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This time last year when we wished our readers a Happy New Year 2020 at our traditional season recap, it was, as is always the case, said with the most heartfelt sincerity, though it can feel a touch formulaic to some, given the law of averages that tends to even out the ups from the downs.
Little did we know that the word "Happy" would feel like a long lost friend in 2020.
But truth be told, how could we have possibly foretold the cataclysm that was about to engulf and batter us, even if that dreadful microscopic monster with Shrek ear-like protrusions had already reared its ugly head not too far away from us as early as December 2019?
Kranji was not spared from that global tidal wave that took only a few weeks to cripple not only other economies and industries, but also our daily lives, both here and around the world.
Whilst Singapore racing (and we are not alone) might not have been in the pink of health of late, we have got by, but that COVID-19 could potentially send us straight to ICU.
Pushing the medical analogy further, three long months of no racing from mid-April to mid-July to toe the line with the Government's national lockdown dubbed the Circuit Breaker was as good as cutting off the oxygen supply.
Breathing was not made any easier with the compulsory facial masks, but Kranji could heave a huge collective sigh of relief when common sense prevailed at the early months of the outbreak regarding our most precious asset, horses.
Human activity can come to a standstill, or even shapeshift into that office game changer, work-from-home, but livestock has to be kept active and on the go. Luckily, the various ministries concerned allowed trackwork to continue albeit at a slower pace during the lockdown.
That was when we also saw the strong sense of solidarity and resilience within our racing community, be it among trainers, jockeys, track riders, syces and of course, the owners and the Singapore Turf Club. The green light for our Malaysian staff to stay at the stables (within strict sanitary protocols) when the checkpoints were closed was just one poignant example, not to mention most jobs being saved.
Still, the uncertainty was so easily scrutable from that unmasked upper part of every industry participant's face, the eyes.
The only question on everybody's lips was "how long will this last?" - and it was finally answered on July 11, when the go-ahead to press restart was given.
However, it was akin to waking up from a nightmare to a bizarre new landscape around us.
Yes, the starting gates could crash back again to unleash that old familiar rush of horsepower around the Kranji turf and Polytrack, but not the green wrought-iron gates at the MRT entrance plaza.
Unfortunately, our racegoers still can't come back to their favourite haunt yet. At least, television and Telebet account can lighten up their level of abstinence compared to the zero racing for three endless months, but ask any racing uncle and he'll tell you nothing comes close to standing with his kakis among a throng of like-minded punters cheering their favourite horse home 'from railside'.
It was not just the eerily empty and silent grandstand that made for an otherworldly landscape which somehow conjured up post-apocalyptic scenes from those Hollywood sci-fi blockbusters.
The jockeys' room suddenly became "roomier". Four expat hoops, including top gun Michael Rodd, began a mass exodus as soon as racing stopped, but it conversely opened the door to greater opportunities for local jockeys, who may well belong to that rare clutch of businesses like Grab or Zoom to have found a silver lining in the pandemic.
Case in point: Malaysian lightweight jockey A'Isisuhairi "Harry" Kasim booting Mr Malek, Excelling (in a Group race for good measure) or Muraahib home for the powerful Lee Freedman yard. An unlikely match in previous normal seasons, but it has been one of the real backdrop success stories to that extraordinary COVID-19 season.
Trainers have had it tough, too, especially in convincing owners not to pull the pin, but unfortunately, two of them had to throw in the towel: Saimee Jumaat and Mok Zhan Lun. COVID-19 may not have been the sole conviction, but it was certainly a catalyst.
But probably the biggest fallout was the practically unrecognisable racing calendar that had been turned on its head when it was time to pick up the pieces and take on the colossal task of patching it up.
Still, kudos to the Singapore Turf Club for pulling it off, even if it's never easy to please everybody. The introduction of priority passes in October to provide a fair nomination and ballot system in relation to the usual thorny issue of supply (limited berths) and demand (around 900 horses) given the even fewer number of meetings was well received by some and not so by others.
But it has to be remembered such unprecedented times have thrown everybody off into uncharted waters. Trying to put all our heads together to work in the same direction with imponderables we have never dealt with or heard of before would make a colour-blind person solving a Rubik's cube look like child's play.
With three months of racing thrown out the window, races were invariably reduced both in numbers and frequency while some feature races had to be either scrapped or rescheduled with reduced prizemoney, and sometimes reset with tweaked conditions.
There was so much chopping and changing that it might be easier to read the chronology of events below, but the biggest loss had to be the Kranji Mile, over which we had all been rubbing our hands in anticipation of the first staging of our premier race as an International Group 3 race in May, but with the logistic nightmare of flying horses in from the four corners of the globe, it was turned into a local affair in August, but still run as a Group 1 event.
