Suspended Jones Retains Brisbane Lead

Angela Jones made the most of her final day in the saddle before serving a suspension, landing a stunning win aboard The Three Hundred in the Gr3 Winx Guineas at the Sunshine Coast and tightening her grip on the Brisbane jockeys’ premiership in the process. With two victories on the day – including King Yoshi in an earlier Benchmark 80 sprint – Jones extended her lead over Emily Lang from three to five metro wins as the curtain fell on the Queensland winter carnival, reports cairnspost.com.au. Her Guineas triumph aboard the Adrian Bott and Gai Waterhouse-trained The Three Hundred ($11) was especially emphatic, the pair dashing away to beat $34 outsider Ramp It Up by 1.25-lengths, with Toowoomba galloper Apuntar ($6.50) in third on a Soft 6 surface. Jones will now serve a 10-day suspension for careless riding from last weekend’s Group 1 Tattersall’s Tiara on Floozie, though she plans to appeal the severity of the penalty at a Queensland Racing Appeals Panel hearing on Monday. There was further drama on Saturday when Ryan Maloney suffered a back injury while riding Caspernova to second behind King Yoshi, forcing him to forfeit the ride on Winx Guineas favourite Mister Bianco. Gold Coast trainer Paul Shailer was unable to find a replacement jockey and had to scratch the horse from the $300,000 feature. "You know their horses are fit," Jones said of The Three Hundred. "Maybe he wasn’t putting it all into his races when he gets back so we really made a point that if we can get him away cleanly, we’d send him to the front and he’d be winning. We were able to do that, lovely and relaxed, and he is a different horse when he doesn’t have other horses to look around at. It was a super dominant win today. It has been a good season and hopefully I get a few more [wins] before I serve my suspension next week.” Neil Paine, representing the Waterhouse-Bott stable, praised both Jones and the sometimes-difficult gelding. “The problem with this horse is that he’s a bugger at the machines,” he said. “We told Ang to keep him warmed up and if he jumps, to put him right into the race. Over the last one or two starts, he was slowly away and he gets back and starts to lose interest. I was really happy when he jumped and Ang kept pushing forward. The pace was a little bit fast early but she pushed him forward and got him balanced once she got him to the lead. Gee he surprised me when he kicked away. He is a horse with promise but there’s two of them!”