\n\t\t\t\t\tBy Paul Symes<\/b>\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Listen<\/p>\n
Half Yours (St Jean) is primed to go in search of instant access to the Caulfield Cup (Gr 1, 2400m) through the Naturalism Stakes (Gr 3, 2000m) this Saturday, with co-trainer Tony McEvoy believing the stable\u2019s progressive stayer would represent a live chance in next month\u2019s $5 million showpiece.<\/p>\n
Having been assigned just 51 kilograms in the Caulfield Cup earlier this week by Racing Victoria\u2019s head of handicapping, David Hegan, the lightly-raced five-year-old sits well down the order of entry and is in a race against time to make it onto the field for his grand final \u2013 but a sixth career win on Saturday would immediately solve that dilemma.<\/p>\n
The other, more pressing concern facing McEvoy on Thursday morning was the fact that there were 16 horses still ahead of Half Yours in the queue to contest the Naturalism Stakes which, like the Underwood Stakes (Gr 1, 1800m) on the same card, offers the winner ballot exemption into the Caulfield Cup.<\/p>\n
However, rather than sitting in his Ballarat office and continually refreshing the scratchings page on the Racing Australia website, McEvoy put in a quick call to his fellow trainer Chris Waller who confirmed that his well-fancied runner Birdman (Free Eagle) would instead remain in Sydney to contest the Kingston Town Stakes (Gr 3, 2000m).\u00a0<\/p>\n
That news came as a tremendous relief to Team McEvoy, comprising patriarch Tony and his son Calvin. In partnership with Belmont Bloodstock, they pounced on Half Yours for $305,000 when he featured among the Halo Racing dispersal on the Inglis November (Late) Online Sale last year, following the passing of prominent racehorse owner and meat processing baron Col McKenna.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is very rare for horses to improve after exiting the stables of Ciaron Maher, who was the underbidder and could live to regret missing out, but Half Yours may well prove an exception to the general rule having excelled since joining the McEvoys.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is six months to the day that Half Yours stepped out for the first time for his new connections, and in that time the flashy chestnut has registered three wins \u2013 in three different states \u2013 and a pair of placings from his six starts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Leading the half-year highlights reel was his 4.5-length romp in the Caloundra Cup (Listed, 2400m) at the Sunshine Coast in July, when he became the first stakes winner for his unheralded sire St Jean (Teofilo), who stands for the modest fee of $3,300 (inc GST) at Brackley Park in Victoria\u2019s Goulburn Valley.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Half Yours encountered favourable conditions that day, with McEvoy conceding that he needs ground at least in the soft range in order to thrive; but despite a prediction of only light showers in the build-up to Saturday\u2019s $200,000 contest, early punters have still stepped in and crunched him into $2.60 favouritism from an opening quote of $4.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been lovely to see the horse\u2019s progression since he joined us,\u201d McEvoy Snr told ANZ News.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe really impressed me in the Caloundra Cup, which was his first run over a mile-and-a-half, and at that stage we knew we might have a pretty handy stayer in the making. He got soft ground that day which we\u2019re probably not going to get on Saturday, because there\u2019s not much rain around and the Caulfield track drains particularly well.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving said all that, he ran really well on a firm deck at Sandown at his first start for us and then won on a good track at Seymour at his next start. So he is adaptable but there\u2019s no denying he\u2019s better with a bit of give in the ground. We\u2019ll know more after Saturday\u2019s race, but we won\u2019t be using the ground as an excuse if he doesn\u2019t win.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t had a close look at the field yet because we\u2019ve only just found out that we\u2019re in the race, but there looks to be a lot of stayers resuming so we probably won\u2019t want to get too far back because you then run the risk of meeting traffic. We\u2019ve drawn low [in gate two] so provided he breaks cleanly I would expect us to be in the front half of the field, then as always in these big handicap races, you just need a little bit of luck from there.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
If luck be a lady then the female in question is Jamie Melham, who has been booked to ride Half Yours for the first time.<\/p>\n
