RACING:JOHNNY MURTAGH'S 2011 campaign will continue in Japan this weekend but he will travel there as Ireland's champion jockey for the fifth time in his illustrious career after wrapping up the title with a double at Leopardstown yesterday.
The return to deciding the championship on the final day of the turf campaign saw Murtagh, on 83 winners, crowned champion for the fifth time, finishing four clear of his rival Pat Smullen who scored just once yesterday.
It was a particularly satisfying achievement for the 41-year-old rider, coming a year after he quit as number one rider to Aidan O’Brien, and crowned a hugely productive season which saw him complete an Irish classic grand-slam with Jukebox Jury’s Leger dead-heat in September.
“That race, and Dancing Rain in the Oaks were memorable days,” said Murtagh.
“I wanted to make myself available this season and it has worked out very well.”
He nominated Born To Sea as a horse he is looking forward to riding in 2012 but before that Murtagh flies to Kyoto for this weekend’s Queen Elizabeth II Cup where he again teams up with his Oaks heroine Dancing Rain against the defending QEII champion Snow Fairy.
Murtagh will also ride at Hong Kong’s International festival in December and plans to ride at Dundalk’s Friday fixtures up to Christmas which will be part of a separate rider’s title on the all-weather through the winter.
John Oxx supplied both the jockey’s winners yesterday and he paid tribute to Murtagh who began his career as a teenager with the Curragh trainer in the 1980s.
“He has been going great guns all year, getting on every horse he can, and something like this doesn’t happen without a lot of effort, particularly him, with his weight.
“Johnny is still one of the best jockeys in Europe. He has to lead a very disciplined life and anything these jockeys get, they deserve,” Oxx said.
Aidan O’Brien finished the season as champion trainer for the 13th consecutive time, and a 16th in all, with a prize money total of over €4.8 million in Ireland.
His son Joseph was crowned champion apprentice for the second time with a record 57 winners. Michael Tabor is the leading owner with a tally of close on €1.4 million.
The focus yesterday however was all on Murtagh who extinguished Smullen’s lingering hopes of pegging back a three-winner lead at the start of proceedings as Takar hosed up in the juvenile maiden to the tune of eight lengths.
“He should certainly be a Stakes standard horse next year but whether he can go several notches higher, I don’t know,” Oxx said of the Aga Khan’s colt.
“But he is an athletic sort with plenty of ability.”
Call To Battle had beaten Takar on their previous starts and he boosted the form again with a gutsy defeat of Alla Sparenza in the Listed Eyrefield Stakes.
“He’s a good horse with a good pedigree who stays well. He’s from the family of Millenary and like him this horse could end up in a Leger,” Oxx said.
Dermot Weld supplied four of the nine runners in the Listed Knockaire Stakes and while Smullen’s choice Northern Rocked faded to fifth, the 16 to 1 outsider Enchanted Evening came through under veteran jockey Pat Shanahan to win.
Weld did however provide Smullen with the final winner of an eventful turf season as the favourite Hidden Universe battled on too strongly for Pozyc in the closing stages of the November Handicap.
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