LESTER Piggott has landed his first winners on the comeback trail following a horrific fall in Florida last October and is now looking forward to re-opening his account in Hongkong in his latest riding stint, which commences on Wednesday.
Piggott's first winners back were registered at Jebel Ali racecourse, Dubai, on Thursday; the significance here is not the names and races concerned, but merely how the 57-year-old sports legend found the whole experience after more than three months on the sidelines. ''It is good to be back riding again,'' said Piggott.
''I missed it. It is also good to be back winning again,'' he added with a smile. A half-bred named Bonita, and a five-year-old thoroughbred, Aghaadir, who was formerly trained in Britain by John Gosden, combined to give Piggott a winning double on his second day back in the saddle. He had finished second on two of his four mounts on the first day at Sheik Mohammed's Nad al Sheba racecourse.
When the Nad al Sheba fixture got under way, Piggott was saved from ''doing a Moses'', for while not quite stuck in the desert 40 days and 40 nights, he had spent a week longer than planned as freak storms hit Dubai and the meeting was twice postponed. Piggott's injuries were basically in the collarbone and upper chest region, and he worked very hard to get back to full fitness.
Constant walking and swimming have helped speed up his recovery, and he was riding out in Dubai for a week before his first race.
The 11-time British champion is expected to ''breeze'' through the medical the Royal Hongkong Jockey Club insist upon before issuing licences to overseas jockeys.
HOW much longer does racing have to face the barrage of unfair and inaccurate criticism being levelled at it over whips? That is the question being asked in the game following the announcement last Monday that the Stewards had passed proposals for new whip guidelines. Like many others here, I was appalled at the ''News at Ten'' report on ITN recently that seemed to do its very best to paint racing in the worst possible light.