I’ve been going to Adaminaby races for a long time, and often the fact that little changes is what brings people to this happy country race meeting each year.
But change is afoot – and I’m not just talking racehorses. Each year there is a new wave of jockeys with hopes and dreams to live out.
When I arrived this year there was a lonely figure walking the track. It wasn’t hard to tell that figure was a jockey. She was looking closely at the surface, trying to see where the ‘lanes’ were that might help one of her mounts. I hadn’t seen that before at Adaminaby. The jockey was Wagga’s Belinda Wright, and she has high hopes of making it in the big time. Her Wagga mentor, Brad Clark, is finessing her riding skills. She’s been in the saddle just four months and ridden two winners. You see, often big things come from small places – take Tommy Smith, the boy from Goolgowi who rode a horse to school and later became the world’s best horse trainer.