Anyone who has been to the races knows the scene in the parade ring before each race. The trainer, the jockey and the owners stand together for a minute or two, talking quietly before the rider is legged up. People wonder what is being said in those conversations, and plenty of them assume that is where the race plan is made.
For a good jockey, most of the work has been done long before then. Race planning starts at home, days before the meeting, with the form guide and the replays.
When I was riding, I watched the replays of every horse in the race, not just my own. I wanted to know how each one liked to be ridden and what it did under pressure. If I was going to be sitting behind the leader, in the ‘box seat’, I needed to know what that leader would do in the straight when it started to tire. Does it hang in towards the rail, or drift out? Does it try to run away from the whip? By the time we came around the home turn, I already knew which way I was going for a run, in or out.
Jockeys have their own habits too, and you study your rivals in the same way. Some like to push forward early, while others ride quietly and come from behind. All of that goes into your picture of how the race will be run.
That picture is what people mean when they talk about a speed map. A speed map tries to predict who will lead, who will be near the pace and who will settle back, and from that, how fast the race will be run. The pace and your horse’s style decides where you want to be. In a slowly run race, it generally pays to be close to the lead. In a fast run race with plenty of pressure up front, it is usually better to sit further back and save energy while the leaders tire. Of course every horse has its own pattern as well. Some need to be ridden forward, some go best from the back and some very good ones can adapt.
Speed maps are a relatively modern innovation – in the 1980s and 1990s when I was riding speed maps weren’t as available and people weren’t as focussed on them. These days they are everywhere and because of that every trainer is referring to them. The influence speed maps have can show up in some surprising ways. Let’s take a scenario where a speed map predicts there will be a lack of pace in a race. The trainers all look at the same map, and because there is no speed on paper, they instruct their jockeys to go forward. All of a sudden, the race is flipped on its head and the pace is on. This is what happened in The Everest last week – people thought the map was simple – but more horses were pushed to be on-pace than expected. That meant Ka Ying Rising could not cross as easily as Zac Purton thought he could.
The last piece of pre-race information comes on the day and how the track plays. For me the track bias was always a big factor to look for. I would watch the first couple of races, see which part of the track the winners and horses finding the line were coming from, and adjust. Some jockeys, especially in Australia, like to walk the track before the meeting. I never really felt I needed to. I learned more on the way to the start, sometimes taking a slightly different line to feel the ground, or sitting behind another horse to watch how far its hooves were sinking into the turf.
By the time I walked into the parade ring, I already had a plan. There are two types of trainers when it comes to instructions. Some like to give them, while others don’t bother because they know you have done your homework. I always told the trainer how I thought the race would be run and how I wanted to ride the horse. Most of the time they agreed, and if they didn’t, they had to give me a good reason. Gai Waterhouse came to the races with her maps and her own view of the race, and we were nearly always on the same wavelength. John Size was interesting because he had spent time as a form analyst – so that made it easy for me because we had a similar way of thinking about racing.
The people I rode for knew I had put the work in before I got there. I don’t think any jockey should turn up at the races and just hop on, hoping for the best.
Lester Piggott put it best: “Good jockeys don’t need instructions, and bad jockeys can’t follow them.”
The Melbourne Cup I Should Have Won
The best example I have of a trainer overruling me on a race plan came in the 1991 Melbourne Cup.
With the Cup coming up next Tuesday, it seems a good time to tell it.
I had never sat on Shiva’s Revenge before that day. He was trained by Bart Cummings, who also had Let’s Elope in the race, and Shiva’s Revenge had a minor hoof problem the week before that kept him out of the Mackinnon Stakes on the Saturday. He was right to run on the Tuesday, but because I’d never ridden him, I went through all of his tapes.
My plan was simple. He had a good draw, and I thought if I could have him running in the first four or five horses on settling, he would win. Bart hadn’t said a word to me about the race until I walked into the mounting yard and told him what I wanted to do. Straight away he said no. He wanted me back on the fence, further back in the field than I had planned to be, and he didn’t want the horse doing any work early.
His reason was a good one. The horse was over his problem, but Bart was worried that if he was up on the pace with pressure on him early, it might re-occur. With an easy run in the back half of the field, he was as good as anything in the race. I understood that, and I rode him the way Bart wanted.
That’s the part people don’t see from the grandstand. A jockey can do all the homework in the world, but the trainer knows things about the horse that the replays don’t show you. When a trainer like Bart gives you a reason like that, you listen.
The plan nearly worked. We got back on the fence, saved ground and he was travelling well. Around the 500 metres I went to come out for a run, and just as I did, Let’s Elope came up around me and her jockey Steven King pushed me back in. In three strides Let’s Elope put six lengths on us and was gone, while I was getting checked. Shiva’s Revenge needed time to wind up, and he was just about to get going when the check happened.
I finished second, two and a half lengths behind her. I reckon if I’d been able to stay where I was entitled to be, he would have outstayed her. In fairness to Steven, who turned 22 that day, it was a great ride.
When I got back to the mounting yard, Bart told me not to protest. Both horses were his, and he’d just won another Melbourne Cup. I didn’t listen. I stood on the scales to weigh in and lodged a protest anyway, so one Cummings horse was off to the stewards’ room to try to take the race from the other.
It was never going to get up. Two and a half lengths was just too big a margin, and you can’t overturn a Melbourne Cup when the winner has gone that far clear, whatever happened earlier in the straight. The stewards dismissed it.
