ANGELA JONES' TEN DAY SUSPENSION CONFIRMED

By Graham Potter | Monday, July 7, 2025

There has been a bump in the road in Angela Jones’ quest to become the first female rider to win the Brisbane Jockey’s Premiership with Jones failing to get a ten-day suspension overturned at an appeal hearing.

Jones picked up the suspension for her ride on Floozie in the Group 1 Tatts Tiara on June 28.

Jones vigorous defended her case and disagreed with the stewards’ finding that she was eighty percent responsible for the interference caused during the incident, but her claims were to no avail, with the Appeal Board confirming the original penalty.

But Jones has not been sitting on her hands in the interim. On the contrary, she has put her foot hard on the accelerator in the time from the Tatts Tiara meeting to the Appeal Board finding, to stretch into a five-win lead in the Premiership over Emily Lang, her only rival for that honour.

In fact, the period from June 28 to July 5 could turn out to be the most telling week of all in the premiership chase.
During this time … Saturday to Saturday … Jones rode no less than seven winners from twenty-six metropolitan rides (a twenty-percent winning strike rate in a three-meeting blitz, courtesy of two doubles and a treble).

By way of contrast, Lang has gone winless on fifteen metropolitan rides over the same time period … so, it is possible we might already have witnessed a Premiership race winning move by Jones ... but it should be remembered that, overall, Lang had limited opportunities over the Winter Carnival (which has now ended, with the influx of senior, southern state-based jockeys, so it would surely be foolish to write Lang off just yet

Lang, who is an apprentice to the muti-premiership winning trainer Tony Gollan … she already has the Brisbane Apprentice Jockey’s Premiership sewn up … didn’t get to the top and lead the Premiership for so long … she was only being overtaken by Jones recently … without seriously knuckling down to the task in her first full season in town and that work ethic and her keenness to learn and develop her skills have helped push her to the front of the jockey ranks.

With Jones now watching from the sidelines, Lang will be in action at Ipswich on Wednesday where she has been booked for five rides … three of those for the Gollan stable, on horses who are all last start winners.

Suddenly that five-win lead for Jones doesn’t look quite as comfortable as it did at first glance.

The fine line on which jockeys ply their trade can be seen by the fact that the last time Lang rode at Ipswich she was involved in a four-horse fall and that any significant injury there could have ended her season abruptly and brought a premature end to the Premiership race.

Thankfully, Lang walked away from that incident and will be taking up the challenge again on Wednesday … and, while Jones’ hands might be pretty much tied at the moment, she does have the score on the board and it is still very much ‘race on.’

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