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Two Australian jockeys, Will Price and Taylor Marshall, have been granted visiting jockey licences to ride in Singapore.
Price will ride for the period from 28 September to 5 October 2024 while Marshall will fly in for a one-day visit at the Group 1 Grand Singapore Gold Cup (2000m) meeting on Saturday, 5 October. Marshall will ride the Ricardo Le Grange-trained Hole In One in the $1.38 million time-honoured feature race.
They will be making their first appearances at Kranji and here are the brief write-ups on the two new visiting jockeys.
Will Price
Born and raised in Adelaide, South Australia, Will Price is the son of former multiple Group 1-winning jockey Simon Price, who rode at Bukit Timah in the 1990s and won the 1998 Singapore Gold Cup aboard the Malcom Thwaites-trained Three Crowns, as well as Kranji in the early 2000s.
Prior to his debut, the 24-year-old moved to Ballarat, Victoria five years ago and was indentured to his uncle and trainer Dan O'Sullivan before his first ride in Coleraine, Victoria in September 2019. He rode 85 winners in less than 10 months before going on to win the Victorian Jockeys' Association's (VJA) Rising Star Award twice in the 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 seasons. Price was also crowned the champion Melbourne apprentice jockey in the 2020/2021 season.
The talented rider outrode his claim in December last year with the Ryan Balfour-trained Canford, the same horse who handed him his first Group win in the Group 3 Lord Reims Stakes in February 2022. Price also took out the Group 3 Auraria Stakes atop My Whisper in April that same year.
Currently licensed by Racing Victoria, Price has chalked up over 220 wins in five years of riding. He recently completed the 2023/2024 Victorian racing season with 21 wins. Price will be at his first stint overseas in Singapore and he goes to scale at 48kgs.
Taylor Marshall
The 31-year-old Taylor Marshall is the son of the late John Marshall, who was a Melbourne Cup-winning jockey on the Bart Cummings-trained Rogan Josh in 1999 but lost his life to pancreatic cancer in 2018. Growing up in Sunshine Coast, Marshall Jr had nothing to do with horses even if his father was a successful jockey but decided to hop on ponies and ex-racehorses on the farm at the age of 18 as he contemplated between furthering his studies in university or becoming a jockey.
But it would seem racing was clearly in his blood. After a year of riding at the provincials since March 2013, Marshall, who started his apprenticeship with trainer Ron Quinton in Sydney, made headlines with four wins at his first metropolitan meeting at Rosehill in May 2014, including his first stakes success in the Listed Lord Mayor's Cup atop Zephyron at Rosehill Gardens.
Marshall, who had been indentured to ex-Kranji trainer Michael Freedman in Sydney and trainer Danny O'Brien in Melbourne, joined trainer Lawrie Mayfield-Smith and kick-started a new phase of his career in Brisbane, Queensland in February 2018. Three years later, his only Group success came in the Group 3 Vo Rogue Plate aboard Apache Chase for trainer Desleigh Forster at Eagle Farm.
Now licensed by Racing Queensland, Marshall has ridden more than 360 winners in 11 years. He also had a three-month stint with former champion jockey Johnny Murtagh in Ireland in 2015.
Marshall sits 14th on three wins on the Queensland Metropolitan jockeys' premiership this season. He goes to scale at 49kgs.