FEATURE
“I had my first gallop at Gawler racetrack one morning and the adrenalin rush was amazing. I’d never experienced anything like it. I was hooked. Mum and Dad were a bit concerned but they’ve always been by my side,” she said. race, you’d have to switch onto a different horse – you didn’t get any time to get to know them, you just swung on and had to go and race. I think I just got really used to jumping on any horse and getting a feel for them in the first two or three seconds. And that’s what you do in race riding.” When she was 14, Jamie’s future began to fall into place when she got a part- time job at the stables of trainer John MacMillan. By the age of 15, she knew her future lay with horses – specifically, the racing industry. Jamie convinced her parents, John and Karen, to let her leave school to start a jockey apprenticeship and they understood her passion and yearning to follow her dream. The couple are former speed skaters who chased their own dreams when they represented Australia at the 1992 Winter Olympics in the French Alps. During the first six months of her apprenticeship, Jamie rode 40 winners. In her first full season in 2012/13, she won the Adelaide Jockeys’ Premiership – the first apprentice to do so in almost 20 years.
By her 18th birthday, Jamie was celebrating 163 wins, and she won the Adelaide Jockeys’ Premiership another three times before a move to Melbourne in 2019. It was also in 2019 that she first rode in the Lexus Melbourne Cup, aboard Prince Of Arran. She didn’t win – but it left a mark. “Just to make it to the race was the most special thing. I crossed the line and just saw all the people in the big marquees, and it felt like I’d won the Melbourne Cup, the way the crowd cheered. That was the most incredible feeling – until, obviously, winning it.” Her winning streak continued. She became the first jockey – male or female – to ride 100 winners in a single Melbourne Metropolitan season when she ended the 2020/21 season with 105 first places. “That was probably one of my real favourite moments I’ve ticked off,” she said. In April 2021, Jamie also won the $3 million Group 1 Doncaster Mile at Randwick on Cascadian and became the first female rider anywhere in the world to clinch a Group 1 win for Godolphin. That year she became the only female to rank in the Thoroughbred Racing Commentary’s top 100 jockeys globally. The wins kept coming – but so did the challenges that tested Jamie’s mettle and showcased her resilience and dedication to her profession. In September 2021, Jamie was suspended by the Victorian Racing Tribunal for breaching strict COVID-19 lockdown rules during a gathering at an Airbnb rental on the Mornington Peninsula. Racing Victoria officials claimed she gave them misleading information about the incident and she was initially suspended for five months. Jamie appealed and the ban was reduced to three months. Her focus was on ‘moving forward’ and getting back to doing what she loved. In March 2023, Jamie faced a much tougher and potentially career-ending battle when she had a severe fall at Flemington. She tumbled from her mount, Flyball, during the Sires’ Produce Stakes and was left with bleeding to the brain and several breaks to her body.
Fancy a Gallop? | 19
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