t has been a year when Hollie Doyle seized every opportunity to come her way and she did so again at Happy Valley in Hong Kong on Wednesday, becoming the first female rider to win a race in the track’s annual International Jockeys’ Championship competition on the way to a third-place finish in the overall standings. A new form-based system replaced the luck of the draw in allocating rides to the jockeys in this year’s contest, but it did few favours to Doyle in the first three races, as she failed to reach the frame on big outsiders. Her final chance, however, came aboard Harmony N Blessed, an 11-10 favourite, and as so often in 2020 Doyle made the most of it. She broke sharply from stall six and sat just behind the pace before taking command inside the final quarter and holding the late challenge of Ryan Moore and Grateful Heart by three-quarters of a length. Doyle beat her partner, Tom Marquand, into third place, and was behind only the local stars Zac Purton, who took the £50,000 first prize, and João “Magic Man” Moreira in the final standings. Her win on Harmony N Blessed, meanwhile, added another £100,000 to her prize money total for 2020, which is now just short of £2m. “It’s absolutely unbelievable,” Doyle said. “I knew I had a good chance on this horse, but you need a lot of things to go right. It’s a huge privilege for Tom and I to be asked after a great season and it’s icing on the cake. “He jumped well, I didn’t have to ask much of him early on and he settled really nicely on the girths of the leader. The further I was going, the better.” Doyle was the first female jockey to take part in the annual contest since Chantal Sutherland in 2009 and fitted in seamlessly against some of the biggest names in world racing. Her invitation to the event came at the end of an extraordinary year for the 24-year-old, which has included her first Royal Ascot winner, a double on Champions Day at Ascot including her first Group One success and the first five-timer for a female rider in Britain at Windsor in August. Doyle has also recently been named Sportswoman of the Year by the Sunday Times, is shortlisted for the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year award later this month and led the way with four nominations for the Professional Jockeys Association’s awards – the “Lesters” – on 22 December. From Ireland there was news on Wednesday that Faugheen, one of the most popular jumping horses of recent years, will not make his seasonal debut at one of Ireland’s big Christmas meetings after a setback. The 2015 Champion Hurdle winner, who will be 13 years old on 1 January, enjoyed a belated campaign as a novice chaser in 2019-20 that included two Grade One wins and a close third in the Marsh Novice Chase at Cheltenham. “He had a little setback at the end of October,” Patrick Mullins, assistant trainer to his father, Willie, said on Wednesday. “We’ll just have to start again with him and if he’s in great form, we’ll look for a race then, but he won’t be out at Christmas.”