Alan Munro heads for new career in Japan
Alan Munro has never been afraid of change.
As a young jockey he took himself off to the United States to hone his skills riding work on the American tracks and returned with a low-slung riding style that marked him out as a fashion-setter. and has now decided to quit British racing for a final time as he embarks on a three-month riding stint riding in Japan.
Munro, 43, will take up a contract from October to ride for the National Racing Association which is Japan’s second tier, below the Japan Racing Association circuit which dominates the prestige race meetings. Giving his reasons for the move the jockey said: “I’m at the end of my career – I’ve got eight years left I hope – and so it’s the right time for me to leave.”
“I’m going to the NRA circuit and they race Monday to Friday. They have 12-race cards every day and I’ll be racing one week at one track, one week at another track and it’s all centralised in Tokyo. And on the weekends it’s JRA racing. And so I’ll have weekends off - unless I get a horse good enough to go on the JRA - and it’ll be a good life for those three months. Hopefully I do well and if I don’t it’s still good experience.”
It was the thirst for experience that took Munro – who rode his first winner for Barry Hills on Sentimental Roses at Yarmouth in August 1985 – stateside in between riding for Mel Brittain and then Bill O’Gorman, for whom he rode Timeless Times to 16 juvenile-race victories in 1990.
By the following year Munro had hit the big time when he landed the job as retained rider to Prince Fahd Salman, whose string that year included Generous (pictured), on whom Munro won the Derby, Irish Derby and King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes but he quit the British scene for the first time in 1995 to ride in Hong Kong. He lost a year when he was stood down for 12 months on medical grounds after a gallops accident but returned to some of the top races including the Hong Kong Champions & Chater Cup on Indigenous in 1997 and the Hong Kong Gold Cup and Queen Elizabeth II Cup on Industrialist three years later.
But he had fallen out of love with racing and gave up to study martial arts before deciding on a comeback because, as he said at the time, “no-one calls and you lose your identity - you have to readjust to being just a small person in the world and it's really hard."
The hard road back started in New Zealand but he was back in Britain for the 2005 season when he rode Sergeant Cecil to an unprecedented staying handicap treble of the Northumberland Plate, Ebor and Cesarewitch, which he followed up by winning the Irish 2000 Guineas and St James’s Palace Stakes on Araafa but, within weeks of that win at Royal Ascot, Munro was on another 12-month medical suspension after suffering a convulsion on a flight to Deauville.
The loss of another year was compounded by the fact that Munro had been riding regularly for Peter Chapple-Hyam who was about to run a two-year-old for whom he had high hopes. The following June Authorized won the Derby ridden by Frankie Dettori.
Munro made another comeback but found that all the places at the top table were taken and has decided to try his luck abroad. “The JRA is the top and I can’t get in to the JRA because they have a criteria that you have to have been in the top 10 in the last two years. And I don’t meet that criteria – not in the last two years anyway,” Munro explained. “I don’t plan coming back unless maybe for three or four weeks to have a ride around a few tracks, but mainly my career will be abroad. The next step I’m planning is Qatar – there’s good money there – so there’s opportunities there as well.”
He has also considered a return to Hong Kong or even the growing sport in China but admits that it will be a wrench to leave Britain once more but he can no longer make the figures stack up without the marquee horses to ride.
“British racing is, for a rider, fantastic,” he said. “The tracks are beautiful and of course the big racedays at Royal Ascot and Glorious Goodwood are phenomenal and you wouldn’t choose to be anywhere else.
“However, it’s very hard to keep your money here. The expenses are really high, the tax and the workload is enormous. So then you have the alternative - an Asian circuit where they race a lot less a week, so you get a life back, and a much better tax rate. So it’s hard to compare the two and come out with England being a positive.”
As ever Munro goes into his new venture in positive mood. No change there.
Tags: