John Bisono rode his 1,000th winner Saturday – for the second time.
Bisono scored his 1,000th career victory in the United States on Saturday in the fifth race at Parx Racing aboard Irish Colonel for trainer Cal Lynch. Bisono was previously honored at Camerero racetrack in Puerto Rico for winning 1,000 races there.
Although Equibase credits Bisono with 821 wins in Puerto Rico, where he rode from 1997 to 2010, he says the correct figure is 1,055.
“I had Puerto Rico send me all my charts from there,” Bisono said. “I won 1,055 races and 30 stakes. Equibase is missing statistics on me from the late 1990s.”
Although the jockey pipeline almost always runs from Puerto Rico to the United States, Bisono did a reverse commute. A native of Queens, N.Y., Bisono started at Belmont Park and Aqueduct in 1989. He switched to Parx, then named Philadelphia Park, in 1991 and stayed there with the exception of 1995 when he rode in Florida.
“Before I went to Puerto Rico I was doing good, but I kept getting hurt,” Bisono said. “I’d get hurt, come back and start winning, and then get hurt again. In 1997, I got a call from Ramon Morales, a top trainer in Puerto Rico, who I knew from up here. He said, ‘I’m doing good, would you like to come ride for me?’ I agreed and went down and stayed for 13 years.”
Bisono, 45, was introduced to racing by his father, who would go to the races as a fan and bring John along.
“When I was 9 or 10, I just fell in love with it and said I wanted to learn to ride,” Bisono said. “I started going to the backside and to the farms. I learned the old way. I groomed and took care of the horses before I started riding.”
When Bisono returned from Puerto Rico, he got off to a good start and was a top 10 rider at Parx each year from 2010 to 2014, finishing second in 2013 standings and fifth in 2014 and 2012.
His business has declined the past three years, and he won 38 races in 2016 and 37 last year.
Ex-rider Carl Fiorentino was Bisono’s agent until recently when a personal situation began taking up more of Fiorentino’s time.
“John has just kind of fallen through the cracks here,” Fiorentino said. “He’s a gentleman, he rides a good race, and he tries hard every race whether he’s 2-1 or 20-1.”
Bisono has the backing of some top horsemen and is Todd Pletcher’s go-to rider at Parx. Pletcher and Bisono are 23 for 67 together (34 percent). Last year, they won 10 races from 31 starts (32 percent), including the $100,000 Parx Derby with Bonus Points and the $100,000 Power By Far Stakes with Firsthand Report.
“John is a very professional and consistent rider,” Pletcher said.
Bisono said he wishes he had more mounts and that he intends to keep working hard to rebuild his business.
“I would like to ride a lot more, but some people here think I only want to ride stakes or good horses in allowance races,” he said. “I will ride in any race, any time.”
Bisono is on a mini hot streak and through Monday had won with three of his last five mounts and four of his last 13. On Feb. 10, he won at Parx for trainer Ed Coletti Jr. Prior to his milestone win Saturday, he won his 999th race in the United States last Friday at Laurel Park for John Servis.
Bisono has 42 wins from 185 mounts for Servis, a 22 percent average. They teamed up to win the James F. Lewis III Stakes at Laurel in November with a Different Style, who on Feb. 10 won the Jimmy Winkfield Stakes at Aqueduct.
Last Friday at Laurel, Forest Fire paid $50 when he won a first-level optional-claiming race under Bisono.
“John is a classy guy,” Servis said. “He’s a very intelligent rider who can really tell you something about a horse once he gets off. When John says something about a horse, you should be listening.
“The horse he won on for me Friday, he liked right from the start.”
