PIPER WINS PREMIERSHIP, GIVES GAME AWAY

By Graham Potter | Thursday, August 6, 2009

Love her or hate her - and there are people in both camps - the feat of landing the Sunshine Coast Jockeys Premiership against the odds will always stand as a testament to the strength of character of apprentice jockey Jana Piper.

If ever there was a roller-coaster ride to success - this was it. Piper’s season was a constant battle with adversity and animosity during which time personal challenges complicated her cause, but she prevailed to win the title under tremendous pressure - rubber-stamping the achievement by booting home winners in her last two rides of the season.

Then she gave the game away.

Piper has chosen not to re-new her license for the new season and has left the sport on her own terms. She might have gone out on a high, but Piper’s views on the racing are more sobering than euphoric. Candid to the point which polarises her profile, Piper’s personal opinions cover appreciation of those who have helped her, scorn at those whose behaviour she feels should be questioned and criticism of protocols she believes should be improved.

This is Jana Piper in her own words.

“The Premiership was important. I wanted it. I wanted it ... but it wasn’t the end of the world if I didn’t win. But, yeah, if I didn’t have that ... if I didn’t have something to keep driving me ... I normally can’t stay up that long. Like I’ve only got a good three months in me and then I get tired and I stop trying and I get fat.

“You must understand that I had no motivation at the start to become a race rider. There was none at all. I was happy doing what I wanted to do - just riding work and learning more about horses. I was quite happy poking along and then (trainer) Troy Hall got me ... he badgered me for six months, saying, you can do it (race riding). He had a lot of confidence in me. In the end I said yeah, and I signed up with Troy.

“I was with him for the first six months of my race riding. Then I transferred to Lloydie (Brazier) and I’ve been with him ever since. Troy is a very good trainer. He is a great trainer ... I have to say he is a fantastic racehorse trainer, but as a master ... he had a big team. He had just too many horses and too many things going on for him to be able to concentrate on my riding. So I left.

“With Lloydie, he had a smaller team and he had time to pay attention to my riding. I needed somebody there at the races everyday with me. Like, he is here from the first to the last race if I’m riding. You know, just in case I end up in the (Stewards) room, he’s there. Also, if he sees me stuff up in a race he is the first one down there going, arrrgh.

“The competitive edge did build in me as I went along ... I am a bit feisty ... but, even though I’m a bit of a fighter and I’m pretty stubborn, without Lloydie behind me there is no way I would have kept riding. Everytime I threw my boots and the wall and said, that’s it, I’ve had enough, he’d drag me back the next week and say, get on your feet, stop being a sook ... get going, you can do this!

“It was a case of tough love, but he was also soft as well - at the right times. He knew just the right balance to keep someone like me on track. Not many people know the right balance, you know. He knew when to push and when not to push. No, he was great. I wouldn’t have done it without him, that is for sure.

“When you’ve got somebody batting for you and when you’ve got somebody one hundred percent behind you, you can’t lose.

“You know Lloydie was taking horses to the bush for me when I was still apprenticed to Troy. Every weekend, Lloydie would take one to the bush so I could get experience and then as soon as I started riding in the provincials Mick Mair hasn’t stopped giving me winners. Troy got me started and a couple of other trainers have been there, but nobody ... like no one ... has been there from the start to the finish ... no one except Lloydie and Mick.

“The best moment ... my first winner for Lloydie. Its name was Arsang. It was pretty emotional. It was a mongrel of a horse too. But my biggest win would have to be when I won a $50 000 race on Devastating for John Collins when they first opened the Cushion Track. Slick Trick’s last win was also great. Again it was pretty emotional because he was such a special horse ... and also to win for Mick Mair. Like Mick Mair played a huge, huge part. If it wasn’t for Mick I wouldn’t have won this premiership.

“The hardest thing was dealing with the Stewards ... it really was. They have their own agenda and I think it will be found out that Queensland racing and the way they train apprentices is wrong. They don’t offer the right training at the start. They gave me my license to ride in a race and I hadn’t even pulled a stick on a horse before.

“I had to do twenty official trials to get my license and I didn’t even have to pull the stick. I didn’t have to do anything. All they told me to do was to sit really still and look pretty and then you’ll get your license. So that’s what I did. I punched twenty around. I had my trials done in about ten weeks. Twelve weeks later I was riding in a race.

