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.