Riding ‘right horses’ gives Bruce best season yet

Press, 22 June 1989, Page 41

Riding ‘right horses’ gives Bruce best season yet

By DAVID MCCARTHY One of the highlights of the southern racing season to date, the emergence of Ashburton-based Raymond Bruce as an established senior rider in the area, was underlined by the jockey’s four winners at Ashburton last Friday.

It was the third time Bruce has achieved the feat and the significant thing about that is that all three occasions have been in the last 12 months. Bruce rode four winners at last July’s Waimate meeting. Also of some significance there was that one was for the stable of Peter and Dawn Williams (Amandii) and two for Mayfield’s Jan Hay (Silver Tussock and Sabrielle). Bruce had ridden four winners at the Timaru meeting last December. They were in succession and included the Show Gate Stakes on Fly Baby, Mistella (another of the Pitman stable) Diamond Annie and Cool Touch. Diamond Annie had given him his first win of the season at Riccarton ’ the previous August. ,

Last Friday Bruce combined with the Hay stable for one of his wins, the Williams stable for another (Red Digger), while Innocent Victim and Pblacca provided the balance. ! With 54 winners he is experiencing his best season and his career total is now 225.

By another coincidence Bruce rode his first winner at Timaru in

December, , when General Francis was successful at long odds. For all that Bruce did not make a big impression while an apprentice. He rode less than 40 winners though he ran third in an Apprentice Special at Ellerslie, in

1983. Bruce was associated with Pat Corboy and, like most Corboy staff, tried his hand in jumping races. He left that field on a winning note when Next Lot was successful at Wingatiii in September 1987.

“When your main income is from flat racing the risks of injury are too great in the jumping races,” he says. Bruce, aged 27, pulled • the “right rein” when he shifted to Ashburton last season from Timaru. There were an increasing number of horses trained in the area and while that sometimes brings agonising decisions (Bruce turned down the winning ride on Endicott at Ashburton to ride Deer Game, also trained there), the over-all results have been positive. He rode 49 winners last season, his best until then by a wide margin, and was fourteenth on the jockeys’ list. He looks set to make the top ten this season with only Grant Davison and Paul Richards, among southern riders, in front of him. Probably the major influence on his career has been the confidence he has gained from riding better horses. “I’ve been on the right horses and it’s crucial you get those sort of rides. I put down my increased success to that,” said Bruce. He has no special ambition to achieve other than to ride as well as he can. But getting the better rides comes from a trainer’s assessment of who are the better riders. Raymond Bruce, who had his share of knocks and knockers on the way up, is in that category at the moment and with potential still to be exploited.