Brett Prebble after winning the Michael Fox Handicap at Caulfield Racecourse on July 10, 2021 in Caulfield, Australia. (Jay Town/Racing Photos)
Brett Prebble has officially called time on his riding career.
Prebble, who last rode at Rosehill on February 24, released a statement this morning which reads:
‘It’s a real mix of emotions, but I know the time is right.
‘I’ve had the most incredible career. It’s not lost on me just how fortunate I am to leave my time in the saddle a fit, healthy, happy and content 46-year-old. Over four decades of riding I’ve seen way too many times just how incredibly dangerous, devastating and life-changing the job can be.
‘I’m extremely grateful, proud and genuinely satisfied with what I’ve been able to achieve both in Australia and internationally. A CV including a Melbourne Cup, Caulfield Cup, Golden Slipper, a fifteen-year career in Hong Kong with more than 800 winners including the Hong Kong Derby and basically every other major race there, as well as the most incredible Group 1 winners in Japan and Singapore.
“Reflecting on it, I know it’s real but it’s also totally surreal at the same time … It leaves me lost for words to be honest.”
That is as apt a summing up of the star hoop’s career as there can be.
All that remains is to fill in some details.
Prebble won three of the ‘Grand Slam’ races in Australia – the 2010 Golden Slipper on Crystal Lily, the 2012 Melbourne Cup on Green Moon and the 2021 Caulfield Cup on Incentivise.
That Caulfield cup success came a full twenty-six years after Prebble secured the first of his thirty-seven Group 1 wins aboard Daacha in the 1995 Sydney Cup.
From late 2002 to 2018, Prebble was based in Hong Kong where he won just about every feature race on offer in that highly competitive racing precinct.
Prebble set records which stood for a long time, and it took two special jockeys to surpass his high bar he had set.
In 1999, Prebble rode a record nine winners at the Melbourne Cup Carnival. That stood until 2021, when James McDonald rode 10 winners across the four days.
In 1999/2000, Prebble rode a record number of Melbourne metropolitan winners in a season, officially landing 99 and a half winners. That record stood until the 2000/21 season when Jamie Kah landed her century of wins.
While Brett Prebble’s name will no longer appear in the jockey ranks, the Prebble name will continue in racing as Brett’s son Tom is an apprentice jockey in Victoria.