Paco Lopez earns Jockey of the Week honors after 20-win surge
Paco Lopez won 20 races in eight days, spread across four states and 19 trainers, then capped the run with Baby Vino’s 10 3/4-length Pegasus Stakes blowout.
Paco Lopez turned a relentless eight-day grind into Jockey of the Week honors, and the numbers explain why. From June 8-14, he won 20 races for 19 different trainers, a stretch that moved from Parx to Delaware Park, Laurel Park, Penn National and back to Monmouth Park, where he packed most of the week’s damage into the Haskell Preview card and the Sunday follow-up.
The Jockeys’ Guild, which represents more than 1,050 active, retired and permanently disabled jockeys in the United States, selected Lopez for the honor through its voting panel. For horseplayers, the surge mattered because it was not built on one stable or one race type. Lopez’s wins came across Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and New Jersey, a sign that he was landing live mounts for a wide range of barns while still carrying the workload of a rider who can take a full book and keep moving.
The week’s centerpiece came at Monmouth Park on June 13, when Lopez guided Baby Vino to a 10 3/4-length runaway in the $125,000 Pegasus Stakes. The 1 1/16-mile race is a local prep for the $1 million Haskell Stakes, and Lopez gave the colt a clean, tactical trip behind the speed before asking for a decisive move. Baby Vino’s score was not only the most emphatic win of the week for Lopez, it also marked a breakthrough for the Arkansas-based connections and stamped the colt as a player for bigger summer races at Oceanport.
Lopez’s Monmouth weekend was the engine behind the 20-win burst. He won six races on the Haskell Preview card Saturday and added five more Sunday, turning the Jersey stop into a showcase of volume as much as variety. That kind of output also ripples through rival jockey colonies, where one rider piling up winners across multiple barns can squeeze opportunities and reshape the live mounts available on a given card. It was the latest proof that Lopez’s value is not limited to headline stakes success; his edge comes from showing up everywhere and converting volume into wins.
The honor was Lopez’s second Jockeys’ Guild recognition of 2026, following the earlier nod tied to his Preakness Stakes victory, his first career classic-race win. Taken together, the two awards show a rider in form at every level, from marquee classics to the kind of week-long workload that can tilt an entire circuit.
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