This is going to come down to a really close call.
The treble Angela Jones rode at Doomben on Wednesday took her total number of metropolitan wins in Brisbane to fifty-four, now just four winners behind the Premiership leader Emily Lang … this, with just a month-and-a-half of the season left to run.
This battle is an intriguing one with both riders having a close association with the runaway, multi-premiership winning trainer Tony Gollan, whose jockey selection over the coming weeks could well decide this season’s Jockey’s Premiership.
All three of Jones’s wins on Wednesday came on Gollan trained horses.
Lang, who is only in her first season in town, … and what a season she is having … is the Gollan stable apprentice who has grown in both expertise and confidence as the season has progressed.
Apart from the likely, upcoming close battle with Jones down the home stretch for the overall Brisbane jockey’s Premiership, Lang has a comfortable fourteen-win lead over Bailey Wheeler in the Brisbane Apprentice Jockey’s Premiership … so she is almost certain to take at least one title home at the season’s close.
Jones, for her part, has been a revelation since arriving in town. She took no prisoners when taking out the 2022/23 Brisbane Apprentice Jockey’s Premiership crown with her total of 42 winners when riding as an apprentice being 30 winners more than her nearest rival.
Like Lang is going to do, Jones achieved that landmark Premiership win in her first full season in town.
In that 2022/23 season Jones actually rode a grand total of seventy-nine winners, a mark which saw her placed third behind Jimmy Orman and Ben Thompson … who both are currently riding in Hong Kong … in the overall Brisbane Jockey’s Premiership … and Jones has kept up the good work since then, finishing fourth in the 2023/24 Jockey’s Premiership and now she is sitting in second … chasing Lang … in this year’s premiership.
To date Lang has had 448 metropolitan rides this season for 58 wins at a winning strike-rate of 12.9 percent. Jones has had 443 rides for 54 winners at a strike rate of 12.2 percent.
The bottom line is both are worthy contenders for the title and are very well matched … as shown by the statistics mentioned above.
Two very important major points remain.
The one certainty is that one of them … either Lang or Jones … will create a new page in history by becoming the first woman to win the Brisbane Jockey’s Premiership.
And …
If Lang is crowned the winner, she will become just the second apprentice to win the Brisbane Jockey’s Premiership title since Michael Rodd and Zac Purton landed that singular honour back in 2001/2002 and 2002/3 respectively. Those were big footsteps to follow.
It took seventeen years before another apprentice, Bayley Nothdurft, was able to take out the title. Nothdurft was Brisbane’s leading rider in the 2019/20 season, which was a success gained, at least in part, through the strong supports he received from the Tony Gollan stable.
Nothdurft is currently a stable foreman with the Tony Gollan stable, where he works directly with Emily Land and Angela Jones on an almost daily basis.
This time around, whichever way it goes, they are keeping the premiership all in the family.
