Sport
5 February, 2025
Immediate action is needed with just one local jockey fit and firing
Matt Nicholls outlines the immediate issues facing the North West racing industry.
Meetings will be lost from the North West racing calendar in 2025 if immediate changes are not made to the scheduling.
Once-a-year programs at Boulia, Gregory Downs and Maxwelton are facing an immediate threat, although several Saturday meetings scheduled for Mount Isa will also be under pressure.
Why? Because of a lack of local jockeys in 2025.
The first race meeting of 2025 is scheduled for February 22 at the Mount Isa Race Club and, at the time of writing, just one jockey is available to ride.
That man is 55-year-old Jason Babarovich.
Of the other Mount Isa-based jockeys, Terry Hill is in serious doubt to ride this year due to complications from an injury sustained in 2024, while Dan Ballard is all but retired, having injured his hand at the beginning of last year.
With Keith Ballard also retired, it leaves just Babarovich and Jason Hoopert as the local jockeys who will be available to ride this year.
Hoopert, 52, is still recovering from a nasty fall late last year, but will be available to ride in March or April.
While Racing Queensland will help subsidise the cost of flying jockeys to Mount Isa and the North West, finding enough jockeys to make the trip will also present a problem, with most clubs racing on Saturdays.
The only obvious solution is to start switching race dates away from Saturdays.
This will fly in the face of tradition – and put pressure on volunteers and staff – but it’s perhaps the only option the North West has in 2025.
Boulia, for example, should be pushing to race on Easter Sunday, rather than the Saturday, to allow jockeys riding at Barcaldine that weekend to make the trip west and pick up a second book of rides.
Gregory Downs Jockey Club, which will compete with meetings at Mount Garnet and Barcaldine on its traditional May long weekend, might be better placed to race a day later, on the Sunday, if it wants to get enough jockeys for its program.
Mount Isa Race Club also has the option of moving races to Sundays or Friday afternoons in order to reduce the pressure on jockey numbers.
In recent times, Longreach has moved some meetings to a Sunday with good success.
Racing Queensland, still reeling from the resignation of long-time country racing boss Col Truscott, can’t sit by and allow race meets to be called off, or run with tiny fields, in 2025.
The flow-on effects would be devastating for the North West industry.
If trainers and owners can’t get jockeys for their horses, they will simply walk away.
One leading Mount Isa trainer has already stopped getting new horses in his stable due to a lack of jockeys.
For many communities across Queensland, the annual race meeting is the biggest event of the year.
Without a sustainable industry, those events will soon be gone.
Camooweal is still feeling the pinch of losing its annual race meeting after Racing Queensland deemed its track was unsafe.
Mount Isa Race Club president Jay Morris has the difficult task of wearing two hats as both the head of the region’s main racetrack and as a horse trainer.
He acknowledged that jockeys would be hard to come by this year and that the club was already looking at options.
“As a committee, we’ve thought about getting an apprentice here to help the trainers with trackwork and racing,” Morris said.
“But it’s easier said than done. A lot of young people don’t want to move out here.
“I think we’ll be able to get jockeys to fly in for meetings because we can offer them full books and the chance to ride winners, but it will be hard for some clubs on certain days to get jockeys.”
Racing Minister Tim Mander has called for a review into racing in Queensland, but the results are unlikely to arrive in time to make any meaningful change this year.
North West Weekly calls for both the Racing Queensland CEO and Minister to make a trip to Mount Isa for an industry roundtable to address the issue and make changes to this year’s calendar before we start losing meetings.
And clubs, consider getting on the front foot and look at shifting away from Saturdays.