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History-making Townsville Cup winning jockey Chelsea Jokic spearheaded a day of domination for women at Townsville's Cluden Park on Friday.
Chelsea Jokic, who also holds a trainers licence, trained two winners and rode a double on a profitable return to the scene of her 2018 Cup win on Lady Skills when she became the first Townsville-based female jockey to win the Cup.
Jokic, who has been based at Beaudesert for the past three years, brought four of her team to Townsville "for a short break" and collected with Inclusion and Tierra Del Fuego (ridden by Justin Stanley) over 1200 metres.
She also piloted Castile for trainer Matthew Mcguire to victory in the Open Handicap over 1609 metres.
The 27-year-old Jokic said it was good to be back on familiar territory and was impressed with the redeveloped facilities at Cluden.
"It's a lot different to when I was up here a few years ago," she said.
"Particularly the jockeys' room and new horse stalls."
Jokic has been regularly riding winners at the Gold Coast and South East Queensland meetings this season as she is building a strong team of gallopers at Beaudesert.
She is currently stabling her horses at the property owned by the "Ares syndicate" which has been left vacant while trainer Lindsay Hatch has most of those horses in his Toowoomba stables.
"The track here is in beautiful order and gives every horse a chance," Jokic said.
"I'll be up here for a few more weeks having a break.
"I had virtually decided to give riding away and concentrate on training but I still enjoy the thrill of race riding against just doing the mundane track work and barrier trials and the like.
"But, I don't have any troubles with my weight, I am still able to easily ride at 54 kilograms so I'll see what happens when I go back home."
Jokic continued on her winning way at Cairns' Cannon Park on Sunday when she landed the Benchmark 58 Handicap with another of her visiting team Tropics.
Ridden by Chris Whiteley, Tropics lumped the 60kg top weight to finish strongly in the straight and grab Yarralinda near the line.
Jokic added a second placing to her riding weekend on Ramblin' Man after a heady front-running ride and was grabbed in the closing stages by Ten Schilling piloted by Lacey Morrison.
Meanwhile, Georgie Holt increased her lead in the Townsville trainers' premiership when the Steven O'Dea owned Ciao Bicky added another paling to the picket fence with his fourth successive win in a fighting comeback in the Benchmark 65 Handicap over 1400 metres.
Ciao Bicky was headed by the favourite Magnetic Drive half-way up the straight but fought hard under jockey Jackson Murphy to rally for a tough win.
"He's pretty strong in the run to the line and Jackson certainly got the best out of him," Holt said.
Joanna Hassett trained her second winner for the month when Dawn Strike scored an overdue win over 1200 metres.
Jockey Lacey Morrison rounded off the day for the females when she piloted Dawn Too Good to an all-the-way win in the Benchmark 70 Handicap over 1000 metres.
Dawn Too Good is part-owned by trainer Bill Kenning's partner Julie Bell, along with members of the "Bubbles Syndicate", who had another reason to celebrate following on from their success of Shepherd Of Fire at the previous Cluden meeting.
Kenning said Dawn Too Good appreciated the fast speed and fought on strongly to withstand the flying finish of Proximate Cause.
"He just loves it when he can set his own pace and Lacey Morrison rode him perfectly," Kenning said.
"We'll press on with him now and see if he can measure up during the winter carnival races."
The win took Kenning to outright second spot on the premiership ladder with 13 wins for the season.
