ARCADIA — Of all the horse trainers and owners who go into this weekend at Santa Anita dreaming of earning spots in the Breeders’ Cup races next month in Kentucky, the one who might be pinching herself is Aggie Ordonez.
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Ordonez, 58, has a chance to make the best season of her training career even better when she saddles Vodka Vodka, a 20-1 longshot on the morning line for Saturday’s 1⅛-mile Goodwood Stakes for older males, and Om N Joy, the 2-1 favorite in Sunday’s 1-1/16-mile Zenyatta Stakes for fillies and mares.
A win in either the $300,000, Grade I Goodwood or the $200,000, Grade II Zenyatta would put Ordonez’s 2026 purses over $1 million in her third consecutive year of rising earnings. A trip to the Breeders’ Cup on Oct. 30-31 at Keeneland would be her first.
“I feel like I’m reaching new heights every year, every week, every day,” Ordonez said one morning this week at Clockers’ Corner, as her labradoodle, Daisy Doodle, strained at her leash. “It’s been an incredible journey. I’m loving every second of it. Don’t wake me up.”
Ordonez hasn’t booked flights to Lexington just yet.
“We’re taking it day by day,” she said. “If they both win, and they both earn a berth in the Breeders’ Cup, and they both come out of the race(s) great, of course that would be the dream. But they lead the way.”
Ordonez, daughter of the late jockey and trainer Pete Anderson, took a political science degree from Tulane and got a job in racetrack publicity in Florida. Galloping horses on the side led to an assistant trainer role in the San Francisco Bay Area with Brett Sumja, and Ordonez took over his barn when Sumja retired in 2004. Ordonez shifted to the Southern California tracks in 2022.
That’s about when she began teaming up with Jerry and Connie Baker of Glendora, who bred and co-own Vodka Vodka and Om N Joy. The two California-bred horses are half-siblings, 5-year-old Vodka Vodka by Stay Thirsty out of Margie’s Minute, 4-year-old Om N Joy by Om out of the same mare. Ordonez has part-ownership in Vodka Vodka.
Om N Joy blossomed in 2025, and scored her signature win with jockey Kent Desormeaux at 8-1 in the Grade II Santa Margarita Stakes at Santa Anita in May. Sent up against males in the Pacific Classic at Del Mar, she ran a respectable fourth.
The Zenyatta puts Om N Joy up against Bob Baffert’s unbeaten Rabeeba, but Ordonez couldn’t sound more confident.
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“Om N Joy’s the queen,” Ordonez said. “I don’t know how she knows it, but she knows there’s a race in the next week, because she’s just a holy terror to gallop. She wants to pass everybody on the racetrack. She’s on top of her game.”
Vodka Vodka’s biggest win came with Desormeaux in the ungraded Sunland Park Stakes in New Mexico in April. The gelding lost a shoe at the start and came back with a bruised foot, which abscessed. He was off until August, then stumbled at the start and finished seventh in the Pat O’Brien Stakes at Del Mar.
“He has a little bit to prove, and I’m very confident he can turn that upside down and get back to the winner’s circle,” Ordonez said as Vodka Vodka goes into the Goodwood against 2025 winner Nevada Beach and seven others.
The Goodwood, whose winner can claim free entry in the $7 million Breeders’ Cup Classic, and the Zenyatta, a qualifier for the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Distaff, are among 13 graded stakes on the first two weekends of Santa Anita’s six-week autumn meet.
The meet opened Friday with Joel Rosario and Juan Hernandez looking ready to pick up where they left off at Del Mar.
Rosario led Hernandez in wins, 42-37, at the top of the Del Mar summer-meet jockey standings while Hernandez was better in win percentage (23%-19%) and purses ($3.2 million to $2.9 million). On Friday, Hernandez was named to ride three morning-line favorites, Rosario two, on the eight-race card.
Santa Anita’s first post is 1 p.m. every Friday, Saturday and Sunday through Nov. 1, plus the holiday on Monday, Oct. 12.
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