The sudden death of jockey Dean Holland continues to leave a sombre mark in the racing industry, as champion jockey Damien Oliver paid tribute to his late colleague after winning a race named in his honour at Ballarat on Wednesday.
The win came as Racing Victoria boss Andrew Jones pledged to look into the spate of falls which have occurred in Victoria over the past six weeks, with Holland’s passing taking him back to his time as Cricket NSW boss when batsman Phil Hughes tragically died after being hit in the head with a cricket ball.
Liam Riordan saluted to the heavens as he steered Serenaur to victory. Dean Holland had won on the Brent Stanley-trained four-year-old three starts earlier at Ballarat.Credit: Racing Photos
Later, jockey Liam Riordan saluted to the heavens as he steered Serenaur to victory. Holland had won on the Brent Stanley-trained four-year-old three starts earlier at Ballarat, and placed at his prior two runs.
Stanley said the $20,000 in winnings would be donated to Holland’s family.
“[It’s] an emotional win,” Stanley said.
“Deano just missed on him last time. Liam obviously got the job done, but I think someone was riding with him.”
Riordan struggled to hold back tears after returning to the scales.
“Obviously, everyone’s the same – we’re really upset about Dean,” he said. “We can’t bring him back, but hopefully that brings some joy.”
If anyone was able to compartmