There is a vacancy for the role of leading rider at Los Alamitos, which begins a two-week daytime Thoroughbred meeting on Friday. Ramon Vazquez won or tied for the riding title at five brief meetings at Los Alamitos from the summer of 2022 through September of this year. Vazquez has since relocated to Oaklawn Park, which opens its winter-spring meeting on Friday. Without Vazquez in the jockeys’ room, and with prominent riders such as Antonio Fresu, Juan Hernandez, Flavien Prat, and Umberto Rispoli expected to ride sparingly, if at all, riders such as Tyler Baze, Kyle Frey, Diego Herrera, and the apprentice J.G. Torrealba could easily be at the top of the standings before closing day on Dec. 17. At the Los Alamitos September meeting, Frey won four races from 12 mounts, returning after a self-imposed mental break of more than seven weeks. :: Bet the races with a $200 First Deposit Match + FREE All Access PPs! Join DRF Bets. Frey, who tied for fifth-place in the standings with six wins at the Del Mar autumn meeting that ended last weekend, said on Wednesday that a riding title is not a singular focus in the next two weeks. “I’m going to have fun,” Frey said. “I’m happy to be riding again.” On Friday’s nine-race program, which begins at 12:30 p.m. Pacific, Frey has mounts in seven of the eight races, and will be the most active rider of the day if they all start. Several of the circuit’s leading riders will be at Los Alamitos for the meeting’s two main races – Saturday’s Grade 2 Starlet Stakes and the Grade 2 Los Alamitos Futurity on Dec. 16. Both races are run for 2-year-olds at 1 1/16 miles and have purses of $200,000. The only other graded stakes at the meeting is the Grade 3 Bayakoa Stakes, a $100,000 race at 1 1/16 miles for fillies and mares on Dec. 15. Overnight purses will be worth slightly less in some categories, continuing a worrisome trend that affected meetings at Del Mar and Santa Anita earlier this year. A maiden race for California-breds will have a purse of $45,000, down from $47,000 at the December 2022 meeting. A first-condition allowance race will be worth $47,000, a decline of $1,000 from the corresponding meeting in 2022. Purses for some lower-level claiming races are unchanged. Los Alamitos does not have a turf course, and has struggled to draw significant fields. The 2022 December meeting averaged 7.37 runners per race, the best figure in eight meetings at the track since the beginning of 2021. The September meeting earlier this year averaged 6.14 runners per race, down from 6.65 at the corresponding meeting in 2022. For this month’s meeting, Los Alamitos will introduce a graphic on its simulcast feed displaying projected final odds based on calculations from multi-race payouts that end in a given race, notably pick three and pick four bets. The graphic will be introduced beginning with the third race each day. The graphic is designed to provide a guideline for win bettors, who have reacted angrily in recent years because of significant changes in final odds in win pools after late bets have been placed by computer-assisted wagering programs. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.