In a thrilling finale to the 2009/10 season tonight (Wednesday) at Happy Valley. Douglas Whyte just resisted the determined challenge of Brett Prebble to retain the jockeys' crown he has worn since 2001. By doing so he became the first champion in Hong Kong professional racing history to reign for an entire decade.
After Sunday's Champion Awards ceremony at Sha Tin four major presentations remained outstanding. They did so only becAUSe competition for the titles remained so fierce that results could not be called until the very last meeting of the season. Now at last we know the winners of these dramatic struggles for supremacy.
The mighty battle for the Jockeys' Championship between nine times champion Douglas Whyte and Brett Prebble who has harried him throughout the season could still have gone either way when the Happy Valley finale began. In a fitting final flourish Prebble struck in the very last race with the appropriately named Perfect Style, but he had needed three winners to overtake the defending champion, and Whyte eventually secured victory with a total of 100 wins which gave him a margin of just one over his gallant rival.
The battle for the Apprentice Championship concerned three live contenders on the final night: Keith Yeung, Ben So and Derek Leung. After a struggle that has also lasted all season long Keith Yeung, who effectively guaranteed his triumph with victory on Cosmo Successor in Race 3, eventually took the title with 30 winners.
Entrapment, already elected Champion Griffin last Sunday, beat another rising star Tai Sing Yeh to claim the Most Improved Horse award with a rating improvement from 52 to 115. The Caspar Fownes-trained Flying Supreme, who edged into the lead in stakes money after his victory on Sunday, won the HK$1 million ISG bonus for his owner Tse Kwok Fai with earnings of HK$ 2,756,750.
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go dougie go