Chris Waller had to play the waiting game to get Unusual Legacy into the Metropolitan – and once he was in the field, the premier trainer was forced to find a new jockey for the favourite.
Star New Zealand apprentice Wiremu Pinn was booked for Unusual Legacy, but ruled himself out because of injury from a barrier trial incident in New Zealand on Tuesday, allowing Jay Ford to take the ride in Saturday’s group 1 at Randwick.
Jay Ford has been given a late call-up to ride Metropolitan favourite Unusual Legacy.Credit: Getty
“He put the chances of the horse ahead of himself,” Waller’s assistant trainer Charlie Duckworth said of Pinn. “He said in a text that he couldn’t do the horse justice and apologised. It’s to his credit that he did that – but it left us shuffling jockeys again.
“We have been working on having jockeys that can ride the limit of 50 kilos for the past month and when you have four at 50 kilos, there aren’t that many options.”
Unusual Legacy, the third emergency, was lifted into the field when Waller decided to send El Bodegon and Manzoice to Melbourne to try and qualify for the Melbourne Cup via the Bart Cummings and Ciaron Maher kept his smart stayer Berkshire Breeze down south.
“We had the jockeys but had to work out what worked best,” Duckworth said. “Jay was going to Matusalem this morning, but we had to switch him to Unusual Legacy because we think it is the best of our hopes on the limit.”
Waller uses Ford throughout the year as a lightweight option, and he got home from riding at Kembla Grange to the news he was on the Metropolitan favourite.
“I wasn’t sure what I was going to be riding this morning,” Ford said. “I knew I had a light one for Chris [Waller] but to get on Unusual Legacy is great opportunity. I know they have really good opinion of him, but it is his first time up to 2400m, so that is a little question mark.
“But he has been prepared to get into the Metrop, so I go to Randwick with a big chance.”
Meanwhile, Wagga apprentice Holly Durnan was suspended for three months and fined $1000 by Racing NSW stewards for taking “an offensive photograph of a fellow apprentice jockey on her mobile telephone while in the female jockey room and distributing it to another industry participant” at Corowa on September 16.
Durnan was found guilty of three charges, the first of workplace harassment for taking and distributing the photo, to which she pleaded not guilty, and two other charges of using her phone from the jockeys room.
If Durnan completes an accredited workplace harassment course, she will be able to return from suspension a month earlier on December 7.
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