Shergar Cup: Hayley Turner targets Silver Saddle hat-trick with one eye on keeping the trophy on 14th appearance
Hayley Turner has won the last two Silver Saddle awards for leading jockey in the Shergar Cup and returns to lead the Ladies Team on her 14th appearance; watch the Shergar Cup at Ascot live on Sky Sports Racing on Saturday from 12.15pm
Saturday 7 August 2021 07:46, UK
If there is one jockey synonymous with the Shergar Cup it has to be Hayley Turner, who has more than rubber-stamped the Ascot jamboree and will once again be in the thick of the action on the six-race card which takes place for the 20th time on Saturday, live on Sky Sports Racing.
From small beginnings, the competition has become extremely popular with regular crowds of over 30,000 giving families and racegoers of the future an opportunity to watch international jockeys take part in a points-scoring competition that quite often goes down to the wire.
Turner has been a great advocate of Shergar Cup day and enthusiastically looks forward to her 14th appearance in Saturday's event, where four teams: Great Britain, Ireland, Ladies and the Rest of the World, take part with three jockeys in each team.
Turner said: "I look forward to this day every year and am really lucky to have been involved with the competition so many times.
"They obviously started off with having a girl on the team many years ago and it has progressed from there.
"It is so nice to have a change from the daily grind by doing something completely different.
"We are always racing as individuals and this is just so different as it is a team event and, apart from it being great fun, the participants get right behind the whole day and there is a great sense of camaraderie amongst the teams.
"There are some really good female jockeys riding these days and we have won the competition a few times now.
"We always get some big support for the girls team and it creates a lot of interest for a normally non-racing audience."
Turner is the leading jockey in the competition's history, notching up eight winners and 297 points, and has landed the Alistair Haggis Silver Saddle as leading jockey in the last two renewals of the competition in 2018 and 2019.
She landed her first winner at the meeting in 2007, when partnering Relative Order (later named Yummy Spirits when sent to race in Hong Kong) in the seven-furlong nursery handicap at odds of 33-1, prevailing by three-quarters of a length.
The horses in the competition are usually drawn on lots but necessity determined that Turner was forced to take the mount on that occasion.
Trainer John Best explained: "Hayley was the only jockey in the competition that could do 7st12lb and we were delighted when we got her.
"She gave the horse a great ride and we were over the moon when she did the business for us again on Eddystone Rocks in 2019."
Turner was successful in the competition during the following three years with Gee Dee Nen (Mark Tompkins), Noverre To Go (Tom Dascombe) and Yourgunnabelucky (Mark Johnston), but had to wait until 2016 for her next victory when partnering Early Morning (Harry Dunlop).
Via Serendipity (Stuart Williams) set the seal on her first Silver Saddle victory in 2018 and she took that title in the last running of the contest when partnering Eddystone Rocks and Sapa Inca to a 37-1 double in 2019.
Sadly due to Covid restrictions, the Shergar Cup was unable to take place in 2020, but Turner has her eye on retaining, and even keeping, the Silver Saddle if the Ladies team captain can notch the hat-trick as leading jockey this year.
"The Silver Saddle means a lot to me and I can remember Alistair Haggis pushing to get me involved in the early years of the competition when it was unfashionable to have a female jockey taking part.
"Unfortunately, Alistair is no longer with us, but I was grateful for his help and I definitely think the Shergar Cup elevated my career in general.
"If I do manage to be leading jockey on Saturday for a third time it would be wonderful if I did get to keep the trophy!"
With 31 winners already this season, Turner has already sailed past her total of 20 for 2020 and is looking to keep her renewed career - she originally retired briefly at the end of 2015 - on an upwardly mobile path.
She said: "I don't think it is that I am riding any different, but the simple fact is that it feels like I am getting better rides and once you manage to get a few winners then you become more fashionable again, which has a very welcome knock-on effect.
"I have been getting support from a few different yards and long may it last."