“They need to look at the way they train apprentices. Have a look at our apprentices compared to New South Wales and Victorian apprentices. Have a look at them and have a look at our apprentices having their first ride in a race ... and that wouldn’t pass as an apprentice.

“People can get lost and fall through the cracks and we can lose a lot of riders ... potentially good riders that have just had the wrong base put on them. Like, look how long it took me ... you know, eighteen months of riding ... I should be riding in town and riding winners in town, but I’m not. I’m a provincial jockey. You know, if I’d been trained right from the start I’d be further ahead. No doubt at all. Of course there are riders who make it. I’m just saying there could be more ... should be more.

“The battle with my weight was also hard. One day Lloydie and I totalled the fines I’d received for being overweight and things and I think it came to about $7500. But, you know, weight is an issue in every jockey’s life. You just have to live with it.

“As far as the female rider thing goes, no, you just don’t get accepted. The male riders ... some of them are just disgraceful. They speak to woman disgustingly. You wouldn’t ever hear them speaking to their mother or somebody else’s mother or somebody else’s wife like they do.

“I said to one rider who was speaking to me disgracefully, how would you like it if someone in your wife’s office spoke to her like that? Don’t speak to me like that!

“It gets worse on the track, but out there at least it is in the heat of battle and with my particular nature ... I am a bit feisty ... I just give it back to them. In the end, they just treat you with respect - but you have to demand it.

“The future? That’s means family at the moment. That’s all I’ve got on the cards. I’m semi-retired. If I want to be a rider, I want to be the best. I want to win. I don’t want to be half-committed. That is why it had to come to an end.

“For me, I’m finished with race riding. I did what I wanted to do.”

For final closure on the story, Jana Piper’s master, trainer Lloyd Brazier has the last word.

“There was a lot of pain during the season, but the end result was great ... not for my sake, just for Jana’s sake,” said Brazier.

“I love Jana. She is a beautiful lady ... but she lost it a couple times during the season. When she is focussed she is brilliant. She is fearless. She is a great work-rider. She can do things with horses nobody else can do, I promise you, only because she is fearless. I could see her ability from the moment she started riding work for me and he has been learning race riding ever since.

“When she loses focus though, when she has outside distractions, it gets bad. I have had to say to her, Jana you are not focussing. Things are happening in your brain which just weren’t happening before. I used to talk to her every day about it. I used to say, Jana I can see you going downhill. You are not focussing and you are not going to get anywhere if you don’t. I said you not doing what you have to ... even though you might think you are, you’re not. Where she was staying, having to travel a long way to work at ridiculous hours of the morning, it was all having a negative effect on her riding.

“She also had a lot of hard times with the Stewards. Now, let’s get this right. She did a lot of things wrong, but then again she appealed, I’m not sure four or five times, and won them. You know, so there was a little bit of both there. Like even though Jana was doing a lot of things wrong, which was only inexperience plus trying too hard, it was a problem. I appealed them myself and even though we got the result, she still had to go through an unpleasant process.

“You know, I worked very hard at it. I used to go home and watch the videos. I watched every ride. I’d sit down with Jana and go through the videos. I wasn’t only doing that to help her ride properly. I was doing that to keep her focussed. But then it got to the stage where other things were messing with her head and I couldn’t keep her focussed.

“I knew she was going to give it away soon. I didn’t want to know. Other influences made her reach her decision. If her circumstances were different I honestly don’t think she’d be giving up.

“I feel let down because I really wanted to make her the leading apprentice in Brisbane and I really thought we could do that within the next eight months. She still has a few things to sort out with her riding ... a few things I had to sort out with her ... and I had them ready to sort out, but now it’s not going to happen.

“Having said that, I didn’t try to change her mind when she finally made her decision. I said, if you are not focussed you are not going to be good enough to do what I want you to do in town and I said, until you can be one hundred percent focussed, you’ve done the right thing.

“All that aside, the bottom line is that it is a pretty big thing for that young girl to win that championship. It just goes to how much talent she has. Jana has got a lot of talent and she earned that Premiership the hard way. She deserves her success.”

More articles