The Brazilian rider, fresh from being crowned champion in the United Arab Emirates, will ride a majority of the horses trained by Roger Varian this year
Silvestre De Sousa has landed a new role with a powerful Newmarket stable. The Brazilian, champion jockey in Britain three times, spent the winter in the Middle East where he was crowned UAE champion jockey for the first time last weekend.
Since returning to Britain he has secured a promotion with Roger Varian who has revealed the 44-year-old will ride as his first choice jockey. Last year, although the role was filled by James Doyle, de Sousa rode the Varian-trained Elmalka to victory in the 1,000 Guineas and was the regular rider of champion older miler Charyn.
Meanwhile Doyle has been appointed first jockey to emerging powerhouse Wathnan Racing. Varian explained the new jockey arrangement to ITV Racing when Flat racing returned to Newmarket on Tuesday,
“We’re big fans of James but long term it wasn’t going to work out,” he said. “Wathnan Racing is too big an operation and we have to be realistic about these things.
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“We can’t have an arrangement with James riding for us when available when he is rarely going to be available. Long term it was unfeasible to maintain that.
“We have a nice horse in the yard owned by Wathnan and I am sure he will ride that horse as well as a few others during the course of the year. Don’t read into it that there has been some sort of fallout.”
De Sousa, who has ridden nearly 2,000 winners, partnered the Nurlan Bizakov-owned Charyn to three Group 1 victories during 2024.
Varian went on: “Silvestre will be riding the majority. He’s retained by Nurlan Bizakov to ride Nurlan’s UK runners. He has a dozen or so horses with me and I think he has a few with Charlie Johnston as well.
“Silvestre will prioritise Nurlan’s runners but it’s not a huge string so he’ll still have a degree of flexibility and hopefully we can tap into that. He did very well for us last year so the arrangement makes sense.”
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