When 50/1 outsider Boom Time won the 2017 Caulfield Cup, the victory gave battling Victorian based jockey, Cory Parish, his first Group 1 winner. Cory Parish rode as an apprentice in Queensland from his base on the Sunshine Coast before heading to Victoria and ironically it was David Hayes, the same man who entrusted him to ride Boom Time last Saturday, who also gave Cory the thrill of riding his first Melbourne metropolitan winner.

In an article written by Phil Purser on 25/6/14, just a few days after Cory Parish had won his first Melbourne metropolitan race – again ironically on a roughie trained by David Hayes – the following was writing on this website about the Parish ride.

So top rides from Rockhampton to Randwick have been covered, stopping in at Eagle Farm along the way, but there was a really special ride at Moonee Valley that surpassed all the others that I’ve mentioned previously.

Personally, I find it “astonishing” that jockey Cory Parish had never ridden a Melbourne metropolitan winner before he got home on 30/1 chance Warwarick in the last race at Moonee Valley. The jockey would have surely been breaking out in carbuncles coming into the short but demanding Moonee Valley straight, but he showed wonderful patience, waiting to get out of his zip-fastener pocket, without knocking any fellow jockey over, which would have necessitated another fundraiser, then he somehow but expertly brought his horse around the heels of the three in front of him, balanced his horse up and somehow got home first. If Parish makes one small error anywhere in the run he gets rolled. Instead he got home by a short half head. It is my considered opinion that they should show that race in every Apprentice School around Australia and any other country around the world where they want to teach newcomers to the jockey ranks the way to ride a racehorse. It would teach kids to 1) not to go into panic mode when you can’t get a run, 2) how to ride a grained crazed racehorse whilst paying paramount attention to the safety of jockeys around you, riding with the skill to gently ease across horses heels and not clip any of them whilst not losing momentum and 4) to balance your horse up before going for home even though the line is looming large.

Cory Parish spent time in Queensland as an apprentice with ageing trainer Alan Jones up at Caloundra and I don’t ever recall looking twice at any ride he ever had to think he had any above average talent. I can assure you that I’ve looked at the Warwarwick ride from last Saturday many more times than two. They say in life things happen for a reason and when some despised outsider won the last race at Moonee Valley most punters would have exclaimed an expletive as he nailed the $3.70 favourite Atlantis Dream right on the line, but unless it was a total fluke, we unearthed a wonderful talent in the Victorian jockey ranks via the win by Cory Parish. Now let’s hope everyone gives him the young man the go that he obviously so richly deserves.