Newly crowned UAE champion jockey Richard Mullen is hoping to put the icing on the cake of an already successful campaign by claiming a winner at Saturday’s Dubai World Cup meeting.
It has been a stand-out season for one of the longest-serving riders in the UAE, claiming his second jockey’s title in three years. Mullen capped 2016/17 with 52 winners, his best in a season, and accomplished after a duel with Tadhg O’Shea, who finished two behind him.
“It’s the first time in 15 years two jockeys have broken the 50-winner mark,” Mullen said. “It has been a magnificent season and I hope we can crown the moment on Saturday with a winner.”
Mullen has been the stable jockey for trainer Satish Seemar for more than a decade and he will be atop the Zabeel Stables’s charge North America in the US$1 million (Dh3.67m) Godolphin Mile and Reynaldothewizard in the $2m Dubai Golden Shaheen.
In between, he is booked on Elise Jeanne’s Faucon Du Loup in the Dubai Kahayla Classic, the second race and the solitary event for Purebred Arabians.
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Mullen has chosen to ride the seven-year-old, with whom he won the Group 1 Al Maktoum Challenge Round 2 over Jean de Roualle’s mare Loraa, winner of the Dh3m President’s Cup in Abu Dhabi.
Looking back on his successful year, Mullen was keen to pay tribute to the work of those who had prepared the horses he had been triumphant on.
“I was in a very privileged position to ride for several owners and trainers,” he said.
“Without their help and support of the connections, like the entire stable staff who did all the hard work, it becomes so easy for a jockey when the horses are in good form.”
Seemar is bullish on the prospects of North America in the Godolphin Mile.
He has been a revelation since his arrival in Dubai after a winless campaign in Europe in six starts under the Godolphin trainer Charlie Appleby in Europe.
The five-year-old gelding by Dubawi has racked up four wins from four starts, including the Group 3 Firebreak Stakes in his last start.
“He [North America] is the new super star of the stables,” Seemar said. “His record this season is 100 per cent and the horse has improved leaps and bounds.
“I hope he can produce a similar result on the big day.”
Reynaldothewizard remains a sentimental favourite of Mullen, and he is glad to have the opportunity to pair up again tomorrow.
“I celebrated my first Group 1 success, the 2013 Dubai Golden Shaheen, on Reynaldothewizard,” he said.
“He’s in fine form having won his only start this season. He is acting more like a two-year-old than an 11-year-old. Satish Seemar and the team have really looked after him.
“He has not had much racing which has helped him keep going so strongly. He should be running on strongly on Saturday.”
Success has come relatively late to Mullen in his career as a professional jockey.
He did not decide on pursuing a riding career until he was 14, and he rode more than 100 times before his first win. He took more than 17 years for his first Group 1 winner.
“I had been into ponies when I was six or seven, lost interest and started playing football in my teens but then I got back into horses when I was 14,” he said.
He still vividly remembers his first race at Newmarket.
“Lester Piggott and Willie Carson, the two legends of the sport, were on my two sides,” he said. “I rode about 100 losers before I had my first winner, but learning to ride the bad ones makes you appreciate a good one even more.”
Mullen first arrived in Dubai as an apprentice to ride for Godolphin in 1998. He spent four winters and a spell with Jaci Wickham at the Metropolitan Stables before his move to the Zabeel Stables.
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