Edgar Prado Headlines Jockey and Jeans Fundraiser

Hall of Famer Edgar Prado will head up nine star jockeys in the first All Star Jockey Challenge Saturday at Canterbury Park June 23 to benefit disabled jockeys.

The inaugural Jockey and Jeans & PDJF All Star Jockey Challenge is part of the fifth annual Jockeys and Jeans Fundraiser. Proceeds from both, along with a poker tournament and Sunday's golf tournament, will go to the Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund. The race will be part of the track's inaugural Mystic Lake Northern Stars Racing Festival, featuring five stakes races worth a total $500,000.   

Prado leads the eight active Hall of Fame Riders, with 7,006 victories, and his 38,000 mounts have earned $267 million. Only seven riders have won more races or money. In 1997, he became one of four jockeys to win more than 500 races in a year, winning 536. In 2002, he won his first Classic race, the Belmont Stakes aboard Sarava at 70-1, the race's longest priced winner. In 2004, he again won the Belmont with Birdstone  who denied the popular Smarty Jones  the Triple Crown.

Galloping out after the race, the always gracious rider drew alongside fellow jockey Stewart Elliott aboard Smarty Jones and said, "I'm sorry." Prado won the Kentucky Derby (G1) in 2006 aboard the great Barbaro, winning by 6 1/2 lengths, the largest margin of victory since Assault in 1946. Shortly after the start of the Preakness Stakes (G1), the colt shattered an ankle and Prado did a running dismount while holding onto the reins and was widely credited with saving Barbaro's life. Sadly, the gallant colt was euthanized the following winter. Proving he still has his mojo at 52, Prado won the$1 million Woodford Reserve Manhattan Stakes (G1) at Belmont Park June 9.  

In 2006, he won the Mike Venezia Award for Sportsmanship and Citizenship and has worked to aid several racing charities and now is racing for who can no longer race. 

"The injured jockeys need our support and it up to us riders to help," Prado said from his Maryland base. "Jockeys are all one big family and we actually spend more time with other riders and we do with our real families. And if you're a jockey very long you're going to be injured at some time. But God has been with me and I'm blessed."

Still, Prado said he has broken ribs, a shoulder, his back twice and his C7 vertebrae, an injury that kept him sidelined several months.       

He will compete with six of the track's former leading riders, Scott Stevens, Luis Quinonez, Ry Eikleberry, Jareth Loveberry, Leandro Goncalves, and the track's four time leading rider Dean Butler. Also competing are James Graham, a multiple graded stakes race winner of over $75 million in purses and Ramon Vazquez, the nation's fifth leading rider last year with 260 victories and earnings of over $6.5 million. 

The track and horsemen will contribute their share of the race's on-track handle, meaning at least 18% of all money bet at the track will go to the PDJF, which makes monthly payments of $1,000 to some 65 former disabled jockeys, some 40 of whom are either pari-or quadriplegics. Competing jockeys will donate their winnings and horse owners and trainers will have the opportunity to donate their share. Jockeys racing at Canterbury as well as Penn National that evening will have the opportunity to donate a mount fee.      

Prado will join with a dozen Hall of Fame jockeys who will attend Jockeys and Jeans. They include Steve Cauthen, one of five living Triple Crowns winning jockeys, Pat Day, Earlie Fires, Sandy Hawley, Chris McCarron, Don Pierce, Laffitt Pincay, Jr., Randy Romero, John Rotz, Bobby Ussery, Jorge Velasquez, and Manny Ycaza.

Catastrophically injured riders honored at the event include Paul Nolan and Anne Von Rosen, who regularly rode at the track before their injuries, Gary Birzer, Roger Blanco, Quarter Horse rider Tad Leggett—now a quadriplegic—and Armando Rivera, who despite being a paraplegic since he was 19, travels throughout California to race his wheelchair. 

Very few tickets remain unsold for the event and they can be purchased for $50 at Canterburypark.com. Those who cannot attend can donate to the PDJF in behalf of the Jockeys and Jeans Fundraiser at pdjf.org/donate 

For more information contact Eddie Donnally at 818-653-3711 eddonnally@gmail.com or Jeff Maday at 952-496-6408