Latest news with #IrishStLeger
The Herald Scotland
12-07-2025
- Sport
- The Herald Scotland
Fox Legacy too smart in John Smith's Cup
Always prominent when racing from stall 19, the bay progressed nicely through the race and was comfortably able to pull clear when asked in the final furlong to prevail by a length. 'It's a testament to the horse that from that draw I was able to get a position and then take him back and relax where I was,' McDonald told ITV Racing. 'The only thing I had to do was to make sure not to go too soon, he travelled around beautifully for me and he gave me a great spin. 'I was still going nicely into the two (furlong pole). I thought if I let him stretch out and take it (the lead) they'd have to come and get me. Andrew's horses are absolutely flying.' Al Qareem showed there a few more reliable horses in training when seeing off all challengers to claim the John Smith's Silver Cup Stakes. Karl Burke and Nick Bradley Racing's seasoned six-year-old won a Listed contest over the same course and distance last time out and was well backed as the 4-7 favourite under Clifford Lee. He took up the lead at an early stage and was never passed, shrugging off every horse that attempted to challenge him in the home straight to claim victory by a dominant two and a half lengths. 'He always seems to look as though they're going to get him but he just grinds it out, he's so honest and a superstar of a horse to train,' said Burke. 'I'd say the weight will rule him out of the Ebor, presumably he'd get a penalty as well. 'It's always been the target, the Irish St Leger, I think it'd be a nice race for him to roll the dice in.' Washington Heights claimed a well-deserved success in the John Smith's City Walls Stakes at York, justifying his status as the 9-4 favourite. Trained by Kevin Ryan and ridden by Shane Gray, the five-year-old has run with real credit in a range of Group sprints and was most recently seen finishing a close-up seventh in the King Charles III Stakes at Royal Ascot. On the Knavesmire he tackled the same five-furlong trip but was dropped down to Listed level, taking on seven rivals and proving the best of them with a smart three-quarter-length victory. 'He's a great horse for a syndicate like this, he takes them to all the right meetings and as you can see today, they support him well,' said Adam Ryan, assistant to his father. 'It's great for him to get his head in front. The thing with him is he's as tough as bell metal, I thought they were going to get to him a furlong down but it was going to take a brave horse to get past him. 'Thankfully he dug deep, which he always does.'
Daily Mirror
09-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Death of Classic-winning sire of Willie Mullins stars after illness
Jukebox Jury won nine races for Mark Johnston, including the Irish St Leger, and went on to sire the likes of Il Etait Temps and Princess Zoe Tributes have been paid to Jukebox Jury, a top stayer on the Flat who went on to become a significant sire of jumps horses. The grey, who was trained by Mark Johnston, won nine of his 22 starts in the colours of Alan Spence over four seasons. As a two-year-old he won on debut at the 2008 Glorious Goodwood meeting, adding the Group 2 Royal Lodge Stakes later in the year. The following season he landed the Grand Prix de Deauville and next time out made his Group 1 breakthrough in the Preis von Europa, scoring by a nose under regular rider Royston Ffrench, then finished second in the Canadian International. He won twice more during 2010, then after moving up in distance as a six-year-old captured the 2011 Prix Kergorlay and dead-heated for first place in the Irish St Leger. There were more international exploits when he went to Australia to tackle the Melbourne Cup but he finished down the field. He was found to be lame post race and did not race again. He earned more than £850,000 on the track. READ MORE: Jockey who 'practically jumped off' hot favourite at start of race facing investigation Jukebox Jury went on to have a successful stallion career, standing at Burgage Stud in Ireland for a fee of £10,700. He had enjoyed one of his best years in 2025 with one of his best offspring, the Willie Mullins-trained It Etait Temps, defeating Jonbon in the Celebration Chase at Sandown in April. Mullins also trains another son of Jukebox Jury, Bambino Fever, who has won all four starts include the Champion Bumpers at the Cheltenham Festival and Punchestown Festival this year. He weighed in on the Flat too, siring Princess Zoe, who won the Group 1 Prix du Cadran in 2020 when trained by Mullins's brother Tony. Burgage Stud broke the news of Jukebox Jury's passing at the age of 19 on X. The statement said: 'It is with great sadness that we announce Jukebox Jury has been euthanised due to complications following colic surgery. 'He had a lovely, kind personality and was a pleasure to work with. He will be greatly missed, but we are thankful he came to Burgage and the impact he has left.' It continued: 'He is the sire of six individual G1 winners, including a Group 1 winner on the Flat, a feat achieved by few stallions - Farclas, Stuke, Princess Zoe, Il Etait Temps, Honesty Policy, Bambino Fever.'
