Rivals put in the shade

Each major race win, each premiership success spawns another knock on the stable door, another call on the phone. Couple their innate skills with sheer weight of quality numbers and their opponents are immediately on the back foot.

Their supremacy has been well underlined in recent weeks. On 7 September Waller won both major races in Sydney and Melbourne, which are some 900km apart by road.

Waller, a former kiwi now based in Sydney and a man who smashed the record last season for the greatest number of winners trained in one season in that city, not only won the Group 2 Chelmsford Stakes (1600m) at Randwick with Cox Plate aspirant Hawkspur, he also Quinellaed the race, with his Doomben Cup winning import Beaten Up finishing second.

Down south, in Moody’s hometown, Waller won the Makybe Diva Stakes – promoted to Group 1 level this year – with Foreteller, who claimed the early Melbourne Cup favourite Puissance De Lune in the last few strides.

The two feature races, both at 1600m, featured no fewer than 15 horses – including the first two home in both – originally trained in Europe. And seven of the 15 are with Moody or Waller.

Australians have gone on a crazed buying spree, often outbidding each other, in Europe in the past three years with the possible consequence that the local spend at our major yearling sales might be diminished. If such fears prove well founded, this could be good news for South African buyers.

Many of the imports find themselves with Moody or Waller, which is no surprise. That either one will train the horse is often the “clincher”, according to most of the major syndicators.

While Waller stole the show last weekend, a week earlier it was Moody training the first three home in one of the major races at Caulfield. He won the Heatherlie Handicap, often a handy Cups guide, with 50-1 chance Ibicenco, who like Moody’s multiple Group 1 winner Mangihar, was formerly trained by Luca Cumani.

While weight of numbers will go close to guaranteeing premiership success, they won’t necessarily provide any trainer with victory in any one of Melbourne’s spring holy grails – the Caulfield Cup, Cox Plate or Melbourne Cup.

And interestingly, both Moody and Waller are maidens in this domain. While I doubt either loses sleep over this, I’m sure neither could happily retire without having snared at least one of the big three.

Time is still on their side, it has to be said. Moody is 44 this year and Waller doesn’t turn 40 until next year.

But if you look at a comparison with recently retired Lee Freedman, then they have to get moving. Freedman trained 124 G1 winners. By my reckoning, Moody has 38 (including 14 provided by Black Caviar) and Waller has 26. By the time he was Moody’s age, Freedman had trained 100-plus Group 1 winners and had 11 Cups, Cox and Golden Slipper trophies to his name. Moody and Waller have none.

They’ll be looking to break that drought this year and they do have numbers on their side when it comes to Australia’s premier weight-for-age race, the Cox Plate. Waller has 12 nominations for the race while Moody has nine.

The quality at this stage looks to sit with the Sydney-based horseman, whose entries including five horses are well in the market at this stage for the $30-million race on 26 October. They are Foreteller, Hawkspur, Beaten Up, Royal Descent and Bayrir.

His spring assault, however, will not include Metal Bender, who was to have been ridden by Glyn Scholfield in last weekend’s Chelmsford Stakes. This year’s Ryder Stakes winner has succumbed to a tendon injury and his racing future is in doubt.

That was a disappointment for Schofield, who regularly rides for Waller, on the day that he was reunited with star sprinter Hay List, who resumed from injury with a creditable fifth under topweight in the Concorde Stakes.

“He did enough after the layoff and he’s still got it,” Schofield said of Hay List who, in a 12-run streak earlier in his career, won seven races and was second to Black Caviar four times.

Such is the popularity of Hay List and his ex-pat jockey that the majority of racing page centimetres were devoted to the two leading in to the Concorde. One piece in the “Herald Sun” focused on things we Aussies might not know about Schofield.

They included:

– He was born in England, moved to Johannesburg before being raised in the coastal town of Durban.

– Cricket was never a favourite sport given “the pads used to come up to my waist” but that he was a handy soccer player, so much so he represented Transvaal as a junior

– He loves Liverpool, hates Manchester United and once met Reds hero Kenny Dalglish while waiting for a storm to pass over Johannesburg airport.

– That the first concert he ever attended was South African legendary musician Johnny Clegg and that his first car was a Nissan Langley. “It was a piece of junk. It was full of body filler and parts of the car would fall off whenever I drove over a big bump,” said Schofield, who added that if he wasn’t a jockey, he’d be an architect.

Schofield’s season has begun well with his recent winners including the G3 Toy Show Quality aboard the Waller trained Hidden Kisses. Meanwhile, in other ex-pat news, his son Chad rode a winning treble at Bendigo on Sunday.

Lionel Cohen’s potential G1 performer Aeronautical won a barrier trial on Monday and David Payne celebrated an August treble at Rosehill with the winner’s including Igugu’s half brother Honorius.