WINNIPEG, Manitoba, CMC: Barbadian Antonio Whitehall was crowned champion jockey at the Assiniboia Downs racetrack in Canada for the third time on Wednesday.
The 29-year-old closed the racing season with a double win on the seven-race mid-week card at the central Canadian racetrack to end with 56 wins from 284 mounts and clinch the title he previously won in 2018 and 2020.
It was the second time in five days that Whitehall had a double win after he did the same thing on Monday’s race card, and this enabled him to end the season leading the money list among the colony of jockeys at the track with CAN $687 380 – no one else totaling more than half million dollars.
He got his first win of the day by a neck aboard the 6-5 favorite Lucky Chuckee in the CAN $10 226, claiming his fifth race over 1 100 meters on the dirt.
Lucky Chuckee dueled for the lead on the outside of Witt’s Rojo, under Trinidad & Tobago jockey Stanley Chadee, during the race’s first half. Still, Whitehall got the four-year-old, dark bay gelding to edge away in the stretch for one minute, 05.45 seconds.
Whitehall again had to go to work when he drove the 2-1 favorite Warrior’s Map to victory by the slimmest of margins – a nose – in the CAN $13 200, claiming the final race over one mile on the dirt to bring the season to a close fittingly.
He raced Warrior’s Map near the back of the nine-horse field for the first half of the race before he got the six-year-old bay horse to take a short lead three-wide early in the final turn and hold on in the stretch to clock 1 min, 40.65 secs.
Also winning on the card were Barbadian jockey Renaldo Cumberbatch for the 24th time this season to finish seventh in the standings, compatriot Shavon Belle got his 11th win to end 13th, and Jamaican Arthur Budhu got his 10th to close 11th.
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