Agent sees Van Dyke riding with confidence amid hot streak
Brad Pegram has been a jockey agent for 20 years. He’s booked mounts for Danny Sorenson, Frank Alvarado, Kent Desormeaux, David Flores, Martin Garcia and currently both Mike Smith and Drayden Van Dyke.
He’s had clients accomplish some extraordinary things. In a one-year period, Smith, for example, won five stakes on the 2017 Belmont Stakes Day card and rode Justify to a Triple Crown championship that concluded there this year. At the 2013 Breeders’ Cup World Championships, Smith and Garcia combined to win five races.
But when asked if he’d ever had a rider on a better day-to-day “roll” than Van Dyke here recently, the answer was a plain “No.”
To recap: On Sunday, Van Dyke tied a Del Mar single-day record with seven wins in eight mounts on a 10-race card. When racing resumed Wednesday, Van Dyke won on his first two mounts, extending a consecutive race streak, started with the last three on Sunday, to five in a row.
The streak ended when Van Dyke finished second in the nightcap. But with four mounts on Thursday’s program and seven each on Friday and Saturday, there’s no telling what might lie ahead for the 23-year-old Van Dyke. For reasons that are becoming quite obvious.
“He’s talented, he’s really good,” Pegram said. “He’s getting a lot of support from some really good barns. He’s talented and he’s working hard. He’s out here every morning working horses.
“He’s very comfortable within himself right now. He’s riding with a lot of confidence, but when you’re getting on those kind of horses you can ride with that much confidence. I like seeing him ride with confidence – in himself and the horses he’s on.
“And he’s a student, he’s learned. He’s listening to the right people and he’s been taught the right way. From Tom (Proctor) to Bob (Baffert) to Mike (Smith), he’s been taught well and he has learned. He listens. And that will always pay off. Anybody who is a student of the game is way ahead of somebody who’s not.”
As for his own part in Van Dyke’s hot streak, Pegram said he feels “a little” sense of accomplishment.
“But I like to stay in the background. They’re the ones performing,” Pegram said.
The streak has propelled Van Dyke to a three-win lead (28-25) over defending champion Flavien Prat atop the meeting’s jockey standings. Van Dyke, who won the Eclipse Award as an apprentice in 2014, ranks 14th among North American riders for 2018 with 93 wins from 417 starts and purse earnings of more than $6 million.
Van Dyke is in quest of his first Southern California riding title.