You would have expected James McDonald to have dined with the It's A Dundeel camp, headed by financial whizz John Messara whose brainchild is the A$12 million Championships and who put together the A$10 million syndicate to purchase It's A Dundeel, thereby winning the crown jewel of the whole stunning experience.
That was guaranteed to be the best party in town.
McDonald chose instead to have dinner with Rising Romance's trainer Donna Logan.
That might not sound like much, but it tells you plenty about McDonald's character and how it is immune to being dented by glitz and glamour.
In Australia particular street corners are littered with the skeletons of extremely talented former young riders who couldn't see past the next party.
They buy a Mercedes as their first car and throw away thousands of dollars during nights on the town.
This is, seemingly, never going to end - but it always does. Most end up in menial jobs.
McDonald is made of different stuff. He was brought up among the animals of a Waikato farm, a long way from the champagne and party drugs of a Sydney nightclub and the benefits of that are now obvious.
He is polite to a fault yet never stops thinking.
And, he keeps his promises. He promised the Rising Romance camp he would win the Oaks for them seconds after admitting to the worst big-race ride of his career in the filly's lead up race.
Here's another example of his remarkable maturity, when he came in from that lead up race he didn't reach for that solid volume, the Jockeys' Excuse Book, he put his hands in the air and said: "I stuffed up".
Donna Logan was delighted McDonald joined her team for dinner.
"I was so proud to have James in the saddle, we go back a long way. Dean [training partner Dean Logan] and I have always supported him and in return he's supported us."
A peach of a ride doesn't quite cover McDonald's brilliance on Rising Romance. He got the filly hooked up in trouble at the back of the field in the lead-up, but this time he threw her out of the barriers to sit three places back on the rail.
From that point it was virtually game over with the hot favourite, Lucia Valentina, close to last on a day when it was extremely difficult to make ground.
Rising Romance won with ease, making a nonsense of the lucrative $5.20 tote price compared with the original $2.60 for Lucia Valentina which, stunningly and surprisingly, came in late to $1.80.
It was a strange ride on the favourite and trainer Chris Lees made a little more sense of it by declaring afterwards that it had been the plan to drop back early. That made little sense and Lees admitted to being devastated.
Rising Romance goes out for a spell in great shape; Saturday's race having taken nothing out of her.
"She lost just 4kg as a result of the race - nothing," said Logan yesterday.
"She was pushing us out of the way to get to her feed this morning."
She weighs in normally at 485kg, heavy for a filly, yet looks slightly underdeveloped.
"She will furnish up out of sight in the next six months," said Logan.
McDonald told Logan he feels Rising Romance could be a Cox Plate or Caulfield Cup horse in the spring.
"We'll see, it might be that it's a year too early for her." says the trainer.
The filly's owner John Carter declared after the win that he had been fleeced for a lot of money by the woman who did the horse accounts in his business.
He didn't say how much, but gave some indication when he suggested that the A$1 million race "made up for it".
Carter has a lot to look forward to with Rising Romance's racetrack exploits and residuals in the broodmare paddock.
