Tommy Berry elects to ride in Caulfield Cup over The Everest meeting
Tommy Berry will sacrifice the ride aboard one of his favourite horses on Everest day to chase his first win in the Caulfield Cup.
Tommy Berry will head south on Saturday week to chase his first win in the $5m Caulfield Cup.
Berry was without a ride in The Everest so rather than watching the race on TV, he elected to bypass Australia‘s richest raceday of the year.
The decision has cost him the ride aboard one of his favourite horses in one of the main support races – the $2m The Kosciuszko.
“With The Everest being as big as it is the likelihood of me riding in a Caulfield Cup in the next 10 years or so is unlikely so not having one this year was a great chance to have a crack at the childhood dream,” Berry said.
“The hardest thing for me to do was to tell Terry Robinson that I wouldn’t be riding Art Cadeau.
“He understood that I couldn’t have been sitting in the jockeys’ room at Randwick watching The Everest and the Caulfield Cup.
“It’s one of the hardest calls I’ve had to make in my career because Terry, the connections and Art Cadeau have been so good to me, I’ve done all the work on him and I know how good the horse is going.”
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Robinson has not yet committed to Berry’s replacement for Art Cadeau which is a $13 chance in country racing’s richest event.
“I haven’t done anything yet,” Robinson said.
“I’ve had a few calls but I’m just going to leave it for a couple of days to have a think about things before I make the call.”
Meanwhile, Berry had a couple of offers for horses to ride in the time-honoured Caulfield Cup having partnered No Compromise to victory in The Metropolitan last Saturday and also Numerian which finished second to Cascadian in the $1m Hill Stakes.
TAB.com.au has Numerian listed as an $18 chance in the Caulfield Cup while No Compromise is at $26 after receiving a 1kg weight penalty for last Saturday’s Group 1 win.
“I’d already committed to Annabel to ride Numerian if he ran well on Saturday so even though I could have ridden No Compromise, I was committed for the Caulfield Cup if I chose to go that way,” Berry said.
“He gave me no reason to want to get off him on Saturday to ride something else.
“I thought he ran really well. He was second-up, he had a tough run up on the speed and fought it out.
“It was probably the toughen up run he needed going into a Caulfield Cup and Annabel said he’s come out of the run brilliantly.
“I’m pretty excited about his chances in what’s an open race this year.”
The spring of 2015 resulted in Berry‘s best result in the Caulfield Cup when second aboard the Ed Dunlop-trained Trip To Paris, which was beaten a half-length by Mongolian Khan.
“The Caulfield and Melbourne Cups, as well as the Cox Plate, are still races I really want to win,” he said.
“They are the races, like the Golden Slipper, the Doncaster, that growing up as a kid you want to win.
“You become so invested in those races because they are the lifelong ambition races.”
Originally published as Tommy Berry elects to ride in Caulfield Cup over The Everest meeting
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