Norway’s Frida Valle Skar rounded off Saturday’s Shergar Cup at Ascot by winning the last race on the card, the Shergar Cup Mile, on the outsider Crown Board. Now the 28-year-old jockey, who is based in France, returns to Øvrevoll for the first time in 10 years: on Norwegian Derby day on 23 August she has four rides in the book so far – all for Cathrine Erichsen.
Jane Chapple-Hyam-trained Crown Board (Lope De Vega) was ridden to victory in the mile for Team Europe, where Frida Valle Skar had the French duo Christophe Lemaire and Marie Velon as team-mates. It was Lemaire, an eight-time Japanese champion, who filled second place, while Ryan Moore came home third on Ozat.
Frida Valle Skar finished fourth of the 12 invited star jockeys in the individual standings with 22 points. Moore took The Silver Saddle with 47 points on his first Shergar Cup appearance in 20 years, and Team Great Britain and Ireland won the team contest with 81 points from Team Hong Kong.
“It was all about using the energy in the right places,” Frida Valle Skar summed up to ovrevoll.no after what she herself calls “an incredible day” at a track where racing has been staged since 1711.
You can watch Frida’s Ascot triumph in the video below.
A week and a half on from her Ascot debut, a very different setting awaits. Valle Skar has four rides so far on Øvrevoll’s Derby day, where she partners Miss Alti (Lucky Vega) in Norsk Derby itself, Irish Lioness (Invincible Army) in the Lanwades Stud Stakes (L), Zofi (Mutajally) in the Sølvdivisjon Mile and A Million Dreams (Moohaajim) in the Sølvdivisjon Stayer.
That still leaves room for more rides on a day which, besides the Derby, also features the Marit Sveaas Minneløp (Gr.3) and the Polar Cup (L), among others.
“I am really looking forward to riding on Øvrevoll’s Derby day. And it is nice that Cathrine wants me on board. After all, I won a race on Ingvild for Cathrine in my first season, 2016. It is ten years since I last rode at Øvrevoll,” Frida Valle Skar, who comes from Malm in Nord-Trøndelag, told Tom W. Johannessen at ovrevoll.no.
The road there began with trotting and Flat trainer Steinar Holm in Nittedal. She made her race-riding debut at Øvrevoll on 2 June 2016 on Borzakovski, who also became her first winner that autumn. Ingvild and Tookwino followed before she moved to France, where she rode her first winner there on Danarosa in the autumn of 2018.
Today she is attached to Corine Barande-Barbé’s yard in Chantilly and has ridden 259 winners at 15 different French tracks.
The highlight of her career remains her Classic success in the German 2000 Guineas (Gr.2) at Cologne in May last year, when Yasmin Almenräder’s big outsider Matilda (Soldier Hollow) scored by six and a half lengths – the first filly to win the race in 54 years, and the first Classic success in Germany for a female jockey.
In February, Frida was a fine second in The International Jockeys’ Challenge in Riyadh, narrowly beaten by Mickaël Barzalona.
“It is great fun with Frida. She is on her way to becoming an international star. And it is a big thing that it is a girl. I am a ‘girl trainer’ myself, after all,” Cathrine Erichsen told ovrevoll.no. In 2024 Cathrine became Øvrevoll’s first female champion trainer since Trine Meling in 1985.
On the Derby ride on Miss Alti, Erichsen’s verdict runs: “She has been unlucky, and she is better on turf. A good outsider.”
There is Danish interest in one of the other rides as well. Stutteri Hjortebo-bred A Million Dreams, who is owned by BFP Racing, is a full sister to King To Be, second in the Bucherer Danish Derby at Klampenborg on 1 August.
The filly was last seen winning by the narrowest possible margin in the Sølvdivisjon over 1730 metres at Øvrevoll on 6 August, that day with Harry Willian Wessner in the saddle.
