BELLA YOUNGBERRY IS THE TOAST OF THE COAST

By Graham Potter | Wednesday, July 29, 2026

Bella Youngberry has etched her place in the history of the Gold Coast Turf Club by becoming the first female jockey to win both the Apprentice Jockey and the Jockeys’ Premiership in the same year.

Youngberry has taken out both of these titles for the 2025/26 season with a total of 34 winners … and she has also won the Queensland Provincial Apprentice Jockeys’ Premiership, just coming up shy of the half century with 49.5 winners.

Trainers Alan Chau, Bevan Johnson and Brett Bellamy all played their part to helping Youngberry progress in the early formative stages of her career, but it was the move to the stable of last season’s Gold Coast Trainers premiership winner Adam Campton that gave Youngberry the stage on which to really thrive and announce her arrival on the scene.

All of that would have meant little though, if that learning process wasn’t fully embraced by Youngberry herself … and it was, in no uncertain terms, with her Premiership wins putting an exclamation mark on all of the hard yards she has put in this season, her appetite to commit to, and target, an overall, on-going level improvement of her riding skill-set … and, not least, her more than a little touch of ambition.

Setting goals and working hard to get there is a big gun in the armoury of any apprentice, but, of course, getting opportunities … and making the most of them … is very much part and parcel of any success that might come a jockey’s way.

That is where going to the Adam Campton stable was worth its weight in gold for a rider determined to make her mark.

Campton, last season’s Gold Coast Trainers’ Premiership winner, not only commands a stable of some clout runner-wise, but his stables family environment provides the ideal backdrop to the superb, muti-faceted mentorship that Campton provides to such good effect to young riders who come through the stable door.

Youngberry hasn’t arrived at this juncture by chance.

“I'd love to take out the Gold Coast premiership,” Youngberry told Racing Queensland earlier this year when still trailing by a couple of wins. “I'd love to have a good crack at the Queensland provincial premiership, as well.”

Target set. Trigger pulled. Goal achieved. Boxes ticked.

Now Youngberry is set to raise the bar again as she prepares to pit her skills against the best riders in the state when she moves into the metropolitan riding arena in the new season … and with Youngberry’s mix of capability and ambition, it is a certainty that she will relish riding against, amongst others, the likes of Angela Jones and Cejay Graham, riders Youngberry has freely stated she admires.

And, on past evidence, chances are that move doesn’t come without a reset in the goal-setting department with the obvious target, within the next couple of seasons, being the Brisbane Apprentice Jockeys Premiership.

Youngberry will be well aware that Premiership was won this season by Jace McMurray … who also spent an invaluable period of time with the Campton stable on his way through to bigger things.

Those would be fair footsteps for Youngberry to follow, even for a rider who is busy successfully, tracking a notable path of her own.

The next chapter awaits.

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