Australian jockey Glen Boss had an eerie sense of deja vu yesterday with a late engagement that will see him ride the ante-post favourite in the world's richest two-year-old race in Sydney on Saturday.
Boss joins fellow Hong Kong-based Australians Darren Beadman and Zac Purton in a flying visit to Rosehill for the Golden Slipper Stakes meeting at Rosehill before returning for Happy Valley on Sunday.
The ride on the unbeaten Slipper favourite, Gai Waterhouse-trained Sebring, came at the expense of the More Than Ready colt's regular partner, Blake Shinn, who failed to beat a careless riding ban in the appeal room yesterday and will miss the A$ 3.5 million (HK$25.3m) juvenile.
'I'd been offered a couple of Slipper rides and I deliberated while the trainers found a jockey, that left me free for Sebring when the owners rang,' said Boss, who won the Slipper on Sebring's maternal grandsire, Flying Spur, in 1995 to catapult him into Australia's upper echelon of major race riders.
Boss did not have a ride until Flying Spur's rider, Jim Cassidy, was disqualified on the evening before the race and Boss grabbed the late opportunity on the 25-1 outsider.
'It's a bit of deja vu - the stewards have played a role again and Sebring is a great ride,' Boss said. 'He's been favourite for some time now, his three wins have all been on tracks with some give in them so it certainly doesn't worry me that it's been raining in Sydney this week.'
