Cox Plate winning jockey Chad Schofield will get some timely advice from Brent Thomson with the former champion jockey offering some tutoring to help curtail the apprentice’s string of suspensions.
Chad Schofield holding the Cox Plate after winning the famous race on Shamus Award. Photo by Race Horse Photos Australia.
Schofield is currently serving a twelve meeting suspension for careless riding, his sixth this season, and trainer David Hayes has welcomed Thomson to give his apprentice some worthwhile advice on his riding style.
Schofield, who turns twenty on Saturday week, became the first apprentice jockey to win the Group 1 $3m Sportingbet Cox Plate (2040m) at Moonee Valley last October on Shamus Award since Thomson won the first of his four Cox Plates in 1975 on Fury’s Order as a seventeen year old.
Thomson then rose up the Melbourne jockey ranks to become the stable rider for the powerful Colin Hayes stable and later for David Hayes before heading off to ride successfully in Great Britain and Hong Kong.
Hayes said that the number and frequency of suspensions from Schofield, who is his stable rider now, is getting frustrating and he hopes that with the help of Thomson the problem can be turned around.
“You couldn’t ask for a better mentor than Brent,” Hayes told the Herald Sun.
“It is very frustrating. He just needs to pull his head in.
“He is a slow learner. It is too simple – keep them straight.”
“If you don’t go straight and cause interference, you get suspended,” he said.
“Chad knows that, but he needs to remedy his problem. Hopefully, Brent can drum some sense into him.”
Hayes is hoping the extra advice will help Schofield, not only for the young jockey’s own career, but for the smooth running of Hayes’ huge training operation.
“He is missing out on a lot of rides,” Hayes said.
“He does the work on the horses and then sits in the grandstand because of a suspension. And I am getting mucked around by it.
“You work out your jockeys, then he gets suspended and you have to shift jockeys around. It upsets everything; it upsets owners, too.”
Schofield’s latest suspension was incurred last Saturday at Caulfield when he failed to keep proper control of his mount, Rawnaq, when using the whip rounding the home subsequently causing interference to Youbolt in the second race of the day.
The suspension began at midnight on Saturday night and Schofield can resume riding again on February 14 after missing four metropolitan and eight provincial meetings.
Schofield has ridden seventeen metropolitan winners this season and is currently sitting in sixth position on the Melbourne jockeys premiership table behind front runner Damien Oliver who has chalked up thirty-two winners.
