Prominent owners on the East Coast took notice and Hildebrand competed at the big New York tracks where at Gravesend Race Track he won the 1904 Preakness Stakes on May 28 aboard the colt Bryn Mawr.

Back on the West Coast for the winter racing season, on December 23, 1904, Hildebrand set a new world record for wins in a year when he rode win number 293 at Ascot Park in Los Angeles.

He would finish the year as the national champion in total races won with 297 and in stakes wins with 35.

[7] Gene Hildebrand battled weight gain which hindered his racing and would force him to retire from riding in 1909.

In 1919 he fell ill with a flu that plagued him for two years until it turned to pneumonia and he died in an Oakland, California hospital on November 26, 1921, at the age of 34.