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James McDonald will be under pressure to hold his lead in the race for the inaugural Nathan Berry Shield at the Wyong Cup meeting on Friday.

The Shield, competed for over the two days of the Wyong Cup carnival, celebrates the life of the late jockey Nathan Berry who rode many winners at Wyong before he died in 2014 after contracting a rare form of epilepsy while riding in Singapore.

Tommy Berry is eager to win the Shield carrying his twin brother’s name and is well in the running after riding two winners on the first day of the carnival last Sunday.

However McDonald also rode two winners and a second placing on Sunday to give him eight points and the lead over Berry and Blake Shinn both on six points with Tye Angland next on four points.

McDonald has only four rides on the eight race program on Friday but has missed out on a mount in the $160,000 Wyong Gold Cup (2100m). Ironically Tommy Berry takes the ride on the Godolphin runner Alegria as she is below McDonald’s current riding weight with 54kg.

Berry has rides in four other races but Hugh Bowman could be a bigger threat for the Nathan Berry Shield even though he didn’t ride at Wyong last Sunday.

Bowman has a full book of eight rides on Friday and they include the Chris Waller stablemates Sacred Master in the Wyong Cup and Elle Lou in the $120,000 Mona Lisa Stakes (1350m) for fillies and mares.

Bowman and Waller combined to win last year’s Wyong Cup with Be Thankful.

It was the second Cup win for Bowman and gave Waller his fifth win in the race in the last six years after previous victories with Hawk Island (2010), The Verminator (2011), Wazn (2013) and Multilateral (2014).

Waller has three acceptors this year with Junoob (Blake Shinn) and Loophole (Tim Clark) joining the former Kiwi stayer Sacred Master.

Kerrin McEvoy will ride Orbec, third in last year’s Wyong Cup, for Randwick trainer John Thompson.

The Kris Lees stable is double handed with Olympic Academy (Brenton Avdulla) and Slow Pace (Robert Thompson) but the latter is also an acceptor for an easier Benchmark 78 race over 2000m at Randwick on Saturday.