JONES AND ZARASTRO VERY MUCH BACK IN THE GAME

By Graham Potter | Saturday, June 6, 2026

Another piece of the changing, Saturday to Saturday puzzle that has been in play regarding the rescheduled Group 1 Kingsford Cup fell into place beautifully for jockey Angela Jones who will now get the opportunity to land her first Group 1 win when she rides the Tony Gollan trained Zarastro in the $1 million race at Eagle Farm on Saturday.

Zarastro was originally a scratching last Saturday when the Kingsford Smith Cup was due to be contested but, when the Kingsford Smith became one of the races abandoned because of visibility issues for jockeys on a rain-soaked day, the race was moved back seven days to this Saturday with all scratchings reinstated.

Zarastro was back in the game.

Jones has a great affinity with the six-year-old son of I Am Invincible. That understanding stems from the fact that Jones has ridden Zarastro in fourteen of his last sixteen starts.

Overall, Jones has also partnered Zarastro to five out of the seven wins he has achieved since transferring to the Tony Gollan stable back in the first half of 2023. Three of those Jones / Zarastro successes have come over 1200m at Eagle Farm, where Zarastro has also won a further two times under Jimmy Orman.

The track suits him.

Saturday’s Kingsford Smith pushes the race distance out to 1300m. Zarastro has not raced beyond 1200m for just over a year but, on the credit side here is the fact that Zarastro saluted over 1350m when he won the 2023 Listed Tatts Recognition … and in the only other start in which he was tested beyond 1200m up until now, Zarastro finished fifth in last season’s BRC Sprint, just 1.59 lengths behind Here To Shock.

Jones was in the saddle on both of those occasions.

Jones’s wins on Zarastro include the Group 3, W J Healey, and Listed race victories in the Tatts Recognition and the Falvelon … but her most lucrative win came in the $1 million Magic Millions Sprint in January this year.

As good as that record is, the opposition Zarastro will face in the Kingsford Smith is challenging enough to suggest that Zarastro will have to be at his very best to upstage the best of his better credentialed rivals … and so will Jones, with the riders in opposition against her numbering a ‘who’s who’ of highly successful Group 1 winning riders, all of whom have saluted at the highest level.

But, from not being in the race last Saturday to taking their place this Saturday, the opportunity is now there for Zarastro and Jones to go out and do just that.

They have already come a long way from the time last Saturday where Zarastro was not going to be a starter and Jones was not going to have a ride in the race.

Should Zarastro carry the day it would be Jones’s first Group 1 win and her success would be a massive part of a what would be a hugely popular local victory.

It won’t be easy but the ‘got a ticket, got a chance’ rule is very much in play here for Jones and Zarastro, even if the ticket was delivered via the back door.

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