Anthony Delpech will be crowned KZN champion jockey at the KZN Awards ceremony at the Elangeni Hotel on Friday night and it will be richly deserved as he likely broke two South African records during the season, and maybe a provincial one too.

South African racing records are not well kept, but a look through the archives reveals the stakes earning of R24,653,750 which Delpech’s mounts accumulated for the 2015/2016 season is almost certainly a record. It also reveals he likely broke his own record.

Anthony Delpech (Liesl King)

Delpech’s stakes earnings in the 2010/2011 season of R21,038,304 were likely the first time the R20 million mark had been reached and it was not until this season that it was reached again. All of Delpech, Anton Marcus (R24,128,025) and the National Champion Jockey S’Manga Khumalo (22,929,675) reached the mark last season. The lucrative Sales races must have something to do with this being achieved. Of these sales races Delpech won the R2,5 million Lanzerac Ready To Run Stakes on Budapest, while Marcus was placed in no fewer than six of the R1 million-and-above sales races.

The other record which Delpech might well have broken was the number of wins on one track during a season. Last season he rode no fewer than 125 winners on the Greyville polytrack.

Delpech’s 172 winners in KZN during the season, which saw him beating Anton Marcus to the provincial title by 30, could well be a KZN record.

Marcus beat Delpech in the number of Gr 1 wins in South Africa last season, seven to five, although Delpech’s were on five different horses while Marcus’s were on four horses.

Delpech holds the record for the most winners in a South African season, a phenomenal 334, which he set in the 1998/1999 season.

David Thiselton