Cross-border Pride and joy

New Paper

12-07-2025

Leading Sydney trainer Joseph Pride enjoyed a good day at not one, but two offices in Australia on July 12.
The 2024-25 Australian horse racing season may be drawing to an end with only around two weeks remaining, but the Warwick Farm handler was not letting up on his quest for more winners to pad up his successful campaign, even across borders.
At home in Randwick, he struck a race-to-race double with two from his team of four runners - King's Secret ($22) in a Benchmark 72 handicap (1,100m) followed by Aberlour ($71) in a Benchmark 78 handicap (1,800m), both with A$160,000 (S$135,000) purses - to tie with Ciaron Maher on the Sydney metropolitan trainer's premiership on 45 winners, but still staying in fifth place on a countback for seconds.
In racing, trainers never split their winners, be it in a lowly Class 1 at Wagga or a Group 1 in Flemington, and Pride is no different.
However, if his geographical location on that day was anything to go by, a greater sense of "Pride and joy" must have been felt 700km away from home - Caulfield.
A little less than three hours after cheering his duo home from the simulcast TV monitors at the Melbourne racecourse, and the obligatory phone chats to the owners and stable supervisor Orla Pearl, Pride was reaping the rich reward for his hit-and-run one-horse mission with consistent mare In Flight in the A$200,000 Group 3 Sir John Monash Stakes (1,100m).
Typical of airline flights, the $16 favourite was also late to take off. Three wide at the rear, the Flying Artie four-year-old must have given her punters the same fingernail-chewing moments as a passenger waiting for hours on the tarmac.
But once Craig Williams throttled her up upon straightening, she finally became airborne, sprouting wings towards a soft landing with one length to spare from New York Lustre (Jamie Melham).
Even for Pride, it was only when the Proven Thoroughbred black and lime green silks were over the line that he could release his pent-up nervous energy with a cathartic fist pump from his Caulfield vantage point.
"I thought we would be a lot closer in the run and not tracking out so wide," he said.
"That is probably what made it so awkward for her, but as soon as she straightened up and balanced up, she was good - she's a pretty good mare, this mare."
The Proven colours also flew high at one half of Pride's Sydney double, King's Secret, who is the half-brother of one of Pride's and Proven's best horses, Group 1 Epsom Handicap winner Private Eye.
"It's impressive. To see a mare throw horses like that again and again and to have the family in the stable. It's something special," said Pearl to Sky News, referring to their dam Confidential Queen.
The mood was a lot less joyous in the Daniel Meagher camp in Caulfield, though. The former Kranji-based Australian trainer's two-time Singapore Horse of the Year Lim's Kosciuszko was soundly beaten in eighth place - his third defeat in as many starts since moving to Australia.
One race earlier, Singapore Derby winner Lim's Saltoro fared even worse. After three encouraging runs at the same track, the 10-time Kranji winner put in his worst run by beating one home.
In mitigation, he was eased out of the race in the home straight by jockey Jason Maskiell, who kept looking down to his left and right, as if something had gone amiss.
The win by In Flight, who may be aimed at either the Oakleigh Plate or The Galaxy next year, also capped a treble for Williams, who has now whittled down the gap on the back-from-injury leader, Blake Shinn - who did not win any race - to four wins (67 versus 63).
With five metropolitan meetings still left, the Shinn-Williams showdown will keep racegoers on the edge of their seats at the business end of the Melbourne season.
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