THE CANADIAN PRESS
TORONTO — The unofficial Canadian Triple Crown earned jockey Luis Contreras a Sovereign Award on Thursday night.
The 26-year-old Mexican was named Canada’s top jockey for 2011 at the award banquet at Woodbine Racetrack, and with good reason. Not only was he the venue’s top rider with 212 wins, but he also made Canadian racing history by becoming the first jockey to win the Triple Crown aboard two horses.
Contreras received 144 points in voting to finish well ahead of runner-up Patrick Husbands (70 points) and Emma-Jayne Wilson (24 points).
Contreras opened the 2011 Canadian Triple Crown by winning the Queen’s Plate with Inglorious. But when Inglorious’s handlers skipped the $500,000 Prince of Wales Stakes, Contreras moved aboard Pender Harbour and led him to victory at Fort Erie, Ont., and in the $500,000 Breeders’ Stakes at Woodbine.
Thanks in part to those wins, Pender Harbour received the Sovereign Award as Canada’s champion three-year-old male. Inglorious, meanwhile, was given the Sovereign Award as the country’s champion three-year-old filly.
But the two finished behind filly Never Retreat for Canadian horse-of-the-year honours. Never Retreat received 78 points in voting, two more than Inglorious. Pender Harbour was third with 49 points.
Never Retreat had a stellar 2011, finishing in the money in nine of 11 starts — five wins, two seconds, two thirds — to amass over $900,000 in earnings. She won two-of-three races at Woodbine, finishing second in the other.
Contreras ended his season to remember with a record $11,563,915 in purse earnings and 23 stakes victories. And on Aug. 7, he won six races at Woodbine, becoming the first jockey to do so since David Clark in 1998.
Contreras will return to Woodbine this season looking to break Mickey Walls’ single-season record of 221 wins. But the biggest race on Contreras’s 2012 calendar will be the US$2-million Derby.
He punched his ticket to the event by guiding Woodbine-based Prospective to victory in the US$350,000 Tampa Bay Derby — a Grade II event covering 1 1-16th miles — on March 10.
He will lead Prospective — who wore blinkers for the first time in the Tampa — back into the starter’s gate April 14 for the Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland in Lexington, Ky.
Prospective’s conditioner is Mark Casse, who was named Canada’s top trainer for the fourth time in the last six years.