Angela Jones just keeps ticking the boxes … and she signed off on another notable win at Ipswich on Saturday when she partnered the James Cummings trained Kin to victory in the Listed Gai Waterhouse Classic.
Riding in the royal blue silks of Godolphin is an honour in itself … and Jones has featured in those colours before … but to win in them takes the privilege to a whole new level, particularly when you do it on a James Cummings trained horse shortly before Cummings steps away from Australia and his private trainer arrangement with Godolphin and moves on to a new challenge in Hong Kong.
“I’m very grateful to have rides in these colours, let alone good chances in Listed races,” said Jones, speaking post-race at Ipswich. “I’m over the moon I could get the job done.”
It was a relatively painless watch for followers of Kin.
“The blinkers really sharpened her up today,” explained Jones. “She had a beautiful run from a good gate and my job was sort of done once she was travelling so well in the middle stages.
“Once I peeled her out, she had a beautiful turn of foot, and she put them away quite impressively.”
The Queensland Winter Carnival is not done yet and Jones will be aiming to tick off one of the biggest boxes of all next week when racing returns to Eagle Farm for the Group 1 Tatts Tiara.
Jones, who came within a stride of claiming her first Group 1 win on Zarastro in the $1 million Kingsford Smith Cup, will be aboard the Tony Gollan trained Floozie in the Tatts Tiara, the final Group 1 of the season in Australia.
Jones has a perfect record on the Zoustar mare, having won four successive races on the four-year-old in the four-race unbeaten sequence achieved since Floozie joined the Gollan stable.
Like Jones, Floozie will also be looking for her first Group 1 success after clearing the Listed race and Group 2 hurdles with some authority in her last two starts.
Group 1 action is new territory, but there is no doubt that horse and rider will be primed to bring their best to meet that challenge.
