Ricky Gonzalez & Velocity © Benoit Photo
Jockey Ricky Gonzalez was already having a very good year in 2025. He got married in April and recently got word that they are expecting their first child.
Professionally he was having a fairly nice meet at Del Mar going into last weekend. The just-turned-30-year-old rider had racked-up seven wins from just 34 mounts when he climbed aboard Velocity in the G1 Del Mar Oaks on Saturday. Minutes later he had won the biggest race of his young career.
Gonzalez had won a Grade I back in 2020 at Santa Anita when he captured the La Brea with Fair Maiden. And he has a collection of nice Grade 3 victories over the years.
“This was way better,” Gonzalez notes. “Because the first one was during COVID. There were no crowds or anything. This one (the Oaks win) was electrifying.”
The Oaks was Ricky’s first graded stakes win at Del Mar and his third stakes victory overall at the seaside oval.
“To be honest I thought she’d be better on the dirt,” Gonzalez said of his mount Velocity after the Oaks. “I had a wonderful trip. I just waited for a seam and when I saw it she went right through it.”
Ricardo Gonzalez was born in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico on July 10, 1995. He remembers first falling in love with horses when he was six. His grandfather was a breeder in Mexico.
“He had a bloodstock agent in Kentucky,” Gonzalez recalls, “who he bought some horses from and he took them to Mexico. The bloodstock agent saw my Dad and said ‘There’s a jockey right there.’ My Dad said, ‘No, I’m too old but I have a son who’s just like me.’ He told my dad ‘Show him a race and see if he likes it.’ So they took me to the races and I said ‘Oh yea, I want to do that.’
But Ricky still had some growing to do. He was only six but by the time he turned 12 he was jumping on horses and when he turned 15 he enrolled at the Frank Garza’s jockey’s school in Oxnard.
“I was riding match races,” Gonzalez remembers. “Then I went back to Mexico and rode my first race there and the next day I was on a plane to Phoenix and I started riding at Turf Paradise.”
That was in 2013. A week later on his seventh mount he notched his first win in the States.
“It was a pick up mount,” Gonzalez says. “I went straight to the lead. It was five furlongs and I’ve never looked back.”
He certainly had no problem getting mounts. In his first year he rode over five-hundred races and won 60 of them. In June of that year he moved his tack to Northern California and rode the fair circuit for a couple of months before landing at Golden Gate Fields.
“I loved it up there,” Gonzalez says. “We had a lot of journeyman riders you could learn a lot from. They helped me a lot.”
He would ride in the Bay Area for six years, refining his riding skills and winning races. He won a career high 197 in 2015 and finished second to Russell Baze in the jockey standings. Over the years up there he rode against the likes of Juan Hernandez, Abel Cedillo and Kyle Frey.
“In the summer of 2019 I told my agent ‘Next year I want to try and go down south,’” Gonzalez recalls. “So in the summer of 2020 I decided to make the move.”
That was the summer of COVID, which presented a whole new set of challenges for a young jockey trying to break into one of the toughest jockey colonies in the nation. he was undeterred.
“I had said the year before I was going to do it,” Gonzalez states. “And then COVID happens and I told myself ‘I’m not going to back down now.’ It was challenging. We couldn’t work horses for one.”
He credits trainer Peter Miller for giving him a leg-up in Southern California.
Gonzalez rode his first summer meet at Del Mar that year and finished seventh in the jockey standings with 16 victories. He returned in the fall and won another seven races. Gonzalez has turned into one of the more consistent riders at Del Mar, winning at least six or seven races during every meet. But he has bigger fish to fry.
“Like everybody I’d like to win the Derby,” Gonzalez says when asked about his goals. “A Breeders’ Cup and all that. Main thing is to stay healthy.”
Winning the Del Mar Oaks isn’t the only highlight of 2025 for Gonzalez. He and 1st Bet’s commentator and former jockey Jessica Pyfer tied the knot in the spring and they have their first baby on the way.
If good fortune paves the way to happiness, Ricky Gonzalez is on the right track.