Chris Alford displaying the style that has landed him yet another century of winners
Champion reinsman Chris Alford completed a memorable April at Moonee Valley on Monday when he punched home his 100th Victorian winner for the 2007/08 season.
Alford, who will celebrate his 40th birthday on May 18, partnered King Of Paradise to a narrow win the Shire Of Melton Pace, which was the sixth race on the card.
It marked the 15th-straight season that the Bolinda-based star has cracked the ton in his home state.
After driving 97 winners in 1992/93, he posted his maiden century the following season when he booted home 185 winners. Only once since then has Alford failed to drive less than 167 winners in a season, that being in 2002/03 when he partnered 109 horses to victory.
Alford, who has also driven three winners at Bathurst and three in Tasmania this season, joins Daryl Douglas, Kerryn Manning and Gavin Lang on the list of drivers to have notched 100 Victorian winners this season.
Douglas holds a commanding lead in the race for the Victorian Drivers’ Premiership, having piloted 240 winners for the season to date, well clear of Lang (114) and Manning (108).
The latest century completes a good month for Alford, who at Kilmore on April 9 became the youngest Australasian reinsman to drive his 3500th winner when he scored behind classy two-year-old Hei Tenace.
It is just another achievement in a decorated career for Alford.
Along with six Australasian Drivers’ Premierships from 1994 and 1996 to 2000, Alford has won both the Victorian Statewide and Metropolitan Drivers’ Premierships seven times each.
A winner of five Australasian Breeders Crown finals, Alford has also won three Hunter Cups (Paris Affair 1999, Mont Denver Gold 2003 and Sting Lika Bee 2007) and a Victoria Cup (Golden Reign 1995) but his biggest win came in the 1995 Inter Dominion, also aboard Golden Reign.