New Paper
01-07-2025
- Sport
- New Paper
Kingscote, Crawford new additions to HK ranks in 2025-26
British jockey Richard Kingscote and South African trainer Brett Crawford are the two new faces to join the roster in the upcoming Hong Kong 2025-26 season. Kingscote is licensed to ride from July 17, 2025 to Feb 17, 2026, while Crawford has been licensed for the whole 2025-26 season. Kingscote enjoyed success when he booted home four winners - including a treble at Sha Tin on March 26 - over 10 meetings at his short-term stint in Hong Kong from Feb 19 to April 2. The 38-year-old jockey boasts five Group 1 race wins, with the 2022 Epsom Derby (2,400m) aboard Desert Crown his career highlight. His first Group 1 triumph came in the Irish St Leger (2,800m) on Brown Panther in 2014, before he went on to score with Havana Grey in the 2018 Flying Five Stakes (1,000m), and Bay Bridge in the 2022 Champion Stakes (2,000m). Currently based in the UK, Kingscote won his latest Group 1 race aboard the Harry Eustace-trained Time For Sandals in the Commonwealth Cup (1,200m) at Royal Ascot on June 20. Since his debut in 2004, he has now tallied 1,612 wins across the UK, Hong Kong, Australia, Ireland, United Arab Emirates, Japan, France, Bahrain and Turkey. Kingscote goes to scale at 54kg. All jockeys have been granted a full-season licence except for Kingscote, Keagan de Melo and James Orman, whose terms last until Feb 17. A winner of over 1,400 races in South Africa, Crawford, 53, who was born in Zimbabwe, will begin training in Hong Kong on July 17, a day after the current season ends. Training with his son James on the Western Cape, Crawford senior has amassed 38 Group 1 wins, including two Durban July's (2,200m) with Winchester Mansion in 2023 and Oriental Charm in 2024, as well as three The Met's (2,000m) in Cape Town with Angus (2003), Futura (2015) and Whisky Baron (2017). However, three jockeys and one trainer will also exit the scene. French jockey Antoine Hamelin will return to France, while Australian jockey Ben Thompson will head back to Brisbane for good at the end of the season. In his five years of riding in Hong Kong, Hamelin has clocked 109 wins, albeit with only 10 winners this season. His latest success came atop Rising From Ashes at Sha Tin on June 28. Thompson, who rode at Kranji in 2018-2019, winning 30 races, netted 15 wins in Hong Kong, eight of them in the current term. Just like Hamelin, Thompson has struggled to get a win since his last aboard Fallon on April 23. He will wrap up his 18-month stint at the season's last meeting at Happy Valley on July 16. Local jockeys were not spared lean times either, with Alfred Chan even being forced into retirement at 31. In 10 rides this season, he won only one race on Super Legends, taking his six-year-old career tally to 66 wins. Veteran Hong Kong trainer Benno Yung will call it quits after 12 years of training. The 66-year-old - who began his journey in racing as an apprentice jockey in the 1970s - retires after being licensed as a trainer since 2013-14. He has trained 359 winners, including stable stars like the gigantic grey Pingwu Spark, who finished third to Beauty Only in the 2018 Group 2 Chairman's Trophy (1,600m) and Romantic Touch, who ran third to Luger in the 2015 Hong Kong Derby (2,000m). However, Yung probably scored his biggest win, over cancer in 2023. He made a successful recovery from acute myeloid leukaemia and returned to training. Meanwhile, the Hong Kong Jockey Club's licensing committee has also confirmed that trainer Tony Cruz, 68, is eligible for an extension beyond the end of the 2026-27 season, during which he will turn 70, until the conclusion of the 2029-30 season, "provided he continues to satisfy the benchmarks set down by the club". sharonzhang@
Daily Mirror
27-06-2025
- Sport
- Daily Mirror
Derby-winning jockey becomes latest British-based rider to move to Hong Kong
A week after adding to his Royal Ascot laurels with success in the Commonwealth Cup, it has been announced that Richard Kingscote will join Andrea Atzeni and Harry Bentley on the lucrative circuit Derby-winning jockey Richard Kingscote is to become the latest British-based rider to move to Hong Kong. The 38-year-old has ridden more than 1,600 winners across the world including five at Group 1 level. His biggest success was achieved on the Sir Michael Stoute-trained Desert Crown in the 2022 Epsom Derby on only his second ride in the Classic. He scored his latest of five Group 1 victories at Royal Ascot last week when he steered Time For Sandals to win the Commonwealth Cup. He has also ridden the winners of the Irish St Leger, on the Michael Owen-owned and bred Brown Panther, and the Champion Stakes. Kingscote has ridden 36 winners in 2025 but the quality of his mounts has been reduced by the retirement of Stoute at the end of last year. He had only four rides at the five day Royal Ascot meeting. Nevertheless he took advantage of an unexpected opportunity to visit Hong Kong earlier this year when he accepted an invitation to ride as an emergency replacement for ten meetings after a spate of falls in Hong which hospitalised four jockeys, including local stars Zac Purton and Vincent Ho. He rode four winners and signed off with a treble at Sha Tin, winning on all three of his mounts. Kingscote told Mirror Racing: "I am very much looking forward to it and it's a good opportunity. I am lucky that I do well here in Britain but this is a chance to try something new and if you don't try you never find out." Kingscote has been granted a part-season licence by the Hong Kong Jockey Club which will start on July 17 and run up to February 17 2026, after which it could be extended. He will join established former British-based jockeys Andrea Atzeni and Harry Bentley in one of the most competitive weighing rooms in the world. Atzeni has ridden 54 winners in the current season and is third in the jockeys' championship while Bentley has 30 wins.
