo triumphed aboard 3-year-old Ireland-bred colt Bitcoin Passion, a first-time starter bred and owned by Khalid A. Rahim and trained by Christophe Clement. Bitcoin Passion is by 2015 Triple Crown winner American Pharoah and out of the Bernardini mare Listen Dear.
Next, Gallardo won the fourth race on 6-year-old Florida-bred gelding Legacy Azteca, owned by Mercy Man Racing and trained by Gerald Bennett. Legacy Azteca was claimed from the race for $8,000 by her former owner-trainer, Darien Rodriguez, for his Acclaimed Racing Stable.
Gallardo’s fourth victory came in the seventh race on the turf on Earthquake, a 3-year-old Florida-bred owned by Arindel and trained by Juan Alvarado.
Richard DePass set the Tampa Bay Downs record in 1980 with seven winners and was the first jockey in history to go 7-for-7 on a single card. Edwin Gonzalez rode six winners here in 2017, and a number of jockeys have ridden five winners here, including current Oldsmar riders Daniel Centeno, Samy Camacho and Pablo Morales.
But no one besides Gallardo has done it more than once, according to available records.
“Any time you ride seven races and win five, that feels really good,” he said. “I liked all my horses today. I hope there are more days coming like this, and I thank God for protecting everybody out on the track.”
