{"id":459870,"date":"2025-09-29T07:37:17","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T07:37:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/459870\/"},"modified":"2025-09-29T07:37:17","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T07:37:17","slug":"horse-racing-2025-declan-bates-opens-up-on-pride-of-jenni-return-rsn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/459870\/","title":{"rendered":"Horse Racing 2025: Declan Bates Opens Up On Pride Of Jenni Return | Rsn"},"content":{"rendered":"

The duo reunited on Friday night, winning the Feehan.<\/p>\n

In late 2024, Pride Of Jenni\u2019s<\/strong> usual jockey Declan Bates<\/strong> was booted from the mare after finishing second last in the Group 1 Cox Plate (2040m).<\/p>\n

Despite Bates leading Pride Of Jenni to six of her 11 career wins, owner Tony Ottobre<\/strong> chose Ben Melham<\/strong> to replace Bates in the following race – the Group 1 Champions Mile.<\/p>\n

After Bates was axed, Pride Of Jenni competed in five races, winning two of them under Craig Newitt, before Ottobre decided that Bates was the best jockey for the job again.<\/p>\n

On Friday night the duo reunited, and Bates rode the eight-year-old fan favourite to a Group 2 Feehan Stakes victory by 1.75 lengths at The Valley.<\/p>\n

The Irishman admitted that it was disappointing that Ottobre originally made the decision to sack him from Pride Of Jenni, but he respected the owner for making the call.<\/p>\n

\"SSxTrack<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cNo doubt it was a disappointment, but I didn\u2019t feel personally confronted by it,\u201d Bates revealed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI get on fantastically with Tony and I know that he makes decisions with what he thinks is the right things.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe felt the right thing was a change of jockey and I sort of respected that.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I said he\u2019s always been so good to me and there was never going to be any fallout.\u201d<\/p>\n

The four-time Group 1 winning jockey told SENTrack and RSN\u2019s Giddy Up that when Ottobre gave him the call to ask whether he wanted to partner up with the mare once again, Bates admitted he was over the moon.<\/p>\n

\u201cTony gave me a call and said, \u2018Do you want to get back onboard?\u2019\u201d Bates said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen he decided the best thing was for me to get back onboard, I was happy to get back on the horse because she means the world to me.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a hell of a ride with her and Tony\u2019s been absolutely fantastic to me.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a great connection \u2013 Tony, his family and my family \u2013 we are forever linked I think between this horse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Click here to see why Pride Of Jenni shocked Declan Bates!<\/a><\/p>\n

\"eDM<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The duo reunited on Friday night, winning the Feehan. In late 2024, Pride Of Jenni\u2019s usual jockey Declan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":388317,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4107],"tags":[743,154083,154082,9348,154084,3577,254,55685,40240,1071,26335,79,16,15,9987],"class_list":{"0":"post-459870","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-racing","8":"tag-743","9":"tag-bates","10":"tag-declan","11":"tag-horse","12":"tag-jenni","13":"tag-of","14":"tag-on","15":"tag-opens","16":"tag-pride","17":"tag-racing","18":"tag-return","19":"tag-sports","20":"tag-uk","21":"tag-united-kingdom","22":"tag-up"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115286447211416661","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/388317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}