Marin sets Tampa Bay Downs wins record in historic week of riding

Samuel Marin’s April surge at Tampa Bay Downs was not just a hot streak. It became a record rewrite, with 149 wins in the season, two six-win days and a week that forced Antonio Gallardo’s 147-win standard into second place before the meet was finished.

BloodHorse unanimously named Marin Jockey of the Week for April 20-26 after a stretch that produced 15 wins from 34 mounts, a 44 percent strike rate, and an 88 percent in-the-money clip. That kind of efficiency is rare anywhere, but at a busy meet it carried extra weight because the victories were spread across the card, not piled up for one stable or one lucky sequence.

Marin’s week opened with a win for Juan Avila and kept rolling through mounts for Kelly Breen, Miguel Clement, Michael Simone, Gregory Sacco, Kathleen O’Connell, Nicolas Tomlinson, Alexis Cordero-Lopez, Lynn Rarick, Gerald Bennett, Ramon Aguayo and John Pimental. Tampa Bay Downs said the mix showed how broad the support had become around a rider who was already the meet’s leading jockey and had held the same distinction the year before.

The record fell on Sunday, April 26, when Marin’s six-win card pushed him to 149 and gave him the Tampa Bay Downs single-season mark. He won the opener aboard First Hathor for Kathleen O’Connell and closed the nine-race program on Caravaggio’s Song for John Pimental, with additional victories for Gerald Bennett, Kathleen Guciardo and Ramon Aguayo. It was his second six-win day of the week, following Friday, April 24, and it tied the Tampa Bay Downs single-card mark set by Edwin Gonzalez on March 10, 2017. Marin finished one win short of the all-time track record of seven on a card, set by Richard DePass on March 15, 1980.

The larger context makes the run even more striking. Marin, a 25-year-old from Venezuela, began riding in 2022 and had already clinched his first Oldsmar riding championship in April 2025 with 108 winners. His 149 victories also topped the 116 he recorded in the 2024-2025 meet, underscoring how sharply his output climbed in a year. Marin credited his agent, Mike Moran, saying, “Mike has been doing a great job.”

Gallardo’s old benchmark carried real history, too. He won five Tampa Bay Downs titles and more than 2,700 races in the United States, which made Marin’s break of the modern seasonal record more than a local footnote. With Tampa Bay Downs closing May 3 and Marin already pointing toward a wider North American campaign, the question now is whether this was simply a Tampa hot hand or the launch point for bigger mounts and a broader summer stage.