The Irish Sun
20-06-2025
- Sport
- The Irish Sun
Legendary Classic-winning trainer Kevin Prendergast has died aged 92
LEGENDARY flat trainer Kevin Prendergast, who won multiple Classics in Britain and Ireland, has died aged 92. He took out his licence in 1963 and saddled his final runner at Cork last week, when Glory To Be finished second. 1 Kevin Prendergast has died aged 92 after a long and successful career Credit: Sportsfile - Subscription Tributes have poured in for Prendergast, who spent his career in County Kildare and died two weeks short of his 93rd birthday. Among them was top Irish jockey Chris Hayes, who was stable jockey to Prendergast and rode most of his big winners in recent years including Awtaad, who won the Irish 2,000 Guineas in 2016. He said: "La Collina was my first Group 1 winner for Kevin, but Awtaad was the first horse that was mine - I inherited La Collina from Declan McDonogh. "Obviously there were also some great days with Madhmoon who came after Awtaad. But Awtaad's Guineas was phenomenal. "It was the old Curragh and the cheer we got on the way in, I haven't heard one like it since. "I've been around a while and I never heard a cheer like that before that either and that cheer was all for Kevin and solely Kevin. People say it was for us, but it wasn't, it was for Kevin. "He's a legend around Kildare and a legend in the racing game and people were 10 deep around the winner's enclosure desperate to congratulate him. "When I got the news this morning I couldn't help but look back through some pictures from that day in the car. We had some phenomenal times together and today is a sad day." Most read in Horse Racing Another legendary trainer Dermot Weld, who was great friends with Prendergast, said: "He was a wonderful trainer. His horses were always turned out in supreme condition - you could always identify one of his by the way they were turned out and, even in the early days, they always won the best-turned-out award. "He was an exceptional trainer of a two-year-old and had great longevity - and he trained a much smaller team of horses than is fashionable nowadays. "He was a very, very talented trainer and naturally my sympathy goes out to his family." Born in Australia on July 5, 1932, Prendergast was educated in Ireland but kicked off his racing career back in the southern hemisphere, where he was head lad to top trainer Frank Dalton. He held that position for three years before returning home to establish himself as a leading amateur rider while serving as assistant trainer to his father. After five years, Prendergast decided to strike out on his own in 1963 - and he did not have to wait long for his inaugural success, saddling Zara to win at Phoenix Park in May that year. Pidget was the first to claim Classic gold for him in the 1972 Irish 1,000 Guineas, before going on to add the Irish St Leger to her tally later on that year. After that Prendergast sent out the likes of Conor Pass (1973) and Oscar Schindler (1996 and 1997) to win two more Irish Legers, while Arctique Royal gave him another 1,000 win and Northern Treasure gave him a first Irish 2,000 Guineas in 1976. Add into the mix top-drawer juveniles La Collina, Miss Beatrix, Termagant and Kingsfort and you get a feel for the kind of longevity Prendergast enjoyed. One of the most consistent trainers in the Irish ranks, Prendergast sent out his 2,000th career winner in 2010. As well as Hayes, the likes of Gary Halpin and Declan McDonogh also rode for Prendergast, demonstrating that he was not just an exceptional instructor of horses. The great Kieren Fallon began his riding career with Prendergast, serving as apprentice from 1982 to 1987 before moving on and eventually becoming a six-times champion jockey. FREE BETS - GET THE BEST SIGN UP DEALS AND RACING OFFERS Commercial content notice: Taking one of the offers featured in this article may result in a payment to The Sun. You should be aware brands pay fees to appear in the highest placements on the page. 18+. T&Cs apply. . Remember to gamble responsibly A responsible gambler is someone who: Read more on the Irish Sun Establishes time and monetary limits before playing Only gambles with money they can afford to lose Never chases their losses Doesn't gamble if they're upset, angry or depressed Gamcare – Gamble Aware – Find our detailed guide on responsible gambling practices here.
