In his 10th year of riding at Woodbine, RAFAEL HERNANDEZ has once again climbed to the top of the rider’s ranks, winning the 2025 title with 148 victories.
Hernandez picked up a win on the shortened final card of the season on December 14 and beat out apprentice Pietro Moran, who had 139 wins. Fraser Aebly got up into third place with 94 wins to edge 2024 leading rider Sahin Civaci, who left Woodbine in October. Seven of the 12 races scheduled for the last day of racing were run before the remainder was cancelled due to cold temperatures.
Since coming to Woodbine in 2016, Hernandez has been a top-three rider, taking his first title in 2020 with 129 wins. He won the Sovereign Award for Outstanding Jockey that year.
Hernandez rode 630 horses in 2025, almost exactly 200 less than Moran, who was the leading apprentice rider of the season. Hernandez’s winning percentage was a strong 23 and his purse earnings were $6,480,672. Most impressive was that the rider won 23 stakes races at Woodbine this year, easily his best total and far ahead of his rival riders.
Originally from Puerto Rico, Hernandez came to Woodbine to ride Shaman Ghost in the 2016 Queen’s Plate. He had been “discovered” by American trainer Wesley Ward, who was impressed by the rider who was plying his trade in obscurity at Fairmount Park in Illinois. Hernandez, having won the Plate for trainer Brian Lynch and owner Frank Stronach in 2016, made Woodbine his permanent home in 2017.
In total this year, Hernandez won 171 races and brought his career total to 3,401.
MARK CASSE collected his 17th Woodbine training title, sending out 97 winners from 494 starters, a 20 percent win rate. Martin Drexler finished second with 81 wins and Kevin Attard, last year’s Sovereign Award-winning trainer, won 65 races. Casse, whose Woodbine stable is run by David Adams and Kathryn Sullivan, among others, won 12 stakes over Attard’s 10 stakes races. The purses earned by Casse trainees at Woodbine this year reached $5.7 million. A duo Hall of Famer, Casse won his 4,000th career race in 2025 at Colonial Downs, and he has won 16 Sovereign Awards for Outstanding Trainer.
BRUNO SCHICKEDANZ won his third straight owner’s title by purses, as his horses won $2,014,063 thanks to 79 wins in 438 starts and two stakes wins. Chiefswood Stable had just 120 starters and won 27 races, five stakes, and collected purses of 1.6 million. Al and Bill Ulwelling, who won their first King’s Plate this year, were third with $1.479 million in purses and 19 wins from 79 starters.
The winningest horse of the 2025 Woodbine season (by total victories) was Frank DiGuilio’s MAXIMUM FIFTY, who won six of her seven races for DiGuilio (who also bred) as well as Mad Dog Racing Stables and Martin Drexler. The four-year-old speedster is by Souper Speedy from the mare Pohdi Pohdi, by Old Forester.
MANSETTI, the King’s Plate winner, was the leading money-earning horse at the meeting for owners Al and Bill Ulwelling and trainer Kevin Attard.
The Highest Winning Beyer Speed Figures recorded at the Woodbine meeting in 2025 were:
PATCHES O’HOULIHAN – 108, Thorncliffe S.
SHE FEELS PRETTY – 104, E. P. Taylor S.
SIMCOE – 103, Bold Venture S.
OLD CHESTNUT – 101, Jacques Carter S.
NOTABLE SPEECH – 101, Woodbine Mile
SIMCOE – 100, Vigil S.
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