Here, as the final race of a history-making day is about to jump, one of the most overworked men on the racecourse has finally slumped down in the corner of the jockeys’ room.
He’s sitting in James McDonald’s seat. The bench behind him is filled with riding gear, clothes, a form guide from Sydney’s tabloid newspaper and a few sheets of paper with predicted speed maps. Unsurprisingly, they correctly predicted the future. There are riding goggles, lots of them, because McDonald can go through a packet of six during one meeting. If one has a tiny mark or scratch, he has to replace it.
The only reason the day might seem a little out of the ordinary is the three trophies stuffed in his corner and a celebratory chocolate cake sitting on a trolley. It’s waiting to be eaten after every rider has made their last weight for the day.
McDonald has already worked his body to near breaking point. He’s given permission by stewards to ride his last mount, More Territories, a kilogram over its allotted weight. Horse and rider scout so wide down the Rosehill straight you would be forgiven for thinking it was a lap of honour where the jockey high fives punters on the fence. More Territories, a middling mare at stakes level with just two career wins, beats three runners home. Never mind.
In the minutes leading up to the race, the same overworked man saw why James McDonald is so good.
“I said to (another jockey) Dylan Gibbons, ‘look at him. What’s he just done? Won three Group 1s and look at him, he’s sitting here doing the form’,” says McDonald’s longtime valet Chris Barrett. “He’s just a professional.
“A lot of guys will just look at the replays over and over again (after each race). Not him. He might look at them once. He’s got his head straight into the paper and doing the form for the next race. He just studies up.”
You didn’t have to study much to realise Saturday was going to be McDonald’s day, when he would be feted for coming back through Rosehill’s golden arch as arguably the best to ever do it.
Needing two wins to surpass the great Damien Oliver (129) as the most prolific Group 1-winning jockey in Australian racing history, McDonald did it in style at Sydney’s Golden Slipper meeting, urging Aeliana ($1.6) to victory in the Ranvet Stakes before following it up with a masterclass on Autumn Boy ($2.45) in the Rosehill Guineas.
And they were prior to the new queen of Australian racing, Autumn Glow ($1.28), demolishing her ‘rivals’ in the George Ryder Stakes to be unbeaten in 11 starts. Winx might not have done it better, to which there can be no higher compliment.
Oliver had also set a new mark in Sydney, surpassing George Moore, just a few years ago. It was so understated, and so surprising after he scored on longshot Nimalee in the Queen Of The Turf, some weren’t even sure if he’d actually broken the mark. Australian racing’s record keeping has always been a bit of an embarrassment for a long time, and Oliver was fighting in the shadows of his own post to get there. He probably knew he would only be holding the torch for a while until a kid from a dairy farm in the north of New Zealand surged past him.
But everyone was ready for this day.
“I was more stressed out than him, to the point where I had to leave the house every day just so I didn’t put anything more onto him,” says McDonald’s wife Katelyn, a former Group 1-winning rider herself who stops to chat to Idol Horse after finishing her television duties where she analyses her husband’s races.
“But it was just like another day in the office for him. There never felt like there was any more tension or any more stress in the air.”
McDonald started the day writing a message to himself on a piece of paper.
See it. Feel it. Win it.
All Blacks legend Steve Hansen, who was a part-owner in one of McDonald’s greatest horses, Nature Strip, sent him a text message on race morning. He told him to walk straight into his shot at history and grab it with both hands.
“I was thinking to myself, imagine him sitting down with the All Blacks, a fifteen squad of men, our greatest sport in New Zealand, and he’s saying, ‘walk into it, embrace it’,” McDonald says. “I thought that was quite special because it took me back a little bit.”
You have to go back a long way to figure out what makes McDonald tick.
Given James was riding and Katelyn was working, McDonald’s mother Dianne was on child-minding duties for most of the day, cradling her two grandkids, Evie and Mia.
So, did she ever think this day would be possible?