By her own meteoric standards Melham has had a relatively quiet start to the spring, but the 29-year-old looks to have a strong book of rides at Caulfield on Saturday with Stay Cosmic (Cosmic Force) well supported to win the Caulfield Guineas Prelude (Gr 3, 1400m) and Another Wil (Street Boss) considered one of the leading chances in the Underwood Stakes, one of two Group 1 races which headline the program.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
McEvoy Snr, of course, played a key role in the formative stages of Melham\u2019s riding career, as she established a formidable partnership with his stable in her native South Australia before continuing the association \u2013 albeit to a lesser extent \u2013 when she switched states to Victoria.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Their 97 wins in tandem include five black type triumphs, headlined by Melham\u2019s supreme steer aboard Coco Sun (The Autumn Sun) in last year\u2019s South Australian Derby (Gr 1, 2500m).\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Melham-McEvoy axis is therefore a fearsome combination and although the jockey formerly known as Jamie Kah is yet to sit on Half Yours, if the market is right there is a very good chance they will be celebrating a sixth stakes success come Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no doubt familiarity with a horse is a big plus in any race, let alone a Saturday feature, but I don\u2019t think it matters too much that Jamie hasn\u2019t been on the horse before,\u201d McEvoy told ANZ News.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cElite jockeys like Jamie can sit on any horse for the first time and go out and execute a plan to perfection. That\u2019s why everyone is chasing these top riders, and we\u2019re obviously delighted to have her on board on Saturday. Hopefully they get along famously, then it\u2019ll be onwards and upwards to the Caulfield Cup.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
If, for whatever reason, Half Yours doesn\u2019t show a liking for the Caulfield track on his first visit there, McEvoy would consider pivoting to a tilt at the Metropolitan (Gr 1, 2400m) \u2013 with Melham one of the very few leading jockeys willing and able to get down to the 50-kilogram minimum weight.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, the strong preference at this stage is to qualify for the Caulfield Cup, a race McEvoy came agonisingly close to winning back in 2002 when his star galloper Fields Of Omagh (Rubiton) was denied by the narrowest of margins by the late, great Northerly (Serheed).<\/p>\n
Half Yours is no Fields Of Omagh \u2013 which is no great slight as very few are \u2013 but he might in time achieve something the horse affectionately known as \u2018FOO\u2019 never managed and run in a Melbourne Cup (Gr 1, 3200m).\u00a0<\/p>\n
Should Half Yours firstly make the Caulfield Cup field and then acquit himself well on raceday, McEvoy hasn\u2019t entirely ruled out an ambitious plan to press onto \u2018the race that stops a nation\u2019, with jockey Ashley Morgan telling connections shortly after he dismounted at the Sunshine Coast that two miles would be well within the gallant gelding\u2019s remit.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had him genetically tested and the results came back that he was in the C:T Long category, which means his optimum distance range is between 1400 and 2400 metres,\u201d said McEvoy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the way he finished off in the Caloundra Cup over 2400 metres, Ashley was adamant that two miles wouldn\u2019t be a problem for this horse. So that gave us the confidence to target the Caulfield Cup, and if he were to run well there then who knows?\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it\u2019s a wet Caulfield Cup this year, then I think he\u2019d be well and truly in it. I truly believe he\u2019d be a very good chance in any race in the country provided it\u2019s run on soft ground. If we\u2019re playing on a wet deck in the Caulfield Cup, it would probably take out at least a third of the field because some horses simply don\u2019t handle it, particularly in staying races where it really saps their stamina.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of things would have to go in our favour between now and then, but it\u2019s exciting to think that we have a horse capable of competing at the highest level. It\u2019s been a while since I\u2019ve won one of the majors [with Fields Of Omagh in the 2003 Cox Plate], but it hasn\u2019t stopped us from trying.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Paul Symes Listen Half Yours (St Jean) is primed to go in search of instant access to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4107],"tags":[1071,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-433947","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-racing","8":"tag-racing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115226125589668771","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}