Since then, the brothers have racked up a combined 3500 wins, 22 riding titles, 2 Belmont Stakes wins and 5 Breeders’ Cup victories, along with spotless reputations.
So why doesn’t anybody outside the Thoroughbred racing niche know their names? At ages 24 and 25, the Ortizes are poised to inherit the mantle of Hall of Fame riders such as Angel Cordero, Jr. They should be a marketer’s dream come true. They’re brothers who’ve come to the US to fulfill the American Dream, succeeding by dint of an unbeatable trifecta of character, effort and talent. It’s impossible to find anyone on the New York backstretches who has a bad word to say about them. They’re family men, close to their parents, with long-term partners and soon, each will have a couple of kids (Taylor Rice, also a jockey and José’s wife, is expecting their second child later this year). Irad met his partner, Meliza Betancourt, seven years ago while he was in jockey school in Puerto Rico, making them the racetrack equivalent of high school sweethearts. Ordinarily, jockeys begin their careers on lower-level tracks, where they’re more likely to get rides and the experience and education that comes with them.
Irad came straight to New York, and, predictably, family played a major role in that. His grandfather, who, like one of their uncles, was also a jockey, worked the New York tracks.
Now the Ortizes’ parents are both here, their father working in one of the barns at Belmont. Perhaps as a direct result of their success, most of José and Irad’s family are on the US mainland with them and were, fortunately, largely unaffected when Hurricane Maria hit last fall.
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