By Andrew Smith<\/p>\n
The ballroom of The Star in Brisbane is about as far away as you can get from the dusty racetracks in the North West of the Sunshine State.<\/p>\n
But for Keith Ballard, it was those country racecourses where he dedicated years of his life to the thoroughbred code that led to him being recognised on the national stage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The retired jockey was presented with the Spirit of Racing Award at the recent 2024\/25 Australian Racehorse of the Year Awards for his significant contribution to the industry.<\/p>\n
Ballard drew the curtain on a riding career spanning 55 years when he rode in his final race at Mount Isa in November 2024, at the age of 71.<\/p>\n
At the time, the\u00a0Mount Isa-based hoop was the oldest active jockey in Australia, having kicked off his riding career at Longreach in 1969.<\/p>\n
While he never rode a winner on a metropolitan track, the veteran claimed over 1,700 wins throughout his storied career including a Darwin Cup, Cleveland Bay Handicap in Townsville and a swag of regional Cup races.<\/p>\n
Ballard was joined by wife Denise and son Dan at the ceremony in Brisbane, along with long-term stablehand Tammy Parry.<\/p>\n
Speaking after being honoured on stage, the 72-year-old was his typical humble self as he explained his shock at hearing his name read out as this year\u2019s recipient.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Andrew Smith The ballroom of The Star in Brisbane is about as far away as you can…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124241,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-124240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}