James McDonald isn’t one to look back. When you’re the most sought-after jockey in the land, there’s not much time for yesterday.
“In racing, we skip through the years so quickly,” McDonald says. “It’s not like you win a premiership and have six months to reflect on it. You’re always onto the next race. You win a Cox Plate then you’re onto Cup week three days later. You can’t be flaunting around reflecting on the past.”
But say you did give yourself time to flaunt and reflect, how far back would you look, J-Mac?
How about we start with the two-star Thoroughbred Motel at 11 Alison Road, Kensington, which is one block from Randwick Racecourse and where you can get a double room for $105 per night?
Those modest digs are where McDonald started his Australian journey in 2011, having been dispatched from New Zealand to Sydney to ride trainer Graeme Rogerson’s Scarlett Lady for prominent owner Max Whitby.
“Tough days,” McDonald replies when I mention the Thoroughbred Motel. “It wasn’t flash, that’s for sure. I used to pushbike everywhere because I didn’t have a car. I remember days when I was going to Gosford for one ride and places like that. Sometimes, I thought it was too hard.”
Anamoe wins the Cox Plate with James McDonald on board.Credit:Racing Photos
McDonald doesn’t stay in two-star accommodation any longer. He lives in a $9.05 million, six-bedroom, three-bathroom home with a four-car garage in Vaucluse with long-time partner Katelyn Mallyon, who is expecting their first child in days. During this Melbourne Cup carnival, he’s been staying at Crown Towers where rooms start at $350 on a quiet night.
As for his earnings, that’s tricky to pin down, but a snapshot of his season so far explains enough. Since August 1, his rides have won nearly $18 million in prizemoney for connections.
McDonald takes a five per cent clip of that which, along with riding and trackwork fees, suggests he’s not eating fish fingers from Aldi trying to make ends meet.
“But I don’t do it for the money,” he says bluntly. “I do it to win the big races.”
On that score, there are few boxes left to tick after his breathtaking win on Anamoe in the WS Cox Plate (2040m) on October 22.
The scratching of second favourite Loft denied McDonald a chance to win the Melbourne Cup (3200m) for a second consecutive year after he won with Verry Elleegant the previous year, but he heads into the final day of the carnival on Saturday in rare form and still chasing history.
Last year, he won a record 10 races over the course of the four-day Cup carnival. His victory on $21 bolter Aitch Two Oh in the last on Oaks Day means he has notched seven winners for the carnival so far.
On Champion Stakes Day, he has a typically strong book of rides, headlined by sprinter Nature Strip in the Champions Sprint (1200m) and Anamoe (2000m) in the Champions Stakes.
James McDonald is on track to break his own Melbourne Spring Carnival record.Credit:Simon Schluter
“He doesn’t know how good he is,” retired jockey Glen Boss says. “He’ll break all the records and all those records will stand the test of time. He’s the benchmark.”
The most prestigious is the all-time group 1 record. Damien Oliver, 50, has notched 123 wins and nearing the end of his career. McDonald, 30, has won 60. The gap would’ve been smaller if McDonald had not been suspended in 2016 for 18 months after he pleaded guilty to having a bet on a horse he was riding.
McDonald was far from an overnight sensation, although he always showed promise.
Prominent Kiwi owner Sir Peter Vela handed him an award at apprentice school and McDonald demonstrated the same foresight in that moment as he does in a race.
“I’d love to ride for you one day, Mr Vela,” he said.
Six months later, he had his first ride for Vela and won. “Six minutes after that,” McDonald recalls, “I was appointed stable rider.”
Vela would later send McDonald to leading stables in Ireland and England to learn on different horses in different conditions. It jolted him out of his comfort zone and made him a better jockey.
Sydney trainer John O’Shea believed in McDonald as much as Vela, bringing him to Sydney in the winter of 2011. He rode three winners at a time of year when the good horses are tucked up in their boxes.
“I knew he was good — but I didn’t know he was that good,” O’Shea admits now.
Then success dried up.
“He had 45 losing rides for the stable,” O’Shea recalls. “To say I was getting some scrutiny from my ownership group is an understatement. But we stuck because I believed in him.”
Ask O’Shea why McDonald has evolved into the country’s premier jockey, and he offers two reasons outside the mandatory requirements of balance, awareness and an ability to use the whip in both hands.
“One, you don’t have to give him instructions,” O’Shea says. “You want him to rely on his innate ability, his instincts, because that’s his strength. His instincts are better than my instructions. Two, good jockeys are like batsmen in cricket. Fundamentally, they need good technique, and he’s got good technique that he learned in Europe.”
McDonald is now the definitive gun for hire, riding for Waller, Godolphin or whichever stable can offer him the best horses.
It’s human nature to knock champions; to find ways to explain or dismiss their brilliance. When it comes to jockeys, the argument often tossed up is the human is only as good as the horse underneath him or her.
Critics will point to McDonald’s ride in the $15m The Everest at Randwick on October 15 when short-priced favourite Nature Strip bombed, weakening into fourth.
After the race, he expressed disappointment in his performance to Boss, who reassured him he wasn’t at fault even if punters were howling at the moon.
“They’re animals, not cars,” Boss says. “On the day, the horse wasn’t good enough. He gave it every chance. A week later, he came out and won the Cox Plate. You can get all the good horses – but you still have to execute.”
Boss says humility is McDonald’s greatest strength. Where some jockeys strut around the mounting yard like a bantam rooster, McDonald often defers to the judgement of those before him – like Boss and Darren Beadman, his childhood hero who is now assistant trainer to James Cummings at Godolphin.
I tell Boss that McDonald is a tough interview because he’s not particularly effusive about himself.
“The best ones don’t like talking about themselves,” Boss says. “They’re introverted. But they have this underlying knowledge deep inside themselves that they are very f—ing good. They have a deep trust in themselves. He’s trusting himself that he can just go out and do it.”
McDonald admits he struggles with the growing attention of being the best jockey in the country. It’s “awkward” when a member of the public spots him.
“The better you go, the more you get,” he says. “I’m a shy, quiet bloke who likes his own company. I tend to avoid it as much as possible.”
If he stays on this trajectory, from two-star hotel to superstar jockey, anonymity will be impossible to achieve.
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