St George celebrates racing history

By Jordan Gerrans

The St George community came together on Saturday to celebrate their rich history of racing with the program marking 150 years for the regional Queensland town.

The St George Jockey Club were all set to honour their 150 year milestone in the middle of 2024 before the meeting was washed out in late July.

A new meeting was programmed for Saturday with the club opting to roll all the planned celebrations over to the new race date.

Club patron Josh Vickers – who was president of the local club for around a decade before stepping down – believes it is a special achievement for the bush town to continue racing for such a long period of time.

“It was well supported by the community and everyone came out and got around it to help us celebrate 150 years,” Vickers said.

“To race continuously in the bush for this long, it is a huge achievement when you consider all the weather events, droughts and floods we have around here.

“For us to have a committee and club to still be thriving after 150 years, it is pretty incredible.

“It is a testament to all the people that have come before us, including the committee members and executives that have done all the hard work to keep the wheels turning.”

Based in the Shire of Balonne with a population of just over 3,000 people, the people of St George in South West Queensland come out in droves for their annual race day.

The club put on a special race to open the program to showcase their history, which was named the St George Jockey Club celebrating 150 years of racing.

The race was claimed by trainer Josh Oliver and apprentice hoop Chloe Lowe with galloper True Patriot.

Vickers said the club was keen to have a marquee race to honour the history and presented Oliver and connections with a special winning rug.

It was a big day for promising apprentice Lowe as she gathered two winners and two minor placings across the meeting.

It was a fitting result for Lowe as her master – Toowoomba’s Pat Webster – originally trained at St George before relocating to the Darling Downs over the last couple of years.

The Webster stable are usually a force at St George race days but the trainer only took one galloper ‘home’ in 2025.

But, he drove back to Toowoomba with a perfect strike-rate as Artopia landed the prize in the Class B Handicap over 1000 metres.

Later in the program the St George Cup was claimed by Demon Delivera from the Corey and Kylie Geran team.

Apprentice Kayla Barker was in the saddle aboard Demon Delivera.

It was a day to remember for Gympie hoop Barker as she rode the first two winners of her career, with Demon Delivera’s triumph following on from Art By Concorde’s victory in the prior event.

“We were really pleased with the fields and the trainers, they sent plenty of horses out to us, which was excellent to see,” Vickers said.

“It was a pretty big crowd, we would have had to have at least 1,000 people there on the day, which is a pretty solid crowd.

“We were pretty impressed with the crowd we got.”