3 minute read
Final acceptances for this weekend's Birdsville Races, receiving national TAB and Sky Channel coverage for the first time, have resulted in 154 entries across 13 races on Friday and Saturday.
The 137th edition of Western Queensland's richest and most remote race meeting has drawn a total of 26 trainers and 22 jockeys from as far afield as Strathalbyn in South Australia, Nyngan in NSW, Queensland's Sunshine Coast and Darwin in the Northern Territory.
The 2018 Birdsville Cup winner Bevan Johnson from Toowoomba leads the training contingent with 31 race acceptors over the two days.
Johnson has three horses in contention for the TAB Birdsville Cup, which, this year offers a record-equaling $40,000 prizemoney.
Johnson is followed by Barcaldine trainer Todd Austin with 12 acceptances and Blackall trainer-jockey David Rewald with 11 acceptances..
Austin has attended more than 30 Birdsville Races as both a jockey and trainer.
He won the Birdsville Cup in 2013 with Primed and is hoping for another Cup victory this year with apprentice jockey Clayton Gallagher and booked for his veteran French Hussler.
Other trainers include former Birdsville Cup winners Rodney Robb from Nyngan and Craig Smith (Roma) with 10 acceptances each and the 2011 Birdsville Cup winner Jay Morris from Mount Isa with four acceptances.
South Australia Group 1 trainer David Jolly will also have a starter in the Birdsville Cup for the first time with five year-old gelding Fulton Street to be ridden by Terry Treichel.
Jolly's stables are located at Goolwa, a beachside training ground that has primed Fulton Street to gallop on the red desert sands of the Birdsville track.
There are six trainers from Mount Isa and three from Toowoomba and two each from Charleville and Darwin.
The jockeys include five-time Queensland country champion rider Dan Ballard from Mount Isa. This will be his ninth Birdsville Races.
Ballard, who notched 56 wins from 144 starts in 2018-19, wil ride against his veteran father, Keith Ballard who, at the age of 66, is Australia's oldest competing jockey.
Keith Ballard began riding as a 16 year-old some 50 years ago and has ridden previously in the Birdsville Races 15 times.
Another confirmed jockey with close family ties to the Birdsville Races is Dakota Johnson, daughter of trainer Bevan Johnson.
Dakota leads an exciting array of female jockeys and trainers at this year's Birdsville Races including trainers Denise Ballard (Mount Isa) and Tanya Parry (Julia Creek), Tamworth apprentice Wendy Peel and senior riders Rhiannon Payne, Cecily Eaton and Minonette Kennedy.
The Birdsville Races will be a fully funded country TAB meet for the first time in 2019, offering up a record overall prize-purse of $233,500 – an increase of 14 per cent from the carnival's total prizemoney in 2018.
Sky Racing will telecast all 13 races over the two days.