When someone asked Bart before the protest what he made of one of his horses protesting against the other, he had the perfect answer: “I can’t lose.”
I won the 1989 Melbourne Cup on Tawriffic but I always say that I should have won the 1991 Cup as well.
The Win That Cost Arborea Her Best Races
Sometimes the argument over tactics isn’t with the trainer but with the owners, and the best example I have is Arborea.
Arborea was trained by Clarry Conners, who I won many Group 1s for. She could pull very, very hard in her races. She was extremely difficult to ride. In the spring of 1993 I won the G1 Thousand Guineas, the Wakeful Stakes and the G1 VRC Oaks on her in 22 days, and every time I rode her the same way: back in the field, relaxed, saving everything for the finish. That’s how a filly who pulled that hard was able to win over 2500 metres in the Oaks. She had learned to switch off.
When she came back in the autumn, her first run was over 1200 metres, and the owners wanted her ridden on the pace. I told them I didn’t think it was a good idea. If I pushed her up there she was going to pull, and that habit would hurt us later. I rode her back instead, and she ran a huge race, running on to finish second. But the owners weren’t happy with me.
I want to explain why that matters, because it’s one of the most important things in racing and most people never hear about it. A horse learns from every race. If you send a hard-pulling filly forward over a sprint trip, she learns that racing means going fast from the start. When you get to the longer race, the one you’ve been building towards all along, she still has it in her head that we go fast early, and she won’t be able to run out the distance because she has pulled. You take away the quality that made her good in the first place, which was her ability to relax.
Her next start was over 1400 metres, and again they wanted her up there. Once again, the owners told me to go forward. I went against their instructions again and went back in the field because that is what I believed was best for the horse in the long run. She ran on for a really good fourth. Once again, the owners were not happy – but this time they took me off the horse, which they were entitled to do.
Next start she went to 1500m with Larry Olsen aboard in the Phar Lap Stakes at Rosehill – he rode her up on the pace and she won. I said to myself after watching that – “that’s the end of her” – because once she gets up to 2000m she will want to go too fast and pull too hard.
She then started odds-on favourite in the G1 Storm Queen Stakes (now the Vinery Stud Stakes) over 2000 metres at Rosehill and finished sixth. She’d started over-racing and wasn’t effective over long distances anymore.
She was then unplaced in the G1 AJC Derby and the AJC Oaks over 2400m. If I had ridden her in the Phar Lap Stakes over 1500m – she may not have won that day the way I wanted to ride her – I believe she would have won the Storm Queen Stakes and the Oaks.
That 1500-metre win felt good on the day, but it cost her the races that mattered. Some owners don’t understand that. They think if a horse wins sitting handy, that’s the right way to ride it, but a jockey has to think about the horse’s ultimate goal, not just today’s race.
In my day most horses had one owner you could talk it through with. Now, with so many syndicates, it’s even harder to get everyone on the same page.
Sometimes owners can have too much to say but it is their right because they pay the bills.
Answering The Question On Zac’s Everest Ride
Last week I wrote about Zac Purton’s ride on Ka Ying Rising in The Everest, and it started plenty of conversations. On YouTube, one viewer asked why I was excusing Zac’s indecision. It’s a fair question, and it fits this week’s topic, so let me answer it properly.
People are analysing the ride as if the problem started once the race was being run. The real issue was the plan, and the plan was made before the gates opened.
On paper, only Blue Door, and possibly Savvy Hallie, looked like leading, with most of the field racing off the pace. Zac would have watched all of their previous runs and had his own speed map in his head, and it told him the early pace wouldn’t be fast. Nearly everyone thought the same thing.
He was also worried about the wet track. The ground was better one or two off the fence, so he didn’t want to cross all the way to the rail. Put that together and, sitting in the gates, he’s thinking he doesn’t need to push hard early because he’ll get across outside Blue Door easily. That’s 100 per cent what he would have been thinking, and that’s why he didn’t use the horse from the gates.
About 10 strides after the jump, he would have known he was in trouble. They were going much faster than anyone expected, and he was six wide. At that point he had three options.
The first was to push forward. At that speed, from six wide, that was definitely the wrong option, and I wouldn’t have taken it either.
The second was to stay six wide outside the leaders and hope to get across eventually. He might have ended up three wide on the speed, but he’d have done far too much work at a stage of the race when a horse needs a breather before sprinting home.
The third was to come back a little and find cover. That’s what Zac did, and it’s what I would have done. In truth, he had no good options.
That’s the thing about sprint races. The plan has to be right before the race, because once you’ve gone 200 metres it’s too late to change it. If they’d jumped and gone slower, of course he would have got to outside the leader easily, and it’s a different ball game. But because they were going so fast, and he hadn’t come out of the gates positive enough, he couldn’t get across.
Another viewer made a point I respect: the horse is so good that his ability should have overridden the tactical concerns. If Zac had used him early from the gates to get across, of course he wins, and it’s a different story. But that’s easy to say in hindsight.
Zac had a plan before the race, and with all the information everyone had, I think it was the right plan. Just because it turned out wrong after the race doesn’t mean it was a bad plan. If he had the race again, he would ride him differently, because now he knows what he didn’t know then, and Ka Ying Rising would win every time. Unfortunately for Zac, he doesn’t get that chance.
That’s what all the homework comes down to. You can study every replay and draw the perfect speed map, but in the end it’s a horse race with a bunch of horses and jockeys, all with minds of their own, and it doesn’t always turn out the way you expect. ∎
