Given that she will be out of action for three of the most lucrative weeks of the Victorian spring carnival following the ban she received earlier this week, former champion jockey Jamie Kah will be looking to make hay while the sun shines before her suspension kicks in.
And she certainly should get amongst the winners at Caulfield on Saturday when she has seven rides on the ten race card highlighted by her mount in the fifth race, the Millenium Testa Rossa Stakes, Another Wil.
The Ciaron Maher trained five year old has won six of his nine starts to date and is on course for a tilt at the group 1 Toorak Handicap at Caulfield later in the spring.
While he is not entered in the day’s group 1, the Underwood Stakes, there are more than a few who might be prepared to bet that the chestnut son of Street Boss could eventually turn out to be the best horse running on the card – should he make the progress expected of him over the spring and autumn.
Such was the optimism about him and the rate of improvement he had already shown that Another Wil was sent off at the short price of $3.60 for the Doncaster in Sydney last autumn, a race that is widely regarded as the stiffest test over a mile on the Australian racing calendar.
He had worked his way through the grades to get into the Randwick classic but his starting price and market confidence reflected more on what punters thought his potential was rather than what he had achieved to that point on the track.
In the end he ran a perfectly respectable race to finish seventh of 19 beaten just under 2.5 lengths by the highly regarded three year old Celestial Legend with Pericles, who will go round as favourite for the Underwood later on this card, in second place.
Another Wil has been partnered by Kah in his last six starts (five of them victories) so there is no doubt the duo get on well – as they showed on his reappearance at the last Caulfield meeting when he came from 10th position at the 400 metre mark to win snugly from Here To Shock and Bank Maur over the same course and distance as the 1400 metre Testa Rossa.
That form received a timely boost when Here to Shock came out on Friday and won the Cameron Handicap, a time honoured race, at Newcastle’s big spring meeting in NSW.
Buffalo River is reunited with Celine Gaudray, who partnered him when he won this race a year ago and followed up in the Moonga Handicap , is expected to set his customary hot pace and that should suit Another Wil.
Interestingly, Kah’s mount is not the official top rated in this contest. That honour belongs to the English import Light Infantryman, who (then known simply as Light Infantry) was three times a runner up at group 1 level over a mile in France when he was trained in Britain. However two of those were in the European summer of 2022, while the last was over 1850 metres on a soft track at Longchamp in the Prix d’Ispahan in May 2023.
He came to Australia where he finished more than six lengths behind Fangirl in last year’s Golden Eagle and his two subsequent runs in the autumn, a seventh in the Scone Cup and a well beaten 11th in the Q22, suggest he has some way to go to recapture his best European form.
Kah also has strong chances on the Godolphin galloper Commemorative in race four and Cups prospect Saint George in the MRC Foundation Cup, although she would not be able to ride the imported grey if he qualifies for the Caulfield Cup as her ban rules her out of that big event.
Coco Sun and Bosustow, her mounts in races eight (the Underwood Stakes) nd nine have each way chances while she will be hoping to end the day on a winning note on the Maher trained A Little Deep, whom she partnered to an impressive win at The Valley earlier this month.