Miller confident come-from-behind Jokers Grin can have the last laugh
Knockabout Perth trainer Bernie Miller is confident Jokers Grin (Maschino) – the quirky gelding who hasn’t changed his life – is in the right shape to excel as “the hunted” runner in Saturday’s Winterbottom Stakes (Gr 1, 1200m) at Ascot.
The 70-year-old Miller runs a team of around half a dozen horses at his property at Serpentine, between Perth and Mandurah.
He began training in 1980 but – after one winner in seven years – retired from it to pursue other avenues in the electricity industry, before regaining his licence in 2007.
Always keeping a small team, he’s had 69 winners since then, and knows he’s never had – and never will again have – a horse as good as Jokers Grin.
Back in April, the five-year-old brought his small-time trainer and his owner-breeders a huge windfall when he became the first locally trained horse to win the $5m slot race The Quokka (1200m), with its $2 million first prize.
Miller was of course delighted with that last-gasp victory by the horse who comes from the back, but said nothing has changed at his stable, which he runs with the help of two staffers, other than a little irrigation work.
“Has the Quokka changed my life? Nup, and I told everybody it wouldn’t,” the affable Miller told ANZ News.
“Don’t get me wrong, it was a big thrill, and an enormous effort by everyone, but you can’t be getting big headed and become a smart-arse – that’s not me. I’m very much an introvert, although people think I’m not. I like to be quiet and left alone, and I’m still the same.
“My horse numbers certainly didn’t improve. My phone wasn’t ringing hot, apart from a few people wanting to interview me. We used the money to do some irrigation work around the place, but that was about it.”
Things are slightly different between the Quokka and this Saturday’s other WFA Sprint, the Winterbottom.
While the Quokka is worth far more money, it’s not black type. But if Jokers Grin can lift the $1.5 million Winterbottom he’ll become the first Group 1 winner not only for Miller but for the sprinter’s sire Maschino (Encosta De Lago).
The 18-year-old, standing around the corner from Miller’s place at Alwyn Park for $8,800, has had ten stakes winners from 181 runners at 5.5 per cent. They’re headed by seven-time stakes winner Marocchino and Machine Gun Gracie, both of whom won a Group 2.
“I’m a big fan of Maschino. He’s the most underrated stallion we’ve got over here,” said the wiry, grey-haired Miller, who used to breed horses from a couple of mares himself before building his property at Serpentine.
“I take my horses to Ascot or Belmont for fast work, and that’s an hour away. If I’d kept the mares, you’d know when they would have started foaling down – just as I was pulling into Ascot. My wife [Karen] isn’t horsey, so it wouldn’t have been fair on her.”
One of the horses Miller did breed from his two mares was Cup Night (Maschino) out of a “beautiful” dam he’d trained for two wins in six starts before tendon trouble arose, Walk In Beauty (Barely A Moment).
Cup Night won three stakes races, highlighted by the Northam Sprint (Gr 3, 1100m), continuing a happy relationship between Miller and veteran jockey Pat Carbery, which has flowed on into Jokers Grin.
Though plagued by flat feet which required constant maintenance through a career of 32 starts for nine wins, Cup Night also contested all three of Perth’s Group 1s, with a best of running sixth in the Railway Stakes (Gr 1, 1600m) of 2020.
When he stopped breeding, Miller gifted his two mares to old friend Mark Jones, who with associate David Gatti took Walk In Beauty and bred the horse who’s now her second stakes winner from four runners, Jokers Grin.
As a young rig, he’d been entered in the Magic Millions Perth Yearling Sale of 2022, but had to be withdrawn due to a habit that stays with him to this day – 12 starts into his career, for nine wins.
He’s fine at the stable and at the track, it’s the bit in between that’s the problem.
“Things didn’t work out for that yearling sale, because they had a bit of trouble loading him onto the truck. So I guess he wasn’t meant to go,” Miller said.
“So Mark withdrew him from the sale and said we’ll keep him and play with him.”
Was Miller happy to receive Cup Night’s brother?
“Ooh yeah – very happy,” he said. “Cup Night had the potential to be something really good, but we had a lot of trouble with his feet.
“Jokers Grin’s a good bit better. He’s really going to make his mark on the racing over here or wherever he goes.”
Miller and Carbery felt they had a better younger brother when he was still at the breaker’s.
“I always send them back a second time, not that they’re naughty, it’s just what I do,” Miller said. “When he was there the second time, the breaker said Jokers Grin was clearly one of the best horses he’d handled, if not the best.
“He asked Paddy to jump on, and he took him for a slow spin around Ascot. Just the feel he gave Pat – you know when good horses glide over the ground – we thought he was pretty good.”
Gelded before he raced, requiring surgery as a rig, Jokers Grin raced on the pace when fourth on debut in May last year at Belmont. Switched to settling at the back, he unfurled one of those familiar Perth picket fences, winning his next five on the trot in restricted grade.
He had a win and two seconds from his next three starts, the last a second in his black type debut in the Roma Cup (Gr 3, 1100m), when he fell victim to his trait of hitting the lead too early and cruising.
The gelding then went into the Quokka as a $21 longshot against several stars of the east and west. Drawing the widest gate of 13, Carbery went back and went wide around the turn. Jokers Grin looked unlikely to win for the length of the straight, until in the last few bounds he lifted to nudge out Sydney sprinter Headwall (Dream Ahead) by 0.17 lengths.
Jokers Grin has now extended his current winning streak to three, resuming after The Quokka with a 0.81 length success in the Prince Of Wales Stakes (Gr 3, 1000m) before a 0.56 length win in the Colonel Reeves Stakes (Gr 3, 1100m), also at Ascot.
This means that unlike in The Quokka, he’ll be one of the favourites for the Winterbottom. The TAB on Monday had him at $2.70, behind Overpass (Vancouver) at $2.10. Bjorn Baker’s sprinter’s bid to win a third Quokka in its third running last April ended in a fifth place behind Jokers Grin, but he comes in off a sterling fourth in The Everest (Gr 1, 1200m).
“Now we’re not the hunter; we’ll be the hunted,” Miller said. “They’ll be trying to figure out how they can beat us now.
“We’ll have the same racing style, we’ll send him back a bit, wait till he’s balanced up and ask him to go around them, so I guess there’ll be a few jockeys looking over their shoulder to see where he is.
“The good thing for us is they do go fast over here, especially in these higher graded races. The likes of Overpass, he’s a proven champion, and I can’t see him doing anything different, apart from putting the pedal down for as long as they can. They’ll go like scalded cats to get their positions, and hopefully our boy can drift back, peel out and come past them.
“I’m pretty confident, but it’ll be very, very competitive. I’m not one to say we’re gonna shit in or anything like that, but he’s improved since his last run and I’m very happy with him.”
Win or lose, Miller has his eyes on another Quokka tilt next April, before considering eastward options in Jokers Grin’s six-year-old season, such as the VRC Newmarket Handicap (Gr 1, 1200m).
Hopefully, he’d travel well – something which still takes some work even for the trip from home to Perth’s two racecourses.
“He’s a great horse, but the only time I worry is when I put him on the truck,” Miller said. “He plays up a lot on the truck. He used to try to jump straight off the truck onto the bitumen.
“Once we’ve got him on the ground, he’s fine. I shampoo him, he goes to sleep in the tie-up stalls. And after a race, you wouldn’t know he’d had a race. He just stands still.
“But getting him off the truck, we’ve got all this gear on him now to pacify him. We’re slowly winning that battle. At least now he’ll walk down the ramp instead of trying to jump off the bastard.”