Sport
10 September, 2025
Debutant claims a fairytale win
A new face was thrust into the racing spotlight at Warracknabeal’s Sheep Hills Cup on Saturday after Stawell’s Jade Smith picked up fairytale win in her debut race.
The 18-year-old’s epic win aboard Spylark was the sort of thing dreams are made of and has been the talk of the local racing fraternity all week.
For Jade, she has taken the attention in her stride.
“I’ve gotten a lot of messages from a lot of people,” she said.
“I’ve spent my whole life thinking about that day, it was weird finally just walking into the races, sitting with my bag in the jockey’s room and everything like that.
“I couldn’t have asked for it to work out any better really, it was a big build up for a very long time.”
Spylark, trained by Jade’s father Dane, had been in decent form leading into the cup, which gave Jade a lot of confidence leading into the race.
“She had been running really well in the starts leading up to it, I was saying if there was anyone else on her I’d probably say she could win,” Jade said.
“We knew she was going there to run a nice race, it was just whether I could get the job done on her or not.”
Jade has been refining her craft through Racing Victoria’s education program, as part of the Rider Development Squad and now as a member of the Apprentice Jockey Training Program.
“I got accepted into the program at the start of this year and it’s taken this many months to get up to being ready to race ride,” she said.
Dane had the Sheep Hills Cup circled on the calendar for Spylark, and it turned out to be the perfect race for Jade to make her debut.
“We had that race picked out for her anyway,” said Jade, “She was such a perfect first-race ride because she knows what she’s doing, she was going to look after me.”
“I know her so well because I ride her every day, everything just kind of worked out perfectly.”
Having grown up immersed in the world of horseracing, Jade always had an ambition to race competitively.
“Honestly, for as long as I can remember, I used to ride around on my little ponies and I always thought I was going to be a jockey,” Jade said.
“I never really thought of anything else.”
The thrill of picking up a win on debut is a memory Jade says she’ll always treasure, especially to have done it aboard the horse she has been riding every day for so long.
“I didn’t cry which I thought I was going to,” she said.
“I just pulled up with her and I was thinking she’s gonna be my favourite for a very long time.
“I just couldn’t believe that it had actually worked out like that.”
For father Dane, he was over-the-moon to see his daughter ride to victory on Spylark.
“It sort of went as planned, we went through it plenty of times and it worked out exactly how we planned, it was terrific,” Dane said.
“Proud probably doesn’t describe it to tell you the truth, it was quite amazing.
“The hard work she’s put in to get there and all the rest of it, there’s probably not a word that can describe how proud I was.”
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