Joe Pride found himself having a fanboy moment at Canterbury when recent recruit Joyner scored a breakthrough metropolitan win for owner-breeder Bernie Howlett.
A Group 1-winning jockey and trainer, Howlett has also made a fist of breeding racehorses, producing dual Group 1-winning sprinter-turned-stallion Brazen Beau.
Pride remembers following Howlett’s yard prior to becoming a trainer and says getting a phone call from the Canberra horseman asking him to take on Joyner was surreal.
“Growing up, I used to love backing Bernie Howlett’s horses and when he gave me a call I thought, ‘that’s cool, he wants me to train a horse for him’,” Pride said.
“He told me the other day he has bred a Group One winner, trained a Group One winner and ridden a Group One winner. I’ll never do that.”
Howlett won the Sydney Cup twice as a jockey aboard On Line in 1959 and Sharply in 1961 and trained the 1996 Doomben 10,000 winner Suntain.
He bred Brazen Beau from his stakes-placed mare Sansadee, and Wednesday’s Pinatubo @ Darley Handicap (1200m) winner Joyner is a Denman half-sister to the former top sprinter.
“It was an important win,” Pride said.
“She is a half-sister to Brazen Beau, the stallion, so she’s got a very good pedigree.
“Hopefully there is more to come, but she has done a good job there today.”
Ridden by Chad Schofield, Joyner ($2.40 betting fav) led throughout to score by 1-1/4 lengths over Up To Mischief ($3.70) and Pride is hopeful the winner can eventually measure up to Saturday grade.
“It might not come this preparation, but I think she will improve with each preparation, she is only lightly raced,” Pride said.
“It was a really easy watch. It mapped that way and normally it doesn’t go that way when it looks like that, everyone wants to upset what the map says, but that was a painless one.”
Joyner provided Schofield with the middle leg of a treble after he took out the second race aboard the Bjorn Baker-trained Raikkonen and the penultimate event aboard the three-year-old’s stablemate Midnight Diamond.
He finished third on San Jeronimo at his only other ride.
Pride and Schofield have enjoyed great success this spring, combining to capture the Epsom Handicap–King Charles III Stakes double with Ceolwulf.
