Michael Rodd’s second winner on the Eagle Farm card came aboard the Kelly Schweida trained Joymaker in the Benchmark 80 Handicap over 2206m … to the delight of one very satisfied trainer.
“She just smoked then today,” said trainer Kelly Schweida.
“Every looked very good for her. It was a good speed map. The race suited her. There was a bit of give in the ground and all of her runs have been solid.
“She is a bit quirky and that was the only thing I was worried about. Jimmy Byrne seemed to be the only one who gets on with her, but obviously Michael (Rodd) gets on with her too.
“Jimmy gave Michael all of the instructions during the week so yeah, look, she smoked them today.
‘You don’t want to be cocky, but I thought 800m from home, if nothing goes wrong, she was going to be strong late.
“She can handle the soft and obviously can handle the trip which a lot of other horses can’t, so I think there is a nice race in her somewhere.”
Michael Rodd acknowledged the part played by Jimmy Byrne.
“I had a chat to Jimmy Byrne. He would have been on Joymaker today if he wasn’t down in Sydney,” said Rodd.
“She jumped quite well. I probably could have taking on a more positive position, but I didn’t want to chase her too much. When we got around to the 800m I was really confident because there was still a bit of tempo in there.
“Sometimes, with our staying races up here, they are run at a muddling pace, but they ran along true enough and it was a soft win in the end.
‘She is so relaxed so she can go further and she possesses a turn of foot. Horses over this distance don’t normally have a turn of foot like that … most of them you have always got to get out and moving on them and stoke them up … but she is a horse you can ride really cute and then let her go.”
‘She’s got a really good turn of foot this mare and that was really arrogant, so there is obviously bigger things in store for her.”
