A 42-year-old apprentice jockey?
Trainer-bug rider Sergio Rabadan had his first mount today at 42
Press Release
June 14, 2026
As if it wasn’t enough that Sergio Rabadan manages Prancing Hill Farm for Joe Ioia and everything that entails, from galloping horses, shipping them and helping with the breeding operation, he also trains a 15-horse stable of his own.
Apparently, that’s still not totally fulfilling for the indefatigable 42-year-old from Mexico. He also rode in his first career race as a 10-pound bug on Sunday at Monmouth Park, finishing third aboard Richie’s Valentine – a horse he trains and his wife, Chelsea Sims, owns.
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“My first dream was to be a trainer and I’m doing that. This was my second dream, to be a jockey,” he said. “I wasn’t nervous today. I gallop horses in the mornings and break horses from the gate all of the time. So I’ve ridden plenty of horses before. This was different because it was in a race.
“I feel like this is something I want to do more now. It was fun.”
Rabadan worked as an exercise rider and foreman for the late J. Willard Thompson, a Monmouth Park training fixture, from 1999 until Thompson’s passing in 2018. The past three years he has worked for long-time Monmouth Park-based trainer Chuck Spina, who trains the majority of the horses for Ioia’s Prancing Hill Farm (Monmouth Park’s leading owner last year).
“I wish I had 10 like him,” said Ioia. “He’s as hard a worker as you will find. There’s not much he doesn’t do on our farm.”
Most of the horses Rabadan trains now are Ioia’s, although he does own four of them with his wife.
“He’s a workaholic,” said Spina. “He can do it all. Guys like him who work as hard as he does are the kind you root for.”
In races, Rabadan is only able to ride horses he trains under an archaic gentleman’s rider rule intended to avoid conflicts of interest.
His day wasn’t done after dismounting after the second race since he also saddled Prime Motive to a fourth-place finish for his wife in the fifth race.
As a trainer, he has two wins from 16 starters during the Monmouth Park meet, having gone out on his own in 2024.
“I love to work. I always have,” he said. “I get up at 4 a.m. every day and start on the farm and start galloping and training. I know some people may not understand it but this is what I have always wanted to do.
“Today I got to live out another of my dreams.”
Rabadan said Thompson “was always encouraging me to become a trainer someday.”
It was Ioia, he said, who nudged him to try being a jockey as well.
“Joe kept telling me `you should ride horses, too,’ ” said Rabadan. “We started talking about it in May. I said `you know what? I’m going to give it a try.’ And here I am.”
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