\n If New Zealand\u2019s world champion jockey James McDonald breaks the record he has targeted his entire
\n adult life today, it won\u2019t be enough.\n <\/p>\n
Which is why he is James McDonald.<\/p>\n
Officially the world\u2019s best jockey, McDonald heads to Rosehill in Sydney today on 128 career Group 1 wins, just one short of the record for Group 1-winning rides for an Australasian-based jockey, held by the Aussie legend Damien Oliver.<\/p>\n
McDonald has winning chances in all five Group 1s at today\u2019s Golden Slipper meeting, including two odds-on favourites in Aeliana in the A$1 million ($1.2m) Ranvet and the unbeaten Autumn Glow in the A$1m George Ryder Stakes.<\/p>\n
Both should win.<\/p>\n
He is also riding favourite Autumn Boy in the Rosehill Guineas, as well as Fireball in the Golden Slipper and Generosity in the Galaxy, all five trained by another expat champion, Chris Waller. <\/p>\n
If the markets are right and McDonald executes as he has all season, by tonight the record will be his.<\/p>\n
If and when that happens, the scenes at Rosehill will be chaotic, the feat rightly lauded.<\/p>\n
A 34-year-old man will be called a Goat, that silliest of names that took up residence in sports commentary when knowledge and perspective were kicked out of the building.<\/p>\n
McDonald will play up to it because he isn\u2019t just a jockey of the rarest talents and consistency but a showman. He loves winning and he loves giving the crowd what they want from a winner.<\/p>\n
But James McDonald doesn\u2019t want to win two Group 1s today and break the record of a man he tremendously respects.<\/p>\n
He wants to win all five Group 1s and then more next Saturday. And the Saturday after.<\/p>\n
\u201cI realise the record is a big deal, something I have been aiming at it for so long and to be honest it has come around really quickly,\u201d he tells the Herald.<\/p>\n
\u201cI reckon the last 28 or so have only taken about 18 months, which is hard to believe.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut now I am this close I don\u2019t just want to break it to say I have done it, I want to ride every Group 1 race as well as I can.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are really hard to win and I want to give the horses I am lucky enough to be on that chance. And I want to keep doing that over and over again.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know what that says about me but if I get the record I will still want to win the next race.\u201d<\/p>\n
McDonald is so young, driven and fit it is realistic he could ride at something close to this level for another 10 years, and even if he does a stint full-time in Hong Kong, he already rides in both countries on the same weekend when he desires now.<\/p>\n
It is possible, as ludicrous as it sounds, that McDonald could one day reach 200 Group 1 winners, over 70 more than the record he tries to take ownership of today.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy not?\u201d he says, using his smile to deflect from the fact he is serious.<\/p>\n
Like a Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt or Dame Lisa Carrington who once dreamed of winning just one Olympic gold medal, McDonald realises once you achieve that, you only want more gold medals.<\/p>\n
Which is why McDonald is already thinking past today and the praise it might bring.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe next six weeks is really important to me,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have today, next week and then The Championships [April 4 and 11] and then Romantic Warrior back in Hong Kong at the end of April.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter that it won\u2019t be too long before we are heading to Royal Ascot for Joliestar.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I\u2019m in quite a good position to win the premiership here again \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
McDonald\u2019s dream of 130 Group 1 victories will come true.<\/p>\n
But today is just a marker on the road \u2013 a road he has travelled with some of our greatest jockeys for company. <\/p>\n
After he waves Olly goodbye, McDonald will continue speeding down that road to somewhere nobody has been before.<\/p>\n
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald\u2019s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world\u2019s biggest horse racing carnivals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If New Zealand\u2019s world champion jockey James McDonald breaks the record he has targeted his entire adult life…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":341016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[25638,2046,6028,6628,14054,194,31271,111,139,69,3512,1974,1551,213,12825,57469,61,30943],"class_list":["post-341015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-add","tag-career","tag-champion","tag-historic","tag-james","tag-kiwi","tag-mcdonald","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-racing","tag-record","tag-set","tag-sports","tag-stunning","tag-tally","tag-to","tag-todays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/341016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}