With a record-breaking season comes the attention of turf writers, so Manny Franco was not surprised when I came calling for an interview. However, like many riders, he prefers to do his talking on the track.

“I’m a little bit shy of big cameras and stuff and talking to the media, but I do it,” Franco laughed. “It’s part of the job.”

And what a performance Franco delivered over the 45-day meet at Saratoga Race Course this year. The Puerto Rico native won a record 73 races from 370 mounts, including six graded stakes. In addition, he scored a Grade 1 victory over four consecutive weeks, starting with his ride on Survie in the Christophe Clement Turf Stakes on Aug. 15. Franco added a victory in the Alabama Stakes Presented by Keeneland Sales aboard My Gun’s Loaded on Aug. 22, secured his second Travers Stakes win on Leading Change Aug. 29, and then rounding out the Grade 1 run on The Good Life in the Spendthrift Hopeful Stakes on closing day, Sept. 6.

Franco caps six-win day in Hall of Fame Stakes (Coglianese Photos/Susie Raisher)

The pinnacle of the meet was his record-tying six-win day on Friday, Aug. 7, which included a victory in the Grade 2 National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame Stakes aboard Bottas for trainer Miguel Clement.

Those 73 wins earned Franco his first leading rider title at Saratoga and broke Ramon Dominguez’s record of 68 wins (from a 40-day meet) in 2012. He has also been leading rider at the New York Racing Association’s Belmont Park and Aqueduct 18 times since he started riding in the United States in 2013. He also won one of Gotham’s historic features, the Belmont Stakes, and his first Travers in 2020 with Tiz the Law.

Franco credited his special summer to “a lot of hard work, and we were coming with a lot of momentum from Aqueduct, and I think that helped us a lot because everybody was riding us and we were winning. So, we carried that momentum here, and I think my agent [John Panagot] has been doing a great job, too.

“Riding for all the best barns right now in New York, I think that’s why we did so good,” Franco added.

He learned about the hard work it takes to be a leading rider at the famed Escuela Vocacional Hípica Agustín Mercado Reverón, located at Hipódromo Camarero in Canóvanas, Puerto Rico. The two-year program is the same one that produced a number of leading riders, including brothers Jose and Irad Ortiz Jr., and Hall of Famer Johnny Velazquez. But being a jockey was not originally Franco’s ambition.

“I used to play baseball, and before I got involved in horse racing, nobody in my family was a jockey,” said Franco, who was born in Carolina, outside of San Juan. But his dad took him to Hipódromo Camarero on Sundays, which fostered an interest in becoming a jockey. To help him prepare for his two years at the school, his parents bought him a horse to practice riding on the streets of Carolina.

Now the married father of Valentina, his 8-year-old daughter, spends his days focused on his career in the saddle and his family life off the track.

“When I wake up, I go to the track in the morning, and I have to go work horses, and then when I finish, I go back home, change, and get ready again to go back to the track and ride.”

Franco with family and Hall of Famer Angel Cordero Jr. (Coglianese Photos)

After his day at the racetrack is done, “I just came back home, you know, eat something with the family and just chill,” Franco shared. “When I get home, I try to be with the family and put time in with them because most of the day, I’m out of the house. I’m a family guy.”

The time and work he puts in on the track and off shows in his record-breaking season as well as his daughter’s enthusiasm for her dad’s job. “She loves it,” the 31-year-old father said with a laugh. “She loves horses, and she loves what I do.”

With his stellar summer at the Spa in the rearview mirror, Franco looks forward to the autumn meet at the newly reconstructed Belmont Park as well as this year’s Breeders’ Cup World Championships at Keeneland and maybe a visit to his friend Tiz the Law at Coolmore’s Ashford Stud. He already has two Breeders’ Cup wins on his resume, taking the Juvenile Fillies Turf on Sharing in 2019 and the Juvenile Fillies with Immersive in 2024, as well as a classic success in the 2020 Belmont Stakes, but the Franco has one short-term goal on his mind still.

“Winning the Kentucky Derby, sure. I would love to accomplish that one,” he said. And, for the long term, he aspires to “stay healthy and keep doing what I love until my body says I’m done.”

But, most of all, this record-breaker, husband, and father cherishes what his hard work brings him each time he gets a leg up into the saddle. “This sport is hard sometimes; it’s dangerous, but it’s a beautiful sport. The horses take you all over, a lot of places. The connection that you have with the horses, when they listen to you, that’s the best part.”