THE King’s Stand Stakes winner Nature Strip has become the first horse in Australia to win over A$10 million in a single season.

In just eight starts for the 2021/22 season, Nature Strip added $10,451,323 to his career total of just over $8 million with The Everest providing the lion’s share, as well as Group 1 wins at Royal Ascot, the TJ Smith Stakes and the VRC Sprint Classic. With an international rating of 125, the eight-year-old winner of 20 of 37 starts trails only the unbeaten Baaeed.

JOHNNY Allen has been crowned Champion Victorian jockey for the second consecutive season with 130 wins, 38 of those on city tracks earning him an eighth place on the Metropolitan Jockeys’ Premiership. Jye McNeil took out that title with 76 wins.

Dominating the Victorian training ranks was the partnership of Ciaron Maher and David Eustace winning both Metropolitan and State-wide titles with 104 and 276 wins respectively.

In New South Wales it was Chris Waller, then daylight. The New Zealand-born Waller had 154 city winners, 205 State-wide winners as well as being the Champion trainer in Australia with 352 winners.

Overall his 2,313 starters won 352 races at a strike rate of 15.2%, ran a place just over 41% of the time and banked $49,304,170 in earnings. Along in his wake came jockey James McDonald who took out both the Metropolitan Sydney Jockeys’ title and the Australian Metropolitan Jockeys’ title with 105 and 131 wins respectively.

Across the Tasman Sea Jamie Richards, now setting up in Hong Kong, took out the New Zealand Trainers’ Premiership with 117 winners while Michael McNab took out the Jockeys’ Title with 144 winners.

The 2021/2022 Australian and New Zealand racing seasons concluded on July 30th.