“The Timing Is Right”: All-Time Great Brett Prebble Retires On His Terms

FEW JOCKEYS RODE WITH the competitive intensity of Brett Prebble, so when he awoke one morning last week and didn’t feel the competitive fire that has driven him to greatness over the past three decades, the Australian knew ‘it was time’ to retire.

“I was going to go and ride in some trials on Monday and Tuesday, and I’d just tested a horse for a Hong Kong client, but I just woke up Friday morning and I thought, ‘I don’t want to do it anymore’,” Prebble told Idol Horse. “It was really weird, actually, I just thought ‘it’s not for me anymore’ and I didn’t want to put myself through it all again.”

Prebble had taken a hiatus from riding over the past few months but was physically prepared for another comeback.

“I’m fit, I train five days a week and I’m really conscious of my health,” he said. “So, physically, there’s not an issue, no issue with weight or anything like that. It’s more about just the timing. The timing is right.

“It’s not lost on me how fortunate I am to leave my time in the saddle fit, healthy, content and satisfied as a 46-year-old. I’ve seen way too many times just how incredibly dangerous and challenging the life of a jockey can be”.

Few, if any, riders have compiled as impressive a record as Prebble’s in two major jurisdictions. Foreign riders may have achieved more in Hong Kong, and others more in Australia, but nobody in the modern era achieved more in both.

Prebble was a prodigious talent. He left school and started riding at age 15 with trainer Terry O’Sullivan in country Victoria before he transferred to John Meagher at Flemington and won three Melbourne apprentice titles. He won two Melbourne premierships before the age of 24, one of them a record-setting 99.5-win effort in 2000 that stood for more than 20 years. He rode a record nine winners over the four days of the Flemington carnival twice, in 1999 and 2000 – a record that stood until 2021 when James McDonald rode 10 across the four days – but it was in Hong Kong that Prebble found a ‘bubble-like’ jurisdiction and a turbo-charged, around-the-clock city that matched his own intensity.

“I went to visit Damien Oliver in Hong Kong when I was 18 and I still remember flying into old Kai Tak Airport, among the skyscrapers in Kowloon and my eyes were just popping out of my head,” Prebble said.

“I then rode in Singapore for a little while before moving to Hong Kong full time at 24. I got the bug really early for Asian racing. I just loved that environment, the atmosphere and the level of engagement. In Hong Kong there were something like 30 racing papers. It was just out of control. The city itself is amazing and I loved the style of living. Everyone involved in Hong Kong racing and a lot of people in the city are highly successful. It’s a privilege to be a jockey there.

“I think the concentrated and condensed sort of racing there, just twice per week, suited me, it makes every race a great contest.”

Prebble’s career should not be defined by his rivalry with 13-time championship winner Douglas Whyte – to whom he finished second in the championship to six times – but their bitter battles, which brought out the best in both riders, should not be forgotten either. The bouts between Prebble and Whyte, the pair bumping elbows on Wednesday nights at Happy Valley and on Sundays at Sha Tin, were box office viewing and their rivalry lifted the jurisdiction to new heights. 

“We definitely didn’t get along at all,” Prebble said of the rivalry, adding that the two are now good friends. “You know, we rubbed each other the wrong way for a long time. It’s a fishbowl-type existence in Hong Kong. You’re stealing each other’s rides and that’s our job. It’s nothing personal, but you do take it personally because we’re professional and we’re competitive. Then there was the fact we all lived on course in apartments next to each other, you see each other at trackwork every day, our kids are going to school together, it all added to it. You’re in each other’s faces all of the time.” 

Despite Prebble’s sometimes combative nature and the intensity of Hong Kong racing, he forged a close friendship with the flamboyant French jockey Olivier Doleuze, whose charm, positivity and impeccable dress sense lit up every room he walked into. 

“Olivier’s charisma and personality really lightened up that pressure cooker environment and we became great mates,” Prebble said. “Sometimes there you feel you are fighting against everyone and everything all the time, but when he beat you there was some joy in it, because he is such a great character, and he was genuinely happy for you when you won. A lot of the time that wasn’t the way there, it was dog-eat-dog.”

“Olivier has helped me through many things in life, professionally and personally, just through his mindset on life in general. He half-groomed me as a person, and even changed how I dress!”

Prebble is a student of the game and rattles off a list of all-time greats when asked who he admired among his rivals while based at Sha Tin: “The calibre of riders I competed against there over 15 years was amazing,” he said.

“It was such a melting pot of styles, you had the French riders like Olivier and Gerald Mosse who rode with a different style, letting horses sit wide, prioritising their horses’ rhythm and breathing. They were less interested in getting cover than Australian jockeys. Then there was Eric Saint-Martin, who was French but a bit more aggressive, and Christophe Soumillon, who came out of France but was Belgian. ‘Soumi’ was young, very confident and flying.

