Just leave Isotope alone and it’s fine
AS jockey Ryan Maloney hunts a handsome consolation prize on star Queensland filly Isotope on Saturday, he will deliver some friendly words of advice to barrier attendants at Rosehill. Leave her alone!
“The only real trick to Isotope is just totally leaving her alone in the barriers so she jumps cleanly,” Maloney said of Tony Gollan’s elite threeyear-old.
“You just have to let her bounce around. You don’t think she will jump but I can tell you she jumps a lot cleaner if you just let her do what she wants to do.
“The first instinct of the barrier attendants is to go up to her to get her to calm down, but she resents it.
“A couple of times in Brisbane I have had to tell them (barrier attendants) to stand back. They were taken aback by it but I apologised later and told them the story.”
Isotope has been a big market mover as she makes her Sydney debut in the Listed Darby Munro Stakes at Rosehill on Saturday.
As much as $6 was available on Wednesday morning, she was $4.60 on Thursday and then tumbled into $2.90 on Friday.
Tab.com.au reports the move wasn’t as a result of big bets but more a sustained wave of smaller money.
Maloney will reunite with Isotope for the first time since his tumble from the filly when she clipped heels after straightening when she was a $2.15 favourite in a dramatic running of the $2m Gold Coast Magic Millions 3YO Guineas in January.
Gollan expects Isotope will be suited by a rain-affected track and the leading Queensland trainer gave punters a confidence booster by declaring the filly was his best chance this weekend.
Maloney says Isotope has serious “X-factor”.
He rode Nature Strip earlier in the sprinter’s career and won last year’s Australian Guineas on Alligator Blood but declared he had never experienced such a slashing turn of foot as when Isotope won the Gold Edition Plate from a difficult position at Doomben in December.
Isotope was a mile off Away Game but Maloney was gobsmacked when she flew home to grab the Listed win.
“She put the writing on the wall when she did what she did at Doomben that day when she was in an impossible position and the turn of foot she showed was incredible. I had never experienced anything like it,” Maloney said.
“I got to the point in that race where I didn’t think she could win.
“At the top of the straight I was giving Away Game a good 10 lengths and Away Game wasn’t stopping.
“I just couldn’t believe it.” Maloney has high respect for the opposition at Rosehill on Saturday, saying “it’s like a Group 2 race rather than a Listed race”.