2023 Scobie Breasley Medal & Roy Higgins Medal winner Blake Shinn
Victoria’s stars of the turf will be lauded at the 2024 Victorian Racing Awards in Melbourne next Saturday night, 10 August, with the star-studded ceremony set to be live streamed via the Racing.com digital platforms.
A wide range of awards, headlined by the coveted Scobie Breasley Medal, will be handed out on the night, which is proudly supported by Evans & Partners and will be co-hosted by Seven Horse Racing presenters Jason Richardson and Emma Freedman.
In a change to previous years, the Fred Hoysted Medal will now be awarded to the winner of the Metropolitan Trainers’ Premiership – claimed for the fourth time by Ciaron Maher – with a new gong up for grabs in the form of the Most Outstanding Training Performance of the season.
The inaugural award, which is voted on by a panel of industry officials and racing media, will be presented to a Victorian licensed trainer who has demonstrated excellence in racehorse training throughout the 2023-24 season. Trainers may be judged on an individual or collection of performances both within Victoria and outside.
In another first, members of a training partnership are now eligible to win the Colin Alderson Rising Star Award, which acknowledges a Victorian trainer aged 40 or under whose career is on an upward trajectory and has performed with distinction.
Among the most hotly contested awards on the night will be the Victorian Racehorse of the Year. Judged by the same panel as the Most Outstanding Training Performance award, it takes into account performances on Victorian racetracks during the season irrespective of where a horse is trained.
The five finalists for both the Most Outstanding Training Performance and the Victorian Racehorse of the Year award will be released by Racing Victoria (RV) next week in the countdown to the event.
Other awards to be presented include the RV Acknowledged Retrainer of the Year, the Victorian Jockeys Association’s (VJA) Rising Star and Most Valuable Jockey awards, and the Tommy Corrigan Medal, awarded to the season’s premier jumps jockey.
The evening will culminate in the announcement of the winner of the 28th Scobie Breasley Medal, which recognises riding excellence on Victorian metropolitan racetracks. The RV Stewards panel casts their votes on a 3-2-1 basis at each city meeting for what they deem to be the ride of the day, with the Scobie Breasley Medal awarded to the jockey who accumulates the most points over the season.
Last year’s winner Blake Shinn will hope to retain the medal he first won as an apprentice in 2005, but he faces stiff competition from a host of riders including Damian Lane, who will be presented with the Roy Higgins Medal following his inaugural success in the Metropolitan Jockeys’ Premiership.
Lane also won the overall Victorian Jockeys’ Premiership with 148 winners across the state becoming the first rider since Luke Nolen in 2009-10 to claim both titles.
Young gun Celine Gaudray will also be acknowledged on the night after claiming both the Victorian and metropolitan apprentice titles after stellar season in the saddle that 42 metropolitan winners.