Irad Ortiz Jr. ties Saratoga single-day win record with six victories

Irad Ortiz Jr. matched Saratoga’s single-day win record with six victories on a 12-race card July 25, 2026, a haul built on quality mounts and a stakes-heavy program that kept his name in the winner’s circle all afternoon. The six-win performance tied the mark shared by Hall of Fame riders Ramón Domínguez and John Velázquez.

Ortiz’s day was more than a volume stat. He won with 6 of 12 mounts, which meant every second ride he took to the track produced a victory, and the biggest of those came in the Grade 2, $400,000 Alfred G. Vanderbilt Stakes. Built delivered that breakthrough in the six-furlong sprint, giving Ortiz one of the afternoon’s marquee wins and showing why the total carried so much weight at Saratoga Race Course.

The rest of the card reinforced how difficult the feat was. Saratoga’s Saturday program was a 12-race slate loaded with competitive fields, not a soft set of overmatched spots, and Ortiz kept finding the right horse in the right race. He also was aboard Counting Stars in the Coaching Club American Oaks, meaning both stakes on the card went through his hands. That is the difference between an ordinary winning streak and a record-tying day at the Spa: the victories came in feature races, against better company, with more pressure and less margin for error.

Domínguez set the standard by reaching six wins twice in 2012, on July 22 and Sept. 2, and Velázquez also had previously tied the record. Ortiz joined that small group with a card that said as much about the Saratoga jockey colony as it did about one rider’s form. At elite summer meets, the best mounts do not always spread evenly, and a top jockey who gets the live horses in the live spots can quickly dominate the flow of a card.

That was the shape of Ortiz’s Saturday. He converted a strong book into a historic number, won both stakes races on the program, and left Saratoga with a record-equaling afternoon that will sit among the defining rides of the 2026 meet.