ANGELA JONES BOUNCES BACK IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE

By Graham Potter | Sunday, September 20, 2026

Premiership winning jockey Angela Jones made a welcome return to the winners’ enclosure at Eagle Farm on Saturday … aboard the Tony Gollan trained Graffitude … and the moment was as much about what Jones experienced in the three-quarters of an hour leading up to the race as it was about it being her first winning ride in four-and-a-half months following an injury enforced layoff which kept her out of the whole of the lucrative Queensland Winter carnival.

One race earlier, things looked they had gone horribly wrong for the Jones when her mount, Termagant, suddenly reared up high in the parade ring, skewed to the left and went down with an almighty crash propelling Jones out of the saddle and into the ground with some force.

Jones, instinctively, immediately got to her feet but, once safe, she was told to lie down so that she could be assessed. That was a worrying time, but, soon enough, Jones was given the all clear to walk back to the Jockey’s Room.

In essence, that was her first win for the day!

It would have been no surprise if Jones had been stood down from her rides for the rest of the meeting, but she is made of sterner stuff than that, and she duly reappeared to take the ride on Graffitude in the next race.

The rest, as they say, is history.

“I’ll certainly be quite sore come the morning, but that is tomorrow’s problem,” said Jones after her win, a ride she never hesitated in taking.

“After being out for so long, you don’t want to miss any more time. If you feel ok, it is always better to get back in the saddle straight away.

“I knew I had a nice ride (Graffitude) coming up. I knew he was well educated and would be well behaved and would give me a confident feeling, and that he did.

“Sometimes you ride better when you are not overthinking it anyway.

“The first win back was important, for sure," continued Jones. "You always want to get the monkey off your back and show everybody who is watching you that you are back to one hundred percent … riding at your best … and have picked up where you left off.

“Four months off is long time, but I’d say I’m pretty much one hundred percent fit. Obviously. I’m always keeping busy. You are not going to keep me on a couch, so I did keep myself pretty busy during my time out.

“I’ve done probably over a month of trackwork before I could do trials. If anything, I felt like I was overdone coming back, rather than underdone, so coming back to race riding has been easy fitness-wise.”

Jones famously became the first woman to win the Brisbane Jockeys’ Premiership title in the 2024/25 racing season and, in spite of having her run at her title defence curtailed by three months through injury at the end of last season, she still finished in a highly creditable third place on the ladder.

This time around Jones has already lost one-and-a-half months of the new season, so has started on the backfoot, but talent and determination can take you a long way and nobody will be counting Jones out of anything right now.

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