DEL MAR — He’s from France. He rides most of the year on the East Coast. But the best jockey in America says of California: “It’s home for me.”

“That’s where I started in America, where I started to have success, and where people gave me the chance to ride good horses,” Flavien Prat said. “It has a big place in my heart, for sure.”

So for emotion and meaning, there’d be no place like a California racetrack for Prat to stake his claim to the championship that would make his stature official.

It could happen this week at Del Mar Racetrack, where Prat could all but clinch his first Eclipse Award as North America’s outstanding jockey of 2024 if he turns in a strong performance at the Breeders’ Cup on Friday and Saturday.

Prat has mounts in four of the five Breeders’ Cup races on Friday and eight of the nine on Saturday. Most prominent might be Chancer McPatrick in the $2 million Juvenile, Friday’s biggest race, and Sierra Leone in the $7 million Classic, Saturday’s main event. But the Del Mar morning-line oddsmaker sees his best chances coming with 7-2 favorite Domestic Product in the $1 million Dirt Mile and 5-2 favorite Ways and Means in the $1 million Filly and Mare Sprint, both on Saturday.

Then there’s Goliad, a 20-1 shot in the $2 million Mile who’s trained by Hall of Famer Richard Mandella, the most prominent of the people who gave Prat his start at Santa Anita, Hollywood Park and Del Mar.

A Breeders’ Cup win for Mandella on the Del Mar oval would bring Prat’s story full-circle.

Now 32, the Melun, France-born son of a harness-horse trainer came to California as a teenager to get a taste of U.S. racing, having won an apprentice riding championship in France. He exercised horses and rode his first races here for trainer Leonard Powell, also French-born. Mandella took Prat under his wing at the request of the Wertheimer brothers, heirs to the Chanel fortune and breeders and owners of Kotashaan, Mandella’s 1993 Breeders’ Cup Turf winner and Horse of the Year.

“To be honest, I’d had quite a few (young jockeys) come and spend the winter and do that, and I’d kind of gotten tired of it,” Mandella said over the weekend at Santa Anita. “(But) the Wertheimers had been awfully good to me, so I said yes. I was so glad once I did.

“The first day (of exercising horses), he just looked so perfect on a horse, I couldn’t believe it.”

After Prat went home to France and came back, Mandella began to use Prat to ride in major races. Prat’s first graded stakes ride, aboard Mandella-trained 22-1 shot Segway, resulted in a disqualification from fourth to 10th for interference in the 2014 San Marcos Stakes at Santa Anita. He’d need 21 tries to win one aboard Mandella-trained 7-5 favorite Catch a Flight in the 2015 Precisionist Stakes at the Arcadia track.

“I never had any doubt,” Mandella said, that Prat would be great.

Nor did leading Southern California handicappers. Frank Scatoni compared Prat’s gift for putting horses in optimal position early in races to Jerry Bailey’s. Jon Lindo said Prat’s finishing ability reminds him of Laffit Pincay’s.

“He has no weaknesses,” said Bob Ike, the former Southern California News Group handicapper who makes selections at BobIkePicks.com and co-hosts the Thoroughbred Los Angeles radio show. “Good out of the gate, good at positioning and reading pace, good finisher, fierce competitor. … He reads the first 100 yards of a race better than any jock I’ve ever seen.”

Winning the 2019 Kentucky Derby aboard Country House (via Maximum Security’s disqualification), the 2021 Preakness aboard Rombauer, and five Breeders’ Cup races since 2016 helped to put Prat on the national map.

This year has taken him to a new level. After jump-starting the season by riding National Treasure to victory in the $3 million Pegasus World Cup Invitational at Gulfstream Park in January, Prat followed his now-standard calendar by riding the first half of the Santa Anita winter-spring meet and then heading east to more lucrative tracks. At Saratoga this summer, he smashed a record for the 161-year-old track with 18 stakes wins, 14 graded, seven Grade I. His 70 stakes victories this year put him in range of the American record of 79 in a year, set in 2022 by five-time Eclipse Award winner Irad Ortiz Jr.

Prat’s $28.4 million in purse earnings this year rank second to Ortiz’s $29 million, but Prat leads in earnings per start with $31,945 to Frankie Dettori’s $28,925.

Prat, who has said he’d rather be respected than famous, would be both if Eclipse Award voters give him the nod in January.

“It would maybe validate (my career),” Prat said on the phone from Kentucky before he flew to California on Sunday. “I’ve been trying to put myself into a position where one day I’d have an Eclipse Award. It is very important to me.”

Prat is riding seven Breeders’ Cup horses for trainer Chad Brown.

Thinking about that, Brown said: “I’m in good shape.”

Several of Prat’s Breeders’ Cup horses – Sierra Leone, Chancer McPatrick, Domestic Product and Raging Sea in the $2 million Distaff – have run their best races from off the pace and now will run on a Del Mar main track on which it can be hard to rally.

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Must Prat adjust those horses’ tactics?

“Yes and no,” he said. “That’s the way they like to run. There’s not much you can do about it. But sometimes in those races, there’s a very hot pace and you can run from behind. The main thing is, the talent’s there.”

The Breeders’ Cup races will test Prat’s judgment and finishing ability, parts of the game with which he’s quite comfortable.

In other words, he’ll feel right at home.