With five winners from ten starters over the last four meetings, you would have to say that trainer Barry Lockwood and his trusted assistant Emma-Jane Vincent are working very well together.
Actually, they didn’t need this recent fifty-percent winning strike rate to prove that point. They have been a great team for some time, and it was no surprise when they took the decision to form a training partnership with that pending change first reported in the media many, many months ago.
The surprise was that when Victory Command held all challenges at bay at Eagle Farm on Saturday to give the Lockwood team their first winner of the new season, Vincent’s name still did not appear next to Lockwood’s name in the trainer’s column.
It has been a long wait, but now that training partnership is about to be ratified.
“We got approval from the BRC (Brisbane Racing Club) last week for EJ to train on the track in partnership with me,” said Lockwood.
“So now it will now just be a matter of getting it rubber-stamped through QRIC. They had her license already organised for her, but part of the process of getting the license was getting approval to train on the track at Eagle Farm … which has now been granted, and we are very thankful for that.
“She has been riding work for me for probably seven or eight years and has been working in her current position … as my assistant … probably for the last three or four years.
“She’s done her time. Now she’ll be in partnership with me. She deserves to have her name up there.”
Lockwood finished in twelfth place on the 2024/25 Brisbane Trainer’s Premiership. His winning strike-rate of 14.9 percent was the third highest in the Top 15 trainers, coming in behind David Vandyke (17.2 percent) and Tony Gollan (15.7 percent).
