The Joe Pride-trained Joyner has provided Chad Schofield with the second leg of a midweek treble.
Joe Pride found himself having a fanboy moment at Canterbury when recent recruit Joyner scored a breakthrough metropolitan win for owner-breeder Bernie Howlett.
A Group 1-winning jockey and trainer, Howlett has also made a fist of breeding racehorses, producing dual Group 1-winning sprinter-turned-stallion Brazen Beau.
Pride remembers following Howlett's yard prior to becoming a trainer and says getting a phone call from the Canberra horseman asking him to take on Joyner was surreal.
"Growing up, I used to love backing Bernie Howlett's horses and when he gave me a call I thought, 'that's cool, he wants me to train a horse for him'," Pride said.
"He told me the other day he has bred a Group One winner, trained a Group One winner and ridden a Group One winner. I'll never do that."
Howlett won the Sydney Cup twice as a jockey aboard On Line in 1959 and Sharply in 1961 and trained the 1996 Doomben 10,000 winner Suntain.
He bred Brazen Beau from his stakes-placed mare Sansadee, and Wednesday's Pinatubo @ Darley Handicap (1200m) winner Joyner is a Denman half-sister to the former top sprinter.
"It was an important win," Pride said.
"She is a half-sister to Brazen Beau, the stallion, so she's got a very good pedigree.
"Hopefully there is more to come, but she has done a good job there today."
Ridden by Chad Schofield, Joyner ($2.40 fav) led throughout to score by 1-1/4 lengths over Up To Mischief ($3.70) and Pride is hopeful the winner can eventually measure up to Saturday grade.
"It might not come this preparation, but I think she will improve with each preparation, she is only lightly raced," Pride said.
"It was a really easy watch. It mapped that way and normally it doesn't go that way when it looks like that, everyone wants to upset what the map says, but that was a painless one."
Joyner provided Schofield with the middle leg of a treble after he took out the second race aboard the Bjorn Baker-trained Raikkonen and the penultimate event aboard the three-year-old's stablemate Midnight Diamond.
He finished third on San Jeronimo at his only other ride.
Pride and Schofield have enjoyed great success this spring, combining to capture the Epsom Handicap-King Charles III Stakes double with Ceolwulf.
