Horses for courses or horses for jockeys?

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Schofield and Boban have accrued a winning strike rate of 44 percent in 18 starts since March 2014, with the pair's latest success coming in last Saturday's Group I Memsie Stakes (1400m) at Caulfield.

This Saturday, Schofield rides Ball Of Muscle in the Group III Concorde Stakes (1000m) at Randwick where he will look to extend his perfect record on the gelding to seven.

The association between jockey and horse is often an underestimated component in assessing form. Both Boban and Ball Of Muscle have been afforded the services of champion jockeys such as Hugh Bowman, Nash Rawiller and Blake Shinn during their careers but for whatever reason they haven't been able to produce the same results as Schofield.

Ball Of Muscle's last outing resulted in victory in the Group II QTC Cup (1200m) at Doomben during the Brisbane winter carnival and Schofield is hoping the horse can continue his exponential progress through the country's sprinting ranks.

"He's very quick, at his last start he led over six furlongs and prior to that he'd been a little bit suspect over six furlongs so for him to do it front and back end of the race was pretty good,” Schofield said.

"It was nice to see that he'd obviously strengthened up and matured.

"Whilst his last performance was his career best I think he may still be a couple of lengths off the top level.

"But if he can do what he has done in each preparation which is improve a little bit every time then he's right in those big races so Saturday will give us an idea as to where he's at.”

In terms of the tactics on Saturday, Schofield suggested that he won't be deviating from the horse's usual free-running pattern.

"He's got a good gate on Saturday and he'll jump and put himself there, I'm looking forward to it,” Schofield said.

"Whether he leads on Saturday I'm not really sure but he'll be prominent.”

Pride has indicated the Group I Moir Stakes (1200m) at Moonee Valley on October 2 as a possibility for Ball Of Muscle. Should the chestnut succeed in that race, he will become the fourth Group I winner from the dam Parfore, joining stablemates Terravista and Tiger Tees.


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