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Passing up a Group One opportunity in Brisbane has brought its reward for the in-form Sydney jockey Tim Clark at the Scone carnival this weekend.
Clark has been the regular rider of the classy sprinter Takedown but elected to ride at the two-day Scone carnival instead of sticking with the Gary Moore-trained four-year-old in the $700,000 Doomben Ten Thousand.
Brenton Avdulla has landed the Takedown ride at Doomben on Saturday. Clark’s reward is an outstanding book of rides over the two days of the Scone carnival for some of Australia’s leading stables.
He has rides in four of the eight races on Friday and a full list of eight mounts on Saturday on horses trained by the Snowdens, Gai Waterhouse/Adrian Bott, Bjorn Baker, Darren Beadman, Anthony and Edward Cummings, John Thompson, Gary Moore and David Pfieffer.
The demand for Clark’s services reflects his outstanding form with the hard working rider close to riding 100 winners in a season for the first time in his career.He’s ridden 92 winners to date including 52 city wins to be fourth on the Sydney premiership and in striking distance of the leader Brenton Avdulla on 66.5 wins.
It is the fourth time he has made the “nervous nineties”, having ridden 90 winners in 2005/06; 97 in 2011/12 and going agonisingly close to the century last season when he won 99 races.Clark, an eight-time G1 winner in Australia and Hong Kong and known among his fellow riders and racing mates as ‘Top Cat’, has ridden more than 890 winners in a career that began in the southern districts of NSW 15 years ago
Clark rides Supply And Demand for the Waterhouse/Bott stable in Friday’s $200,000 Scone Cup (1600m) while his prize ride on Saturday is the exciting mare Nieta in the Listed Ortensia Stakes (1100m).The $150,000 sprint will be Nieta’s first crack at a black type race after winning six of her 11 starts with Clark landing the ride from trainer John Thompson as a replacement for the suspended Blake Shinn.
Thompson planned to use Hugh Bowman as Shinn’s replacement but had to go to the lighter Clark when the mare received the limit weight of 53kg.
Clark’s other rides on Saturday are San Pablo (Waterhouse/Bott), Sangiovese (Bjorn Baker), Epidemic (Darren Beadman), Suspenders (Melanie O’Gorman), Crown Him (Anthony and Edward Cummings), Old North (Beadman) and Extensible (Peter and Paul Snowden).John O’Shea, Les Bridge and Gai Waterhouse have been Clark’s strongest supporters in Sydney and it seems he also has a fan in Darren Beadman with Godolphin’s new head trainer providing him with two excellent rides at Scone on Saturday on Epidemic and Old North.
Lonhro filly Epidemic, a veteran of only one start early in the season, will have strong support to beat her talented stablemate Almanzora in the Woodlands Stakes on the back of some impressive trials.Old North has abundant talent and his strong first-up seventh over 1100m at Hawkesbury on April 29 indicates that being gelded during his last spell could be the makings of him as a racehorse.
He is certain to have benefitted from that outing and will be suited going up in distance to the 1300m of Saturday’s $150,000 Luskin Star Stakes.
