Teen jockey Yedsit Hazlewood set for Ellis Park summer move
Yedsit Hazlewood is headed to Ellis Park with 315 career wins already in the book, and Wesley Ward is expected to give the 18-year-old live mounts.
Yedsit Hazlewood is headed to Ellis Park for the summer meet, and the move gives the 18-year-old a sharper test than most riders see this early. Once his apprentice allowance runs out on June 29, Wesley Ward is expected to back him with mounts, while Cliff Collier takes over as his agent.
Hazlewood arrives with numbers that force attention. Equibase listed him with 315 career wins and $10,184,327 in earnings as of June 26, including 178 wins and $5,732,458 in 2026 alone. For a rider still only 18, that is not a developmental profile anymore. It is a book that already belongs with established pros.
The path to Ellis Park has been built race by race in the Mid-Atlantic. Hazlewood got his first U.S. win aboard Addy's Laddy T N T on April 4, 2025, at Laurel Park after starting 0-for-12, then kept climbing through a 2025 Maryland State Fair meet title in Timonium and Laurel Park spring meet honors in 2026, when Brittany Russell was leading trainer. He has spent the last 15 months riding primarily at Laurel Park, Parx and Delaware Park under the guidance of Jose Corrales, the former jockey who helped bring him to Maryland.
His apprenticeship timeline explains the move off the bug. Maryland stewards extended Hazlewood’s apprentice allowance by 66 days on April 4, 2026, citing an injury suffered on June 9, 2025. That extension pushed back the expiration date that had been set for April 13, but the calendar now turns at Ellis Park, where the weight break disappears and every mount has to be earned on merit.
That makes the Henderson, Ky., meet a useful proving ground. Ellis Park opens its 25-day summer season on Thursday, July 2, and runs through Aug. 23, starting with Fourth of July weekend racing before settling into a Friday-through-Sunday schedule. In a short meet like that, there is little time for a new face to fade into the background, especially one with a résumé strong enough to get Ward involved immediately.
Hazlewood’s rise has also moved fast by any standard. America’s Best Racing says the Panama native was inspired by his brother, Angel Rodriguez, trained at the Laffit Pincay Jr. Technical Jockey Training Academy and arrived in the United States two days after his 17th birthday. Ellis Park now gets the next chapter, and it is the first one without apprentice cover.
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