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Saturday, July 19, 2025

Ricky Jadoo back on top

by

Kelvin "N"
1654 days ago
20210107
Veteran jockey Ricky Jadoo sits low as he steers Glenn Mendez- trained Juice Man to win race six, the Modified Benchmark Handicap for three-year-old and over horses rated 90 and over, going 1,750 metres at Santa Rosa Park Arima on August 1. The reigning “Horse of the Year, heads the field of 12 horses which have taken entry for the feature event on Independence Day, 2020.

Veteran jockey Ricky Jadoo sits low as he steers Glenn Mendez- trained Juice Man to win race six, the Modified Benchmark Handicap for three-year-old and over horses rated 90 and over, going 1,750 metres at Santa Rosa Park Arima on August 1. The reigning “Horse of the Year, heads the field of 12 horses which have taken entry for the feature event on Independence Day, 2020.

Sports Desk

For­mer cham­pi­on jock­ey Ricky Jadoo who be­came the old­est jock­ey, in the 28 years of rac­ing of the sport lo­cal­ly at the cen­tralised fa­cil­i­ty at San­ta Rosa Park in Ari­ma, to win the Trinidad Der­by when he land­ed the Mer­lin Sam­lals­ingh-owned and Glenn Mendez-trained Cape Canaver­al in 2018, is back in the win­ner’s en­clo­sure.

The fifty-four-year-old ever-green rid­er not on­ly won the Der­by that year, but he was al­so in­duct­ed in­to Rac­ing Hall Of Fame at the Jet­sam Awards of that year. On Fri­day last, (New Years Day) he teamed-up the Glenn Mendez trained six-year-old chest­nut horse Gen­er­al JN to win the first Grad­ed Event on the Ari­ma Race Club, 2021 rac­ing cal­en­dar – The Stake­hold­er Sian’s Gold Sprint over 1100 me­tres on the turf track.

Jadoo who is ac­cus­tomed to re-writ­ing the record book was full of praise for the train­er Glenn Mendez and the thor­ough­bred Gen­er­al JN.

Jadoo stat­ed, “Gen­er­al JN is a very good horse and though he nev­er raced on the turf, he ran as though he did it be­fore. He was so com­fort­able. In the race I al­lowed him to go up to Ear­ly Bird at 600 me­tres from home and he did it so eas­i­ly. Re­al­ly, I had a lot of horse un­der me and he was trav­el­ling so well that I knew it was just a mat­ter of time."

He con­tin­ued, “How­ev­er, when I asked him to go win the race in the straight, he quick­ened up nice­ly and pulled away im­pres­sive­ly for a good win. He is a very good horse and now that we know he can go on the true train­er Mendez will no doubt be look­ing at oth­er op­tions. Mendez knows how to ready hors­es and I am for­tu­nate to be rid­ing for him. We con­tin­ue to be suc­cess­ful. At my age, I am hap­py to land the top races.”

The like­able Jadoo was aboard favourite Juice Man who land­ed the fi­nal legs of lo­cal rac­ing’s ‘Triple Crown’ in 2019 when he rode his sixth Der­by win­ner. The rac­ing fra­ter­ni­ty then cel­e­brat­ed with Jadoo two years ago at the Jet­sam Awards when he was in­duct­ed in­to the Rac­ing "Hall of Fame" at the Queen's Park Oval in Port-of-Spain.

Dur­ing his long and il­lus­tri­ous ca­reer, Jadoo has al­ways been sought by own­ers and train­ers alike. From his ear­ly days with Mal Lewis down south to Jack De­bideen in the Cap­i­tal city, now to Mendez, Jadoo's cool, qui­et and col­lec­tive, yet con­fi­dent man­ner was in­fec­tious.

To­day, Jadoo com­mands the re­spect of all train­ers and own­ers and yet has the ad­mi­ra­tion of his col­leagues of the pigskin. He is the jock­ey I con­sid­er to be one of the best rid­ers at San­ta Rosa Park. He has won the cham­pi­onship four times.

One can on­ly look back and re­mem­ber his bril­liant per­for­mances aboard the Mendez-trained/Mer­lin Sam­lals­ingh-owned Top Of The Class and Cape Canaver­al.

Jadoo got in­ter­est­ed in hors­es when his fa­ther took him to the pad­dock at Union Park in Mara­bel­la.

"I fell in love with hors­es that day and I knew that was my fu­ture," said Jadoo, who in his ear­ly days was spent with Lewis be­fore he went to the jock­ey school for 18 months.

"When I grad­u­at­ed, I rode my first win­ner Am­ber Light for Lewis. For 39 years I worked re­al­ly hard and it has paid off. For that I am thank­ful. I am proud of what I have achieved."

Jadoo lives with his wife and daugh­ters in San Fer­nan­do and gets up at 4 am to be at the track by 5 am.

Hope­ful­ly, he will be rid­ing for a few more years.


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