The unaltered naming of the age race series after they were put off after August 1 certainly led to confusion, too. For example, Inferno made a clean sweep of the Singapore Three-Year-Old Challenge, except he was four – as was his Southern Hemisphere-bred peers who had turned one year older from August 1 – and he will most probably go down in Singapore racing history as the only "Double Crown" winner ever witnessed since the first Leg was called off!
All's not been all doom and gloom, though. The racing action has been just as spectacular and riveting. If anything, hearing just the sound of thundering hooves and jockeys' yelling sans the ambient noise of the cheering crowd has made us discover a refreshing type of adrenaline rush.
Inferno, Top Knight, Aramaayo and so many other equine bright lights, as well as the epic battle between Vlad Duric and Ruan Maia, have certainly lit up the darkness that has hovered around us.
Michael Clements' first Singapore champion trainer title at his 23rd year of training was indeed special and thoroughly deserved, especially given his overwhelming dominance in Group races (he won seven including three at Group 1 level!).
So, the Zimbabwean-born and naturalised Singaporean handler has also risen above the pandemic pandemonium to succeed at a time when failure tends to outnumber success, but one can argue even when not in peacetime (read virus-free time), someone has to come out tops.
But Clements has worked hard, and more significantly, he has kept a level head (his meditating helps no doubt), didn't panic, regrouped and has thought outside the square to beat the odds.
Self-belief, forbearance and teamwork were the key ingredients, and at the dawn of a new 2021 season which is still full of uncertainties despite the move to Phase 3, the easing of further restrictions from December 28 and the arrival of a vaccine – hopefully the panacea we have all prayed for - maybe we can all take a leaf from the success stories that have given us hope throughout this most unorthodox and unreal season.
Can we bring back the "Happy" in 2021? Time will tell, but it should and will definitely be happier than the one most would be happy to turn their backs on in a few hours' time.
In the meantime, we give you a quick run-down of that 2020 roller-coaster ride. There were after all quite a few great moments to cherish, but it's also okay if you would rather not revisit a year that has made you feel the other way.
Happy New Year 2021 everyone!
JANUARY
January 1 - Trainer Tan Kah Soon kickstarts the new season with the first feature winner Nowyousee in the Group 3 New Year Cup (1200m). It also gave fellow Malaysian apprentice jockey Krisna Thangamani his first silverware.
January 4 – Sacred Gift gives jockey Benny Woodworth his 400th winner at Kranji.
January 12 – Local apprentice jockey Dennis Tan Zhi Xian scores his first win on Rapid Fire.
January 26 – Bold Thruster cements his place as one of the up-and-coming sprinters at Kranji with a gallant win in the Group 3 Fortune Bowl (1400m), handing trainer Michael Clements the first of a haul of seven Group wins for the season.
FEBRUARY
February 6 – I'm Incredible is voted 2019 Singapore Horse of the Year at the annual Racing Appreciation Awards night held at Zouk. Mark Walker (trainer), Vlad Duric (jockey), Simon Kok Wei Hoong (apprentice jockey) and the Falcon Racing Stable (owner) are the other champions honoured.
February 7 – South African jockey Ryan Munger wins his first race at Kranji on Pindus.
February 15 – Trainer Michael Clements takes out another feature race with Countofmontecristo in the Group 2 Chairman's Trophy (1600m). French jockey Louis-Philippe Beuzelin was incidentally capturing his first feature race in Singapore.
February 21 – Trainer Cliff Brown's former assistant-trainer and first full-season trainer Tim Fitzsimmons saddles his first winner with Mega Gold.
February 29 – It's Michael Clements hogging the limelight again, and recombining with Louis-Philippe Beuzelin to snare another Group race, this time the first Leg of the Singapore Three-Year-Old Challenge, the Group 3 Silver Bowl (1400m) with Bold Thruster. Inferno tastes his only defeat in his stellar career when runner-up to Siam Warrior.
MARCH
March 1 – Malaysian apprentice jockey Shafrizal Saleh departs for Australia to represent the Singapore Turf Club at the National Apprentice Race Series (NARS).
March 15 – Noh Senari joins the 100-win club with Coming Fast.
March 20 - Siam Blue Vanda, with replacement jockey A'Isisuhairi Kasim up, makes it a fourth consecutive win at the elite level for trainer Michael Clements in the Group 2 Stewards' Cup (1600m), the second Leg of the Singapore Three-Year-Old Challenge.