“Felix Coutzee was less tactical than the Australians but had great balance and style. Zac (Purton) was amazing once he found his groove and then there was Joao (Moreira). It was like horses weren’t carrying Joao’s weight, he could sit four wide and win by five and you’d think “how the hell did that happen?”, somebody else would get on the same horse and they’d get beaten by eight. He was probably the most freakish talent I rode against.” 

Prebble’s own style was one typified by dogged determination in a finish, a fearless nature when it came to race position and a master tactician whose race planning and execution preceded the similar style, and influenced, that of his countryman Purton.

It stands testament to Prebble’s talent that despite that depth of competition during his time at Sha Tin, that when he left Hong Kong at the end of the 2017-18 season with 803 career wins, only Whyte, Purton and Tony Cruz had ridden more winners. Moreira moved past him but Prebble remains fifth on the all-time list for most winners. 

That 15 season stint didn’t stop Prebble from achieving more top flight wins abroad. As well as a famous victory aboard Bullish Luck in the 2006 Yasuda Kinen, Prebble won the Golden Slipper on Crystal Lily in 2010 and the Melbourne Cup on Green Moon in 2012. In 2015 Prebble and Whyte took their rivalry offshore when Prebble urged Wandjina to a photo finish victory over Whyte and Alpine Eagle in the Australian Guineas. 

After Prebble returned to Australia from Hong Kong he won five Group 1s including the 2021 Caulfield Cup on Incentivise, producing a nerveless ride from an awkward draw, which left him a Cox Plate-short of Australia’s “Grand Slam” of feature races. 

Prebble was highly regarded as an expert judge of a horse’s ability based on a gallop or trial. He worked well in partnership with top trainers over the years like David Hall – who he rode 285 winners for in Australia and Hong Kong – and Caspar Fownes, for whom he rode 126 winners. 

Ten of those wins for Fownes were on fan favourite Lucky Nine, a horse Prebble also ranks as a personal favourite among a host of top rated stars he rode in Hong Kong: Sacred Kingdom, Absolute Champion, Lucky Bubbles, Cape Of Good Hope and Bullish Luck. 

“Lucky Nine was just an absolute ripper. He wasn’t the best horse I rode but he’s one of my favourite horses ever, his character took him a long way,” said Prebble, who jumped at the chance to be photographed with the now 17 year-old at Living Legends for this story.

“He was just a dude, but he was an absolute worrywart when he first got to Hong Kong. He’d shiver and shake, and lose ten kilos every few days. But he adapted to the environment and he had an amazing will to win. He was my best mate in Hong Kong.” 

Lucky Nine also placed in Dubai, Australia and Japan at Group 1 level and went back-to-back in the KrisFlyer Sprint in Singapore in 2013 and 2014. 

“We had some very rewarding and fun times with him, especially with Caspar, who is a very good friend of mine,” Prebble said. “We had a ball and we made it fun.”

The first people Prebble told about his decision to retire were his partner Erin and then long-time mentor Des O’Keefe, who he first met at Dan Meagher’s stables all those years ago. 

“They have both been great for me in different ways,” Prebble said. “Erin has become my best friend over the past few years; she has been a real rock for me. Des has been a great sounding board for me over many years.”

The toughest conversation Prebble had was with 22-year-old son Thomas, who is an apprentice jockey in Melbourne. “That was emotional. I really wanted to ride against him in a race, but maybe it was not meant to be. He probably didn’t need that pressure.”

Plenty of jockeys that went head-to-head with Prebble over the years would probably agree: no jockey needs that pressure.

Even though race riding is no longer calling Prebble to get up before dawn, his successful saddlery business clearly provides an outlet for relentless work ethic and he is a ‘hands on’ manager and often found toiling away in his Melbourne manufacturing hub.

“I am in the factory most days at 4.30am and there until 5pm,” said Prebble, who is a talented whip-maker, supplying many of the world’s top jockeys.

Early on in Prebble’s time in Hong Kong, influenced by the business people around him and seeing an opportunity in the burgeoning manufacturing hub in southern China, he started Persuader International and the brand has flourished.

“I am very lucky that I have my business to turn to and I can retire on my own terms,” he said. “If I rode another 20 or 50 more winners, it’s not going to change my life, but what will change my life now is making Persuader one of the most successful horse racing and jockey product companies in the world.

“That will give me a lot of satisfaction and fulfilment as I move into a new chapter of my life. I’m very passionate about it and I’m very proud of where the business has got to, but it’s not where it’s going to finish, that’s for sure.”