There may be other jockeys who arrive at Happy Valley on 4 December for the HK$1 million LONGINES International Jockeys’ Championship (IJC) with more fanfare, or on the back of recent big race successes.
But none will arguably be in such a rich vein of form as Mickael Barzalona, who has been firing in the winners from every angle since late summer and who came within three victories of running down his great friend and rival Maxime Guyon over the course of a surprisingly tense ending to France’s jockeys’ championship, the Cravache d’Or, which reached its conclusion on the last day of October.
“Maxime opened up a big lead early in the season and there was a point when I was 19 wins behind and I couldn’t really see a way back into the running,” says Barzalona, who rode 189 winners over the course of the race for a championship he won for the first time in 2021.
“But I really began to close him down and to miss out by three winners is nothing really, especially as he had more than a hundred more rides than me.
“I rode 61 winners in the last two months of the race for the Cravache d’Or and in the final month I had 32 second-placed finishes, the same number as my tally of winners. I couldn’t have given any more and I’m very happy with the way I finished off.”
Nor has Barzalona, 33, let up the pressure in the month since the end of the counting period for the Cravache d’Or as he has sailed past the 200-winner mark for the calendar year, and he will head to Happy Valley with real determination to make a good showing in the LONGINES IJC.
2021’s tie for second behind Zac Purton is Barzalona’s best effort in five previous appearances at the LONGINES IJC, and another call-up is evidence of a successful year.
“It’s always very gratifying to be considered part of the elite circle of jockeys that receive an invite to the LONGINES IJC, which is the best challenge in the world and which any jockey would look forward to,” says Barzalona.
“Everything is done by the Club to make things smooth for us and it is great to be going up against the best from Britain and Ireland, Japan and Australia, not to mention the crack Hong Kong-based jockeys.”
Barzalona has had plenty of quality available to him to go with the quantity during 2024, with a canny front-running ride aboard Tribalist to deny Europe’s champion miler Charyn in the G1 Prix du Moulin de Longchamp (1600m) in September the highlight.
“I’ve had a good year in terms of number of winners and riding good horses in the Group races, and perhaps I’ve just lacked a real top notcher,” says Barzalona. “That can happen when you have a retainer with an owner or stable and with Godolphin this year, we’ve been short of a few flagbearers apart from Tribalist. I was delighted he was able to get his Group 1 victory.”
Following on from his appearance in last December’s G1 LONGINES Hong Kong Mile (1600m), Tribalist has been in rare form throughout the year, clocking up a Group-race double at Saint-Cloud in the spring.
The five-year-old Farhh entire will not be returning to Sha Tin this time round but his Andre Fabre-trained stablemate Marquisat will take up the challenge in the HK$24 million G1 LONGINES Hong Kong Vase (2400m), a race which will have added poignancy for Barzalona as it will be his final Group 1 start as Godolphin’s retained rider in France, before he takes up the role of first jockey to His Highness the Aga Khan in January next year.
“Godolphin placed their faith in me at a very young age and it’s not an easy thing to think that this will be my final Group 1 start as their retained jockey,” says Barzalona.
“I have a new challenge now but if by chance I was able to come out on top one last time for them, it would make me enormously happy. Either way it’s been a wonderful adventure over the course of 12 years.”
The lightly-campaigned Marquisat was fifth on his first start at Group 1 level in the G1 Grosser Preis von Bayern (2400m) – the same race Junko used as a springboard to success for Fabre in the 2023 LONGINES Hong Kong Vase – but Barzalona believes he has more quality than he was able to show in Munich.
“Marquisat has plenty of class and it’s unfortunate we haven’t quite seen the best of him yet,” says Barzalona. “This year he ran a great comeback race after an absence when he was pipped by Junko at Chantilly – passing the post I thought we might have won – and then after another break he ran very well on his next start behind Goliath at Longchamp.
“He got bumped coming out of the stalls in Germany but we managed to get in a position to strike if he’d had the gas but, for what was his first trip abroad and on really heavy ground, he wasn’t able to produce that turn of foot.”
Marquisat might not be among the likely favourites for the LONGINES Hong Kong Vase but as Junko reminded the world last December, runners from the Andre Fabre stable should always carry maximum respect when travelling abroad.
And before that, Mickael Barzalona will be going all out to prove himself first among 12 equals in the LONGINES IJC.
By Scott Burton
