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A successful season has got even better for apprentice Emily Lang, who brought home her first metropolitan winner in her fifth metropolitan ride at Doomben yesterday.
That is always a memorable moment in any rider’s career, and it was one that was always going to come sooner rather than later for Lang under the astute guidance of her masters, co-trainers Steven O’Dea and Matt Hoysted.
Lang already has both the Queensland Provincial Jockeys’ Premiership and the Queensland Provincial Apprentice Jockeys’ Premiership locked up … having ridden 73.5 winners in that category to date at an impressive 17.3 percent winning strike rate … so the step up to metropolitan level has been made off a solid foundation of race riding education.
It was only appropriate that Lang’s first city win came aboard an O’Dea and Hoysted trained runner in the form of Moonfleet who won, with Lang in the saddle for the first time, at her third career start.
Just a week earlier, Lang had come excruciatingly close to putting that significant win on the board, finishing second on two occasions at the May 29 meeting at Doomben aboard Hold On Honey and Cartwheels … both O’Dea and Hoysted trained horses … who went down by only 0.30 lengths and an agonising 0.02 length margin respectively.
“It’s all about Emily today,” said Matt Hoysted post-race.
“This will be the first of many. She is definitely a star on the rise.
“She is a nice young girl with a level head. We’ve just tried to take her the right way … not rush her. She probably could have come to town earlier, but we were just making sure we were ironing everything out before she did.
“She’ll have a pretty big impact next season.”
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