FOUR OUT OF FOUR SO FAR AS BAYLEE NOTHDURFT MAKES A SPARKLING RETURN TO THE SADDLE

By Graham Potter | Sunday, September 6, 2020

Brisbane Premiership winning jockey Baylee Nothdurft’s last ride for the 2019/20 season, before it ended prematurely with a smashed jaw, was a winner, kicking off the impressive winning sequence of the Tony Gollan trained Run For Glory.

Now, while Run For Glory was winning for the fourth successive time at Doomben on Saturday, Nothdurft was back landing a confident treble at the Gold Coast carving out a notable sequence of his own.

Nothdurft only resumed from an effective five week injury enforced layoff at Ipswich on Thursday where he enjoyed an armchair success on the four-year-old gelding The Move who won with absolute ease, an effort aptly summed up by the 6.30 winning margin.

The Move is trained by Tony Gollan, whose stable was instrumental in helping Nothdurft, then still an apprentice, make huge strides in his profession last season which ultimately culminated in the young rider becoming the first apprentice to win the Brisbane Jockey’s Premiership since Michael Rodd and Zac Purton back in 2002 and 2003 respectively.

Nothdurft’s ride at Ipswich was his first as a senior rider and he was quick to add to that win when saluting three times from three rides at the Gold Coast on Saturday.

Some will point out that, like The Move, Niewand (trained by Stuart Kendrick), Aventurine and Still Invincible (both Tony Gollan trained runners) were all short-priced strong fancies … but the fact remains they still had to be guided safely to victory.

So, since returning, Nothdurft has a one hundred percent record with those four winners from four rides.

Has any former apprentice won on their first four senior rides?

Somebody will have to put their head in the record books to come up with the answer to that one … and, remember, this sequence has still to be broken.

Speaking at Ipswich on Thursday, Northdurft said, “I’ve only been riding trackwork for a week. I’ll take it slowly … get the weight down and then head back into town.

“I’m allowing that it will probably take a couple of weeks to both get my weight down and get back fully into it. I am a senior jockey now, so we’ll see how we go.”

It seems it is going pretty well!

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