Houston: Gillian Duffield said she was very privileged to have been feted with the HH Shaikha Fatima Bint Mubarak Darley Award as Best Women Trainer during Sunday's Darley Awards ceremony in Houston.
The newly-instituted awards by the Shaikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan Global Arabian Flat Racing Festival aim to recognise and honour women in Arabian racing, and Duffield was one of the winners.
Speaking to Gulf News Duffield said, "I feel very privileged. It is a very prestigious award to win."
The award comes as Duffield completes 25 years of training horses for Shaikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Deputy Ruler of Dubai and Minister of Finance. "It is a wonderful feeling and obviously I could not have done it without the backing of Shaikh Hamdan. He has such fabulous horses," she said.
" I also have to thank each of the other local owners who have helped me do it like Khalid Al Naboodah and De Ruitters from Holland whose Periander is a real star," Duffield said.
Duffield was also pleased that Kaolino, whom she saddled to victory in the Kahayla Classic, and two other horses that were with her in their early racing careers, Nivour de Cardonne (another Kahayla winner) and Chndaka, are standing here in the US.
Achievement
"I flew up to Texas two days ago to see Kaolino and it was great to see him in such a lovely home. He is so well looked after. And Chndaka, he was there as well. I saw a few yearlings and two-year-olds by them," the champion Purebred Arabian trainer from the UK said.
Duffield watched Omani lady jockey Fatima Al Manji win the HH Shaikha Fatima Bint Mubarak IFAHR Cup and the UAE's Shathra Al Hajjaj come third and Oman's Azhar Al Wardi scoop the Best Jockey award. "I think it is a great achievement by the girls for it is a fairly recent thing that the girls from the UAE and other nations in the region have started riding in race," she said.
