Triple Crown winning jockey Victor Espinoza has been seriously injured after his horse collapsed and dies at the Del Mar training center.
Horse Bobby Abu Dhabi suffered a sudden heart attack and collapsed at 9am during training on Sunday.
Espinoza, 46, fractured one of his vertebra and suffered a nerve injury to his left shoulder and arm during the fall. He was rushed to hospital and is slowly regaining feeling in his arms.
Triple Crown winning jockey Victor Espinoza (pictured on Bobby Abu Dhabi at Santa Anita in April this year where he took Grade II, $200,000 Kona Gold Stakes) has been seriously injured after his horse collapsed and dies at the Del Mar training center
He did not race Sunday and will remain in the hospital overnight, NBC San Diego reported.
‘He has regained about 50 percent of the feeling already,’ Espinoza’s agent Brian Beach said. ‘Doctors are optimistic he’ll fully recover fairly quickly. It’s the kind of thing that football players get all the time.’
‘It looks like we dodged a bullet,’ Beach added.
Brian Trump, the racing manager for Rockingham Ranch and owner of Bobby, tweeted about the sudden death of the horse.
Espinoza, 46, fractured one of his vertebra and suffered a nerve injury to his left shoulder and arm during the fall
Horse Bobby Abu Dhabi (pictured in an suffered a sudden heart attack and collapsed at 9am during training on Sunday
Four-year-old colt Bobby (pictured with Espinoza) had been training for the Bing Crosby Stakes next Saturday
‘It is with great sadness that I can confirm this morning we lost our boy, BOBBY ABU DHABI to a sudden cardiac arrest on the track,’ he tweeted. ‘While we are deeply saddened and heartbroken by this loss our thoughts are currently with HOF jockey @VictorEspinoza. Please keep him in your prayers.’
Four-year-old colt Bobby had been training for the Bing Crosby Stakes next Saturday.
It was between the sixteenth pole and the wire when it fell. Espinoza was thrown off the horse, then lay motionless for several minutes before being fitted with a neck brace and taken by ambulance to a hospital.
The accident occurred during training before the center opened the doors to the public.
Beach says Espinoza, who guided American Pharoah to the triple crown in 2015, suffered no paralysis or other broken bones. He says ‘it looks like we dodged a bullet.’
The accident occurred during training before the Del Mar training center (pictured) opened the doors to the public
Four-year-old Bobby Abu Dhabi was training for the Bing Crosby Stakes next Saturday.
Five-foot-two-inches Espinoza came from a small farm in Mexico and moved to the US in 1990.
His big break came in 2000 when he won the Breeders’ Cup Distaff aboard Spain and the following year he clinched first in the Kentucky Derby. Between 2000 and 2006 he averaged 193 wins a year.
He later became the first jockey in history to get three opportunities to win the Triple Crown. He won back to back with California Chrome and American Pharoah in both the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes.
Espinoza, who is unmarried and without kids, has also garnered a reputation for himself as something of a ladies man and was said to be dating 5-foot-9 Stephanie Kunkel.
Kunkel’s mother Julie Kunkel claimed they had been dating seven years and were even engaged in 2015.
He was also allegedly seen kissing then 19-year-old Kelly Kovalchick, a fellow equestrian, according to Page Six.
Yet Espinoza’s agent, Brian Beach, denied that his client even had a girlfriend.
Espinoza, who is unmarried and without kids, has also garnered a reputation for himself as something of a ladies man and was said to be dating 5-foot-9 Stephanie Kunkel (pictured together in 2009)