Bravo leaves crop controversy in N.J., will ride 1 year in Calif.

He will be by the shore again this summer. It just will not be the Jersey Shore.

Joe Bravo, who has been well known as “Jersey Joe” for his 13 riding championships at Monmouth Park, is leaving behind the crop controversy in his native state and taking his tack to spend the next year in Southern California, including this summer at Del Mar.

“I’m flying out for the last few days of Santa Anita,” Bravo told Horse Racing Nation in a Saturday phone conversation from New Jersey. “I’ll be at Santa Anita the 18th, 19th and 20th to show everybody that this is the truth. It’s not just a rumor that I’m going to Del Mar. I’ll ride the final three days (at Santa Anita) and then come home and have my truck shipped with my stuff. Then I’ll go back out to Del Mar.”

The cross-country shift comes after nearly nine months of Bravo’s often very public criticism of the New Jersey Racing Commission’s newly enacted rule that prevents jockeys from using crops on their horses except when safety requires it.

“I’m going to miss Monmouth Park, but it’s a shame the New Jersey Racing Commission had to do what they did,” Bravo said. “How can four people put in something like this? I just don’t understand. It’s a shame that Monmouth Park has to abide by these rules.”

While he spends the next year on the West Coast, Bravo hopes the federal Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act, scheduled to take effect next July, will inspire all racing states to get on the same page when it comes to crop rules.

“If you go around the Northeast right now there’s so many different rules,” Bravo said. “It’s hard to keep up. I figured California is a good place to go for a year until I guess New Jersey gets on board. I figured I’d give myself one year in California, and then I could kind of re-evaluate everything.”

Looking for a new professional home for the summer, Bravo credited his new agent, Matt Nakatani, with engineering the move west.

“It’s all kind of come at the last minute,” Bravo said. “Matt reached out and dropped the idea in my head. I’m like, ‘You know what? It’s a great idea.’”

Bravo said he has already reached out to some trainers to get assignments, but when he was asked who, he said, “I’d hate to mention one or two names, because I don’t want to get slighted from other guys.”

Bravo, 49, was the most prominent jockey to refuse rides this year at Monmouth Park, where the current season began May 28. In the past month he has been riding off and on at Belmont Park, Delaware Park and Penn National. He would have ridden Oleksandra before she was scratched from the Jaipur (G1) on Saturday’s Belmont Stakes undercard.

“If I was going to stay here in New Jersey, I would have to travel two hours every day to go to work,” Bravo said. “Last week I was at Penn National one day and won the Penn Mile (G3, on Gershwin). Then I went to Delaware the following day, and then two days later I was in Belmont. It’d be a little less tough traveling like that the entire summer, so I’m really excited about being in one place and traveling a couple miles to work instead of two hours to work.”

Now in his 34th year as a professional jockey, Bravo has 5,488 wins from 30,427 starts with earnings totaling $188,895,029, according to Equibase.

Bravo’s Del Mar record – 14: 2-1-1 – is scant. The victories were in the autumn runnings of the Jimmy Durante Stakes (G3) aboard Daddy Is a Legend for trainer George Weaver in 2017 and Elsa for Mike Stidham in 2018.

“Every time going to Del Mar is great,” Bravo said. “Horses make you look good, and I’m ecstatic about teaming up with some good ones out there now.”

The Del Mar meet is scheduled to run four days a week this summer from July 16 to Sept. 6. Bravo said he intends to ride full time during the fall meets at Santa Anita and Del Mar and then the winter-spring meet at Santa Anita.

“I’ve rented a beautiful place there at L’Auberge,” Bravo said. “I’m excited about the fun time.”