Joliestar proves too good for Giga Kick in the TJ Smith at Randwick today.
Joliestar’s victory in the A$3 million TJ Smith at Randwick today may have been the richest not only in her career but also for her owners – yet what comes next could be even more special.
While the wonderful sprinter has never set foot in New Zealand, she had Kiwi written all over her as she recorded her fifth Group 1 win, being owned by Cambridge Stud principals Sir Brendan and Lady Jo Lindsay, trained by Chris Waller and ridden by James McDonald.
It was the Lindsays’ greatest win of their time in ownership – and came on their 28th wedding anniversary – while for Waller and McDonald, it could have been mistaken for business as usual, their second Group 1 inside an hour.
But it meant way more than that.
Both Waller and McDonald have enormous admiration for the Lindsays, knowing how important their purchase of Cambridge Stud and their enormous investment in New Zealand racing is to the industry here.
So to provide them with one of their greatest moments in racing will mean plenty to the expat Kiwis, who are now the Kings of Sydney racing.
The TJ Smith is now nicknamed the Autumn Everest and is widely seen as Australia’s second-most-important weight-for-age sprint, and Joliestar joins I Wish I Win as a New Zealand-owned winner of it.
And it was a relatively painless watch, as Joliestar was away well to settle fourth, with McDonald able to hold the line he wanted before sneaking up inside the leaders and putting a winning break on the field.
The win takes Joliestar past A$9m ($10.91m) in career stakes but even bathing in the glory of her win over Giga Kick, both Waller and Lindsay were thinking of June 20 at Royal Ascot and the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes.
That will be Joliestar’s next start, a plan over a year in the making, as the team aim at the summit of racing’s highest mountain, its most glamourous meeting.
The Lindsays have remarkably part-owned the winner of that race before with Hello Youmzain in 2020, who now stands at Cambridge Stud.
But this year will be different and would mean more.
They couldn’t be at Royal Ascot that year because of Covid travel restrictions and while any win at that level is special, Joliestar has been a bigger part of their lives.
They have owned her since she was a yearling and she has taken them on a ride few owners get to experience, with today’s win an exclamation mark on her Australian career.
So now comes Royal Ascot and a chance for the Lindsays’ colours to star on the world stage.
“Jo says I am going to look a dick in a top hat but I won’t mind because I will be at Ascot,” Sir Brendan said with a laugh after today’s win.
“So few people get a chance to have a horse good enough to go there and race at that level so we know we are very lucky.”
Waller says Joliestar won’t race again before her Ascot adventure and he will use trials and jumpouts to keep her ticking over.
“She races so well fresh we will keep her in that state and we are confident she can go up there and represent Australia and New Zealand well,” said Waller.
The Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes isn’t worth as much as the TJ Smith but if Joliestar can match another former Waller sprinter in Nature Strip and win a Group 1 down the famous Ascot straight, it will go down as one of the greatest moments in New Zealand racing history.
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.