Sport
23 October, 2024
That'll do: After 55 years, Keith Ballard announces retirement date
Man had just landed on the moon when Keith Ballard rode his first winner in 1969.
You could write a book about Keith Ballard’s life in racing – big wins, bad falls, major milestones – the 71-year-old has done it all in a career spanning across six decades.
Australia’s oldest jockey will hand over the mantle next month when he officially calls it quits at Julia Creek’s McIntyre Park.
He’ll miss the final meeting of the North West racing season due to a family commitment, putting a dampener on a romantic farewell in Mount Isa on November 30.
Instead, he’ll be sent off at the popular Julia Creek beach party race meeting a fortnight earlier.
Keith couldn’t be talked into finishing at Mount Isa and insisted he wanted to help the industry as much as he could before he pulls up stumps.
“Tanya (Parry) will need riders at Julia Creek and I’ll be available so I’ll ride there,” he said.
The legendary bush jockey, who was in 2021 inducted into the Queensland Racing Hall of Fame along with his wife Denise and son Dan, said he hadn’t fully contemplated retirement.
“Oh, look, it hasn’t hit me yet, but it’s going to be a pretty empty bloody vessel,” Keith said.
“All I’ve ever done in my life is bloody work. I’m filling a bit of spare time in now, chasing grandkids around.
“I’m just going to have to do more and more of that.”
Man had just landed on the moon – yes, just one month earlier – when Keith rode in his first race at Longreach in August 1969.
In a 55-year span, he’s ridden 1777 winners from 9558 rides – a superb record when you consider Ballard has been a part-time jockey with a full-time job for virtually all of his riding career.
“We used to race 56 times a year in Mount Isa – every Saturday and every public holiday,” the champion jockey said.
“A lot of the race meetings only had four races, though.”
There’s no doubt Ballard’s strike rate has taken a hit in the last decade.
Not only has age started to catch up with him, but he also gave up many of his best winning chances to son Dan, also a champion jockey.
With Denise training plenty of good horses over the years, Dan, the heavier jockey, would usually get the first call if he could make the weight. Keith said he was happy to make the sacrifice, saying his son was one of the best jockeys he had seen in the North West.
With Keith’s retirement, there is every chance we could be seeing the last Ballard ride in the region.
Dan has been out of the saddle since the start of the year with a hand injury and doesn’t appear to be rushing back.
Trainer Denise will stick around, at least for another year, as she has made the commitment to train a handful of horses that will still be going around in 2025.
Which means Keith will almost certainly keep riding trackwork most mornings.
Not that he really minds, knowing that all trainers in the North West are finding it hard to get riders to work their horses.
“Oh, look, 90 per cent of our population lives on the coast and (Racing Queensland) are assisting all these jockeys to fly in, and it does nothing to grow our local industry,” he said.
“It does make it tough for trainers to get their horses worked – right now there’s only four people who ride trackwork here in the mornings.”
Keith said he would retire from an industry that he has loved.
“I don’t think racing owes me anything; I’ve been well paid for everything I do,” he said.
“Riding fees are $250 apiece at the moment. When I started you got $6 a head.
“The young fella (Tom Orr) who won the QTIS race the other day in Cloncurry made a motza for riding that winner.”
As someone who won virtually every feature race in the North West, including a Birdsville Cup, Darwin Cup and a Cleveland Bay Handicap in Townsville, Keith said he would retire with just one regret.
“I would have loved to have ridden a metropolitan winner. I only had half a dozen goes at riding one in town and they’ve been horses from here that have gone away,” he said.
The 71-year-old said the best horse he had ridden was a massive English gelding called Mr Ziesel, who was trained out of Adelaide but raced all over Australia.
Following a race in Darwin, Mr Ziesel was sent to Mount Isa and was “heavily backed” in the betting ring before winning easily.
He was then sent to Townsville and won the Cleveland Bay on what was Keith’s 29th birthday.
The champion sprinter ended up racing in the Group 1 Newmarket Handicap at Flemington, such was his talent on the turf.
North West Weekly will publish a series of stories about the racing career of Keith Ballard in the countdown to his retirement. You can send in your memories of Keith to share via email: editor@northwestweekly.com.au