Jockey Bridgmohan back 'home' for first Pegasus World Cup try

When Shaun Bridgmohan rides Tom’s d’Etat in Saturday’s $9 million Pegasus World Cup Invitational (G1) at Gulfstream Park, he isn’t just returning to the South Florida circuit where he launched his career as a jockey. The 39-year-old Bridgmohan is returning home.

Bridgmohan’s family moved from Jamaica to Fort Lauderdale when he was young, and Gerald Bridgmohan was an avid racing fan who took his kids to the track on weekends. Shaun said he “got hooked on it,” working at the track as a hotwalker, groom and then exercise rider while in high school. He started riding races at Calder Race Course, now Gulfstream Park West, after graduating from Boyd H. Anderson High School in Lauderdale Lakes.

“I grew up watching Jerry Bailey and Mike Smith. Johnny Velazquez wintered there, and Pat Day,” Bridgmohan said, naming four Hall of Fame jockeys. “It was always an exciting place. I was only there one winter, but it’s always home to me because it’s where I grew up.”

He rode at Gulfstream Park in 1998 before relocating to New York in a season that concluded with Bridgmohan winning the Eclipse Award as outstanding apprentice jockey. Now a fixture on the Kentucky/New Orleans circuit and the winner of almost 3,200 races, Bridgmohan last rode at Gulfstream Park in 2014, when he was second in the Holy Bull Stakes (G2) aboard Conquest Titan.

Bridgmohan will visit his family but said his dad’s health precludes him from attending the races Saturday.

“The biggest race I won when he was there in person to see it was the Donn Handicap, when I rode Giant Oak,” Bridgmohan said of the Grade 1 race that was the Pegasus World Cup’s predecessor. That 2011 victory also was the jockey’s last graded-stakes triumph at his hometown track.

“If I could win this year, it would definitely be a thrill,” he said. 

Bridgmohan is 3-for-3 on Tom’s d’Etat, including a victory in the Dec. 22 Tenacious stakes at Fair Grounds. Tom’s d’Etat sits at 20-1 in the morning line, but there is no telling how good the Al Stall Jr.-trained 6-year-old horse might be. He’s 6-for-9 in a career sidetracked several times by ankle issues.

Tom’s d’Etat, named for the late New Orleans sports and business icon Tom Benson and campaigned by Benson’s widow, Gayle, has never been in a graded stakes, let alone a Grade 1, let alone North American’s richest race. The $75,000 Tenacious was his first stakes of any kind.

“He’s a really, really nice horse,” Bridgmohan said. “The first time I rode him, I was really impressed. I don’t think you’ve seen the best of what he’s capable of. Now that he’s gotten a couple of races together now, I’m looking forward to it. He couldn’t be doing any better than he is. He feels really good, doing everything right and I look for big things to come. He’s a horse with a tremendous amount of ability.

“The last two races, he just toyed with them. I know there’s more there. I haven’t gotten to the bottom of him. Horses like that, you can feel the acceleration that they give you. As big as he is, he covers a lot of ground. And when you ask him to accelerate, he’s there for you and he gives you a big turn of foot.”

Bridgmohan also rides Rahway in the $200,000 La Prevoyante (G3) for trainer Mike Maker on the Pegasus undercard.