Racing: Slipper hero McDonald gets spray for effort in final race

Sydney trainer John Hawkes would have been delighted with the ride of James McDonald in the Golden Slipper. Photo / Natalie Slade

If you ever hear John Hawkes say a sycophantic word about a jockey, check your pulse, something will be wrong.

A lifetime of habit isn't about to change for the famous Sydney horse trainer, even in the aftermath of winning on Saturday the world's richest juvenile race, the A$3.5 million Golden Slipper with Mossfun.

Hawkes wasn't at Rosehill on Saturday, he was laid up on his living room couch with a bad back.

But then he's watched the majority of his horses from that couch in two decades. When Hawkes trained for the chicken kings Bob Ingham and the late Jack Ingham he rarely went to the races.

Some say because he would often get so upset with jockeys he felt he was best placed away from the track.

Hawkes might not have been at Rosehill, but that didn't stop him giving journalists his opinion of his winning rider, New Zealander James McDonald, who most felt resorted to a piece of brilliance in staying along the inside rail from last on the home bend when no other jockey wanted any piece of the rail all day.

Perhaps embracing the principle that in Sydney at least you are only as good as your last ride, Hawkes talked to journalists at the Inglis yearling parade on Sunday and wanted to talk more about McDonald getting beaten on his horse Leebaz in the last Rosehill race run 40 minutes after the shared Slipper glory.

"It [the Slipper] was the best win [McDonald has had for us], but the best ride?" Hawkes said. "He has ridden plenty of good races for us but he has ridden some shockers like in the last yesterday."

Hawkes feels McDonald went a touch too soon on the well-fancied Leebaz before being caught by Weary. "He is a good young rider, who is still learning," Hawkes said. "He is still making a few blues.

"He has a lot of talent but we have to harness it a bit more.

"I don't want to sound like a smart-arse but I have been around a while and know a bit about the caper. We talk a lot and if he listens, he can harness that obvious talent and be a great rider."

None of this is a criticism of Hawkes, who wants only to help.

For most it's too easy to forget that McDonald is just 22 and that regardless of how much talent you have - and McDonald has more than those around him - you simply cannot hone it all into the perfect package in that short space of time. The talent is there and it will get honed further because McDonald is up for it.

The move to Sydney was timely. A rider will always plateau without continually increasing the quality of opposition he or she rides against.

Australian-based veteran New Zealand jockey Grant Cooksley, who rode a lot for John Hawkes, never worried about the possibility of getting an after-race mouthful from a trainer, called a spray in Australia.

In fact, there was one absolutely brilliant moment between Cooksley and the similarly hard-marking Colin Jillings in the Trentham birdcage one day, the contents of which are unable to be published here.

Many observers rated that encounter a draw, although there were a handful of scorecards that had Cooksley slightly ahead on points.

Despite that seemingly "off the duck's back" resilience to a trainer's anger, Cooksley always said a rider hasn't had a spray until they've had a John Hawkes spray.

McDonald will listen to Hawkes and to anyone else he feels he can glean experience from. Meantime, he's just won one of the world's greatest horse races with a piece of riding magic. And if you wanted him to be a smart-arse you'd have to show him how - he doesn't know.

Too sycophantic?