Bookies ready to throw in towel
Travelling man Johnson a curveball they couldn’t have seen coming
Bookies are getting set to run up the white flag in the battle of the New Zealand jockeys’ premiership. And that could mean paying out punters who backed veteran rider Chris Johnson with more than a month of the season to go.
Johnson was $51 to win the jockeys’ premiership at the start of the season, being just 15th in the order of favouritism.
But after two wins at Pukekohe yesterday continued a magic month in the mud, the TAB has suspended betting on him as he sits 10 clear of long-time premiership leader Danielle Johnson, who pegged one back in the last race yesterday.
While the 53-year-old with the incredible back story has been rated the South Island’s number one rider for much of the last three decades his season-opening odds were reflective of the fact he finished 18th in the premiership last season.
And while he has finished as close as fourth two years ago, that was still over 50 wins behind the premiership winner.
Even just three weeks ago a premiership looked unlikely as he sat five wins behind a rampant Danielle Johnson but he has since ridden like a man possessed, or perhaps more dangerously in his case, a man focused.
While Chris Johnson has regularly picked up his two or more wins at South Island meetings — as he is likely to do again at Oamaru today — he is also riding at better than a win a meeting in the north since he started travelling in his bid to win the title.
“His recent form has been so good we have started talking in the office about whether we surrender and pay his punters out,” admits TAB bookie Stephen Hunt.
“The way the market has turned around this month we now rate him somewhere between $1 and $1.01 to win the title so it looks a done deal.
“We are only really leaving the market open in case he got suspended or something like that or Danielle had a really hot patch for a week and rode five winners.
“But if Chris happened to ride another four or five in the next week and nobody closes the gap on him then we might look at paying punters out, particularly if the margin gets above 15.”
The bookies paying out premiership markets in advance is nothing new, and they paid out those who backed Murray Baker and Andrew Forsman to win the trainers’ premiership three weeks ago, with still two months of the season to run.
They have had little reason to regret that generosity, with the Cambridge trainers bringing up their 100th domestic win for the season with Checkout at Pukekohe yesterday and sitting 24 clear of nearest rival Kevin Myers.
Chris Johnson does have the advantage of riding at his local South Island meetings, where Alysha Collett, who sits third on the premier- ship, is his only regular North Islandbased rival but his ambition to travel as relentlessly as he has in the last month was a curveball bookies simply couldn’t have seen coming.
To further aid him, Danielle Johnson heads to Sweden in early July to compete at an international female jockeys competition, meaning she will miss at least one northern meeting, possibly more. But as far as the TAB, and punters, are concerned, the premiership could well be over and the winnings spent by then.