Local jockey Trevor Whelan scoops 2013 ride of the year award
Trevor Whelan & Rob Dakin of AtTheRaces (photo: Dan Abraham)Conditional jockey Trevor Whelan, who is stable jockey for Barbury-based trainer Neil King, has won the At The Races award for Jump Ride of the Year in 2013.
Awarded at a ceremony organised by the Professional Jockeys Association in Birmingham last month, the Stobart Lesters (named after eleven-time champion jockey Lester Piggott and sponsored by the Stobart Group) are racing’s ‘Oscars’. Whelan was presented with his statuette by Rob Dakin, Executive Producer of the AtTheRaces channel.
In November 2013 Trevor rode Persian Herald to win the two mile Yokohama Tyres Novices Handicap Hurdle at Fakenham in what the judges described as a ‘never-say-die’ effort. Then a five-year-old, Persian Herald won the race by two-and-a-quarter lengths from Watt Broderick.
The day before Persian Herald and Whelan had won at Leicester and a month earlier they had won another Fakenham race.
Whelan is currently lying third in the Conditional Jockeys Champaionship for 2014-2015 with 23 wins – just three wins behind Gavin Sheehan who leads the table.
Trevor Whelan leads out Zeroshadesofgrey at Neil King's open day (2014)Over the past five years Whelan has ridden 48 winners over hurdles and 20 winners in steeplechases.
He has formed a good relationship with the Neil King trained six year-old grey gelding Zeroshadesofgrey. On New Year’s day Whelan brought Zeroshadesofgrey home in third place in Cheltenham’s Neptune Investment Management Novices Hurdle.
Zeroshadesofgrey is entered for the Friday of the Cheltenham Festival (March 13) in the Albert Bartlett Novices Hurdle and may run at Cheltenham’s Festival Trials Day on January 24.
(In case you wondered: a ‘conditional jockey’ is jump racing’s version of flat racing’s ‘apprentice jockey’.)
(Grateful thanks to Dan Abraham for the award ceremony photograph - www.racingfotos.com )