Williams surges clear in premiership race

Sunday 8 July 2018, 5:07pm

With nine city winners in the first week of the final month of the season, Craig Williams has gone a long way to winning his seventh Melbourne jockeys' premiership.

After a treble at Sandown on Wednesday, Williams put on a masterclass at Flemington on Saturday to win six of the nine races on Winter Finals day.

There is also plenty of behind the scenes homework from Williams and the team around him which goes into the jockeys' push to be crowned Melbourne's premier rider once again.

"He gets into the zone," trainer David Hayes said.

"He works hard at getting on the right horses. And he's there before nominations.

"You'd want him on at this time of year."

Williams won on Miss Gunpowder for Hayes and co-trainers Ben Hayes and Tom Dabernig on Saturday.

Tony McEvoy had Williams aboard Rivette Series Final winner Mintha and Taj Rossi Series Final runner-up Scottish Rogue, and said the jockey was on the phone chasing both rides immediately after nominations were released.

"He said 'I really want this premiership' and I just said 'yes' because he was on the ball," McEvoy said.

Three of Williams' six winners came for premier trainer Darren Weir.

"He deserves every success he gets because he'll be on the phone tomorrow morning. I don't see any other jockeys on the phone tomorrow morning," Weir said.

"He does all his homework and a lot of other jockeys should take a leaf out of his book and work as hard as he does."

Williams, who now leads Damian Lane by nine wins, said it was great competition and said everyone works hard.

"We've got great jockeys in Victoria," he said.

He also praised his team and said he was lucky to get on well-prepared horses who tried their hearts out on the day.

"I've got a good management team around me and they've been saying that they've been really happy with everything going on," Williams said.

"And even though we hadn't got the desired results two months ago for that month it was a lead-in month for us for winners. We thought everything is right in place.

"I've been happy with my body, happy with the way I've been riding and my decision making. There was a couple that were unlucky and there was only a couple that if you'd like to have them again, should have won."

– AAP

Latest News

Prime Thoroughbreds - We have a Host of Leaders in our Team

Tuesday, 29 June 2021

Prime Thor­ough­bred’s cur­rent rac­ing team is putt­ing to­gether quite a re­cord. We have 22 hors­es that have raced in our team at pre­sent. Six­teen of th­ese are win­n­ers in­clud­ing the Stakes win­n­ing trio Ru­bisa­ki, Fituese and Xtreme­time with Miss Di­vine Em and Miss In Charge run­n­ing 4th in Stakes races. This sees a stakes win­n­er to win­n­er ra­tio of 18.75% with a stake’s per­formed to win­n­er ra­tio of 31.25%. Th­ese are ex­cep­tio­n­al fig­ures.   More »

Freedmans land maiden Group One win

Saturday, 27 February 2021

Un­der-rat­ed fil­ly For­bid­den Love has emerged as an au­tumn car­ni­val smokey with a bril­liant per­for­mance to win the Sur­round Stakes at Rand­wick.  More »

Capriccio completes Damian Lane treble

Saturday, 27 February 2021

In a big day for coun­try-trained hors­es, War­r­nam­bool fil­ly Capric­cio has tak­en out the In­glis Dash for Daniel Bow­man.  More »

More news headlines »