WINNO - LIVE FROM HONG KONG: WHAT A CRACKER OF A LONGINES INTERNATIONAL JOCKEYS CHALLENGE!

By Darren Winningham | Tuesday, December 3, 2019

The Hong Kong Jockey Club created Longines International Jockeys Challenge (IJC) as a lead-up to the Hong Kong International Races, holding the inaugural running in December 1993.

In that year, 14 of the world's top jockeys came to Hong Kong for the then three-race challenge. Olivier Peslier secured the title after winning the first two contests. A courageous concept was born – the best jockeys in the world contesting on a level playing field.

Given its initial success, the Hong Kong Jockey Club decided to run it as an annual event, tweaking the format over the years until it evolved into the 12-jockey, four-race points-based competition we see today.

Competing jockeys receive 12 points for a race win, six points for a runner-up and four points for finishing third with the overall champion taking home HK$500,000 ($64,000 USD) – with second and third taking home $200,000 HKD and $100,000 HKD respectively. The four LONGINES IJC races are worth a combined HK$6.58 million.

Previous winners include hat-trick scorer Frankie Dettori and Hong Kong champion Douglas Whyte, while Christophe Soumillon and Yutake Take were the first jockeys to dead-heat in 2004. In 2009 Johnny Murtagh, Christophe Lemaire and Ryan Moore tied for first place. Hugh Bowman won in 2016 and Zac Purton won in 2017 (representing Hong Kong).

The reigning 2018 IJC Champion Silvestre de Sousa from Britain returns in 2019 to defend his title. Who can ever forget the dominating effort last year when Silvestre de Sousa scored points in all four legs of the LONGINES International Jockeys Championship at Happy Valley to run out the convincing and deserved winner! It is not often jockeys go back to back and defend their title, but he looks to be in great form to give it a red-hot crack!

Last year Colin Keane, who was the champion jockey in Ireland in 2017, made his debut at this event in 2018 and acquitted himself well being placed runner up. He is my pick this year to take out the LONGINES International Jockeys Championship.

A Hong Kong jockey has never won the title. This year they launched an all-out assault attempting to win the crown for the locals – represented by Karis Keetan and Vincent Ho.

Hong Kong will also be represented by Zac Purton, who returns from a recent suspension and Joao Moreira. Moreira is looking for his maiden win in the event and will be hard to beat at a track he rides exceptionally well.

Australia will be represented by James McDonald in 2019. The New-Zealander has been based in Sydney for several years and is a three-time premiership winner. McDonald was runner up in this event in 2011.

The others making up the magnificent field in 2019 are:

Frankie Dettori, representing Italy, and is a three-time IJC winner. He has an extraordinary 2019 season riding 19 Group 1 winners and leading the LONGINES World’s Best Jockey Award standings. He has won this award on two previous occasions in 2015 and 2018 and looks certain to make his presence noted on Wednesday evening.

Ryan Moore represents Britain. He is a two-time winner of both the IJC (2009 and 2010) and LONGINES World’s Best Jockey Award (2014 and 2016). He seems to always score points and get the best out of his mounts in these events – he is a dark horse for the title this year.

Osin Murphy will also represent Britain. He is this year’s British champion jockey.

France will be represented by Pierre-Charles who is a two-time champion jockey in France (2015 and 2016). He has competed successfully here previously coming third in the 2017 IJC.

Finally, Japan will be represented by a debutant in this years’ IJC – Yuga Kawada. He has an impressive career record being crowned the 2019 World All-Star Jockeys champion. He is only one of nine jockeys in JRA history to have won all five classic races.

One thing is for sure the picturesque tight turning Happy Valley track will test all of these jockeys and the winner in 2019 would certainly have earnt the crown of 2019 Champion LONGINES International Jockey!

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