After two big wins in January and February, the 3-year-old colt won the $2.2 million New Zealand Derby at Ellerslie on March 5, and in its first venture across the Tasman won the A$500,000 Rosehill Guineas in Sydney three weeks later.
They were Jimmy's last two wins of the August 1-July 31 racing season, the horse being spelled after finishing sixth in the AJC Derby at Randwick in April.
At the thoroughbred racing awards he was named best 3-year-old and Horse of the Year, in some quarters becoming regarded as the first New Zealand turf idol since Sunline, and being spoken of in the same terms as Bonecrusher.
By year's end he had opened his 4-year-old season with two wins on his home track, a second placing in the Cox Plate in Melbourne, a fourth at Flemington and a ninth placing in Hong Kong, to become easily the biggest stakeswinner in Hawke's Bay training history.
In the stable of rookie trainer John Bary and owned by Havelock North couple Richard and Liz Wood, he has amassed almost $3.6 million in stakes from 22 starts, including 12 wins and five second placings.
Jimmy Choux is closing fast on the record for a Hawke's Bay-owned racehorse, the former New Zealand-record $4.2 million won by Mangatahi farmer Graham De Gruchy's Matamata-trained mare Horlicks in 1988-90.
She had 17 wins from 40 starts, including a world record 2400m time in the 1989 Japan Cup, then produced 13 foals, including 2000 Melbourne Cup winner Brew. She died on August 24 this year, aged 28.
The big event was the Horse of the Year Show, held in Hastings each year since 1999, now established as one of the biggest equestrian events in the southern hemisphere. Its budget tops $3 million and it attracts 2500 horses and ponies, and about 70,000 people to the Hawke's Bay A and P Society's Tomoana showgrounds.
Other winners worth mentioning were shearer John Kirkpatrick who on March 5 won the Golden Shears Open final for the first time - only the iconic King Country veteran David Fagan has been more successful in the big event.
And then there were a few thousand with a belated triumph, getting to see and hear American superstar and ex-Commodores singer and song-writer Lionel Richie at Church Road Vineyard on March 19, two years and three weeks after the fans dipped out as rain cancelled the 2009 Mission Concert.
Losers were those who battled unsuccessfully to win the right to build a velodrome and national cycling centre of excellence at the Hastings District Council's new regional sports park.
Seven regions bid, but on March 10 national sports agency Sparc (Sport and Recreation New Zealand) announced Hastings wouldn't get the nod, causing quite a local hubbub over no hub. Spokespeople were not happy.
It was another month before Sparc revealed who was still in the cycling race, and ultimately the pursuit was won by a Waikato bid. But at the end of the year there are still question marks about whether the national velodrome will be built anywhere by the target date of 2013.
On March 28, Hawke's Bay awoke to the shock of the police shooting of a man at Omahu, on SH50 between Napier and Hastings.
Police said they encountered Flaxmere man Lachan Kelly-Tumarae in a suburban Napier street, from which he left after apparently presenting a firearm at a police officer. He was shot soon after stopping across the road from the Omahu cemetery.
An inquest relating to the shooting and the release of other reports is expected in the New Year.