“Not in a million years,” she says. “But we should have realised when he was such a good, little talented rugby player. Yet we never thought he’d get to where he was. I was hoping he would ride out his claim. That was my big hope.
“What makes him so special? I’ve said it before, it’s his ability to handle pressure, which he obviously didn’t get from me. The top two inches make the difference having the confidence to do it.”
No two horses are ever exactly the same, and neither is any race, and to watch McDonald be so precise in each of his winning rides was to watch a surgeon with a scalpel at the operating table.
Maybe the first was the best. The 34-year-old had to cajole Aeliana from fourth in running to mow down stablemate Lindermann in a fascinating five-horse Ranvet Stakes. Nash Rawiller had led them up on Lindermann and near-dropped anchor, his tempo as slow as his drawl. As Aeliana slowly inched into the margin down the straight, she suddenly found a tiny little extra gear, enough to win by a short neck.
“See how he pulled the whip through to the left hand at the 200-metre mark,” Barrett whispers as he waits to collect McDonald’s gear at scale.
He was right. Like a magician, McDonald flicked the persuader through to Aeliana’s near side and gave her a light tap. She suddenly started gaining ground at a quicker rate. Denise Martin from Star Thoroughbreds, who races Aeliana, turns to a fellow supporter.
“Thank goodness we had the rider.”
As a hype man employed by the Australian Turf Club whips up the crowd at McDonald equalling the record, the jockey shoots him a strange glance as he comes back to the waiting throng. The club had sounded out McDonald’s manager about the potential celebration. “He’d like to keep it low key,” was the message.
By the time he held the record outright after winning on Autumn Boy, a classic stalking ride in which he swept past favourite Observer 35 minutes later, McDonald was giving the thumbs up to the same MC.
By the time he slips back into the mounting yard for Autumn Glow’s race, the mare’s owner John Messara asks: what are you going to do? McDonald just shrugs. He says, with a mare so good, he’ll figure it out on the track. It’s sensible logic. She could have carried Ronald McDonald to win, so dominant has she become. Waller even drops the ‘C’ word: champion.
“Romantic Warrior is my boy, but she’s my girl,” McDonald gushes.
And as good as Autumn Glow was and is, it’s hard to think this has been anything but McDonald’s day, a “perfect modern jockey” as Waller describes him, with a brain for any occasion.
“We all know he’s got natural ability,” says McDonald’s manager Mark Guest. “But it’s the other things you don’t see.
“He watches races non-stop. He even watches the yearling sales. The trials might come out and we’ll go through them, and I might mention a horse. He’ll say, ‘this horse is by so and so’. It’s freakish. Horse racing consumes his whole life.
“I don’t know for sure, but I reckon he would feel that makes him the jockey he is by doing all those different things and watching races non-stop every day. Some jockeys want to relax and get away from it. It’s rare that he wants to do that.”
Says Katelyn: “He never stops. Ever. Even on holidays he’s always trying to focus on finding the next big horse, either here in Australia or in Hong Kong. It’s a credit to him. I don’t know how he doesn’t go insane.”
On a recent trip to the Hunter Valley to inspect yearlings, Waller even had McDonald in tow, looking to keep busy during a suspension.
“He knew more about the yearlings than us,” Waller joked. “He knew about their mums, what their dads had done and he’s an amazing athlete. I’m sure if he was a footy player he’d be an Alfie Langer or someone great. He’s just an elite sportsman.”
Elite sportsmen are always finding another mountain to climb, and now he’s top of the pops in Australia, McDonald wants more. Ryan Moore has already crashed through the 200-barrier for Group 1 wins. Can McDonald catch him?
“Today is great, but he will be looking for bigger things and probably trying to chase down Ryan Moore, which is a long way to go,” Katelyn says. “That’s him. He’s tense. He wants to win every race. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Group 1 or during the week. He’s so competitive and so driven.” ∎
