Chris Waller describes Jeff Penza as an unsung hero of his stable and hopes to utilise the jockey more in the coming months, beginning at Canterbury on Saturday.
Penza has done plenty of work for the high-flying Rosehill stable in the past four or five years and will partner Needwood Lad in the Rydges Parramatta Handicap (1900m).
He has also been booked for Foreteller in the $100,000 Lord Mayor’s Cup (1900m) but the import is a likely defector from the feature race where Waller has four entries.
“We’ve always had a good provincial jockey,” Waller said.
“To start with it was Jon Grisedale for five or six years but for whatever reason he went his own way and Jeff came across. Since then he’s been a great asset to the stable and he’s an unsung hero.
“He does a lot of hard work and doesn’t get the opportunities he deserves which is partly my fault.
“I said to him three years ago, `I want to make you the Rodney Quinn of our stable’, and be a very good number two rider. I haven’t done it but I still haven’t given up.”
Waller doesn’t have a stable jockey but calls on all of Sydney’s best including Nash Rawiller, Hugh Bowman, Corey Brown, Glyn Schofield, Kerrin McEvoy and Tim Clark.
With the Queensland winter carnival swinging into action this weekend, Waller said Penza could start to get more opportunities.
“At this time of the year we should be utilising jockeys like him,” the trainer said.
“They are very fit, and he rides all the good horses (in work). The Rangirangdoos, the My Kingdom Of Fifes and those sorts of horses, he knows what a good horse feels like.”
Waller, who has trained 82 winners in Sydney so far this season, said it was partly the pressure on a young trainer that had prevented him from giving Penza even more rides in town and also because of the calibre of riders competing in Sydney.
“I’m still under pressure to make the right decisions and most of our horses are ridden by the very best in Sydney, which is in turn pretty much the world,” he said.
Needwood Lad scored a first-up win over 1550 metres at Canterbury on April 20 and steps to 1900m this week.
“His first-up win was flattered by the strength of the competition but he won and won well and he’ll naturally progress to the 1900 metre race and appreciate the distance,” Waller said.
“Jeff rides him in nearly all his work and hopefully he can get the result.”
The premiership-leading trainer is likely to go with just Vintedge and Altered Boy in the Lord Mayor’s Cup.
Beijing Boy will run in Friday’s Wagga Wagga Gold Cup, while Foreteller isn’t expected to back up from a wide barrier after his run in the Rowley Mile last Saturday.
Altered Boy, runner-up in the Rowley Mile, is the $5.50 equal favourite along with three-year-old Shootoff.
AAP TURF
