The track rider for Joliestar hopped off Joliestar on Thursday morning at Rosehill and told trainer Chris Waller: “She feels like she’s ready to explode – she’s like a ticking time bomb. She’s ready to go.”
Englishman Chris Harwood, who has been with Waller for more than a decade and steered some of the stable’s biggest stars at trackwork, including Winx, Verry Elleegant and more recently Via Sistina and Autumn Glow, said four-year-old mare Joliestar was travelling arguably better than when she won her first run this campaign.
The way Joliestar won the Show County Quality at Randwick first up was one of the most arrogant wins on a Sydney racetrack in years. It has kept her at the pointy end of Everest betting with I Wish I Win since.
Waller wanted to keep his mare fresh in the hope of replicating that run in The Everest, and Harwood said the master trainer had achieved just that.
He added that Joliestar had the biggest stride in the stable – GPS data recorded a stride of 8.4m – and reminded him of Waller’s Yes Yes Yes, one of the trainer’s two Everest victors.
Joliestar and James McDonald will be leading contenders for The Everest.Credit: Getty
“This week Joliestar has been a nightmare again,” Harwood told this masthead. “She’s been trying to get away from me, and been kicking up through the tunnel.
“If the name of the game was to replicate having her ready like she was before her first run, Chris has done it to a tee.
“I actually said to J-Mac [jockey James McDonald] the other day how I had sat on Yes Yes Yes for the first time before he won The Everest, and that it never felt like he was going that quickly.
“He must have had a similar stride to Joliestar because even though you don’t feel like you’re going that fast, you’re running time – Yes Yes Yes and Joliestar lope along without that erraticness you get with sprinters.”
Waller’s stable uses Etrakka, a system that measures a horse’s stride length, speed, heart rate and recovery time via sensors fitted into a special saddle. The results are delivered in real time to a laptop but only used on mornings the Waller camp wants to put horses through some serious work.
Until now, no horse had produced a stride longer than 8m. Harwood said Winx’s stride was shorter “but she was able to get two strides in before Joliestar has done one”.
As for Harwood, Waller referred to his 70kg Nottingham import as “like Tom Cruise – he’s like a Top Gun fighter pilot”.
Waller said Harwood not only gave wonderful feedback on some of the topliners but was also entrusted with helping with some of the most difficult juveniles.
“We have a lot of great riders who all have their own niche, but it’s Chris’s time to shine at the moment,” Waller said.
McDonald was in Melbourne riding Via Sistina ahead of next Saturday’s Cox Plate, but his form could be the point of difference that helps Joliestar win one of the most wide-open Everests to date.
Amazingly, Waller said the premier jockey was still yet to hit his peak.
“He’s getting to it, but if you look at history that ‘sweet spot’ does not arrive for jockeys until they are in their late thirties to mid-forties,” he said.
“Darren Beadman kept getting better, and if James follows Darren’s path he’ll rewrite the record books.”
Asked when the in-demand McDonald was locked in to ride Joliestar, Waller quipped: “The first, but I won’t tell you which month.”
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