Jorge Velásquez

Jorge Velásquez was born on 28 December 1946 in Panama, where his career began before he moved to the United States as a teenager. He won more races than any other American jockey in 1967 and led the nation in earnings in 1969.

In 1978 he became nationally famous aboard Alydar in what is often called racing's greatest rivalry, finishing second to Affirmed in all three Triple Crown races by a combined margin of less than two lengths, then beating him in the Travers Stakes after Affirmed's disqualification. In 1981 he won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness on Pleasant Colony, missing the Triple Crown with a third in the Belmont, and in 1985 he won the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies and the Breeders' Cup Classic.

Voted the George Woolf Memorial Jockey Award by his peers in 1986 and inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in 1990, he retired in 1997 with 6,795 wins, later working as a racing official and jockeys' agent.

How the name is written

Panamanian by birth, Velásquez; U.S. racing records list him as Jorge Velasquez.

Sources

Facts in this profile are drawn from the Wikipedia article(s) linked below, consulted on 21 September 2026; the text is original. Wikipedia (English) · Wikipedia (Spanish)

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Profiles are compiled from public sources for general information. They are not affiliated with or endorsed by the people described. Corrections are welcome at carol@velasquez.info.