March 27 – After weeks of allowing the public in under new health and safety controls such as temperature-taking and capped admissions due the COVID-19 outbreak, Friday's night race meeting on March 27 became the first in the history of Singapore horse racing to be run behind closed doors. The Desmond Koh-trained Asia Spirit became the first horse to win a race staged before an empty grandstand at Kranji.
APRIL
April 3 – That race meeting was meant to be the first of a scaled-back (halved) racing calendar, announced at the end of March by the Singapore Turf Club amid the worsening COVID-19 situation, but it turned out to be the last before an outright suspension was enforced the next day (April 4) in alignment with the nationwide lockdown dubbed the Circuit Breaker that was imposed effective from April 7 in a bid to stem the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
April 6-26 – Within three weeks, four jockeys leave Kranji in the wake of the shutdown, Australians Daniel Moor, Michael Rodd and Patrick Moloney and New Zealander Alysha Collett.
April 24 – The Singapore Turf Club announces the postponement of the Kranji Mile and Lion City Cup, which were the first of a series of rescheduling or cancellation of feature races due to the COVID-19-induced suspension of racing.
MAY
Nothing of note happened in May, symptomatic of the screeching halt the racing industry has come to.
JUNE
June 22 – With the Circuit Breaker entering Phase 2 along with the easing of some restrictions, the Singapore Turf Club delivers the good news that the Government has given the green light for racing to resume on July 11, but still held behind closed doors.
JULY
July 11 – Racing finally resumes after a three-month lockdown. The crowds are still absent while the sprinkling of people authorised to go in, mostly trainers, jockeys, stable staff and officials, have to wear masks and observe other sanitary protocols. Only two meetings are scheduled in July, each featuring bumper 14-race programmes. Trainer Jerome Tan's Lim's Shot with Marc Lerner up wins the first race of that new era.
AUGUST
August 2 – Mark Walker pulls off the rare feat of a five-timer with the same owner, the Remarkable Stable thanks to What You Like, I Am Sacred (who incidentally rang up the Kiwi handler's 600th win at Kranji), Sacred Don and Savvy Command winning the first four races before Amazing Choice wrapped up the rout in Race 8.
August 16 – The first feature race staged since racing resumed is the Kranji Mile (postponed from May), which is, as expected, closed to international horses due to border closures, and is downgraded to domestic Group 1 status. Aramaayo lands the prize for trainer Shane Baertschiger and jockey Ruan Maia.
August 23 – The Lee Freedman-trained and A'Isisuhairi Kasim-ridden Excelling claims the Group 2 Merlion Trophy (1200m), but they are clearly overshadowed by Brazilian jockey Ruan Maia's seven-timer courtesy of El Chapo, The Mareeba Mango, Moon Face, Meryl, Ararat Lady, Elite Power and Gamely.
August 30 – One week later, ridden by new partner Vlad Duric, the Cliff Brown-trained Inferno stamps his status as the new Kranji rising star with an easy win in the Group 2 Singapore Classic (1400m), technically the second Leg of the Singapore Three-Year-Old Challenge, but which was in the end run as the first Leg given that the series was cut back to the last two Legs (first Leg, the Group 3 Singapore Three-Year-Old Sprint over 1200m was called off). Likewise, the race was exceptionally open to Southern Hemisphere-bred four-year-olds given the late staging of the series after their universal birthday on August 1.
SEPTEMBER
September 5 – After the first two Legs were held before the Circuit Breaker, the third and final Leg of the Singapore Four-Year-Old Challenge, the Group 1 Singapore Derby (1800m), had to be rescheduled to this date (hence the one-off inclusion of Southern Hemisphere-breds as five-year-olds), and saw the triumph of Top Knight to hand both trainer Michael Clements and jockey Vlad Duric a first in the classic race. Trainer Mok Zhan Lun saddles his last runner Cai Poh Wang to bow out the winner of 215 races after a career that lasted 10 years at Kranji.
September 26 – With Vlad Duric up, Inferno makes the "clean sweep" of the Singapore Three-Year-Old Challenge when he hands trainer Cliff Brown a second Group 1 Singapore Guineas (1600m) after Debt Collector (raced in the same interests as Inferno, the Barree Stable) in 2016. After Mok Zhan Lun, it's Saimee Jumaat's turn to call it a day. Unfortunately, his last runner Buddy Buddy could not break his duck for 2020, but the former eight-time Singapore champion jockey can still look back with pride on a brief but successful training career that has yielded 71 winners, with his best season being his third in 2019 when he finished in a commendable eighth spot on 32 winners.
September 30 – Mr John Davidson is appointed as the new Chief Stipendiary Steward after his predecessor Mr Terry Bailey took up a new position at the Hong Kong Jockey Club.
OCTOBER
October 3 – The first meeting of the last quarter of the 2020 season features a card that is scaled back from 14 to 11 races.
October 10 – After his Kranji Mile heroics, Aramaayo becomes a dual-Group 1 winner in the first Leg of the Singapore Triple Crown series, the Raffles Cup (1600m) for the same duo of Shane Baertschiger and Ruan Maia. On a different note, the Jason Ong-trained Kiwi Kid becomes the first Uruguayan-bred horse to win in Singapore.
October 25 – Fresh from his three-year-old domination, Inferno takes on the big boys in the Group 1 Lion City Cup (1200m), resulting in another infernal rout, handing Vlad Duric a third Group 1 hurrah.
October 31 – Less than one week later, the mercurial Australian makes it a quartet of Group 1 wins in the second Leg of the Singapore Triple Crown series, the Queen Elizabeth II Cup (1800m) with Top Knight for Michael Clements. While it was Duric's third QEII Cup after Quechua (2017) and I'm Incredible (2019), it was Clements' first silverware in the iconic race named after Her Majesty.
NOVEMBER
November 15 – Malaysian jockey Mohd Zaki claims the biggest win of his career after he picks up the ride on Nepean in the Group 2 EW Barker Trophy (1400m) following the withdrawal of jockey Matthew Kellady due to dehydration. Zaki's only other feature accolade came in the Group 3 Committee's Prize aboard Keep Away for his former boss Hideyuki Takaoka in 2012.
November 21 – In a remarkable season where trainer Michael Clements had already captured two Group 1 races he had never won before (Singapore Derby and QEII Cup), he made it a trifecta in the third and final Leg of the Singapore Triple Crown series, the also hitherto unconquered Singapore Gold Cup (2000m) with Big Hearted, perfectly handled by champion apprentice jockey Simon Kok Wei Hoong. Veteran jockey John Powell beats cancer to return to the winner's circle on Time Lord. It's his first win since Lim's Spin on March 20.
DECEMBER
December 5 – The number of races is reduced further to 10. After Inferno last year, Boomba with Ruan Maia astride gives Australian outfit Barree Stable back-to-back wins in the Group 3 Singapore Golden Horseshoe (1200m), as well as trainer Cliff Brown – not a bad effort for someone who once said he "couldn't train two-year-olds".
December 8 – Inferno is sensationally scratched from the Group 1 Longines Hong Kong Sprint (1200m) on December 13 after he became lame, depriving Singapore of its only flagbearer at the prestigious annual event at Sha Tin.
December 19 – Red-hot Brazilian jockey Ruan Maia claims the last feature of the Singapore racing calendar, the Group 3 Colonial Chief Stakes (1600m) on the Lee Freedman-trained Super Dynasty. It was the fifth pin of an amazing quintet of wins which suddenly gives him a real shot at pegging back log leader Vlad Duric at the last meeting on December 27, with the margin having been whittled down to only four winners. Meanwhile, the trainer's premiership is sealed after Michael Clements' old warrior McGregor makes it win No 58 for the Zimbabwean-born handler for a 13-win gap which defending champion, three-time Singapore champion trainer Mark Walker cannot bridge anymore. A two-time champion in Zimbabwe and the longest-serving expatriate trainer since his arrival in 1998, Clements was lifting the coveted Singapore title for the first time.
December 24 – 2018 Singapore champion trainer Lee Freedman announces he is leaving Singapore in March to pursue his training career back home in Australia on the Gold Coast.
December 27 – What was hoped to be an intense two-horse race between Vlad Duric, who was trying to cling on to his four-win lead, and his brazen Brazilian challenger Ruan Maia reached a bit of an anticlimactic finale when Maia could only knock one back on favourite Knight Love, thus leaving Duric on his perch for a well-deserved fourth consecutive title on 65 winners. Michael Clements kept up his title-winning momentum with a training treble to wind up the season on 61 winners, 16 clear of Walker, who hung on to his runner-up spot by one winner from Lee Freedman. Simon Kok Wei Hoong made it back-to-back in the Singapore apprentice jockey's premiership on 33 winners, having already cleared out to another dominant win from a longer way out, and Thai outfit Falcon Racing Stable also made it a running double as champion owners, an unsurprising result courtesy of their raft of big-race wins from Top Knight and Big Hearted as well as the numerous wins from their bread-and-butter horses like On Line and Good Luck Charm to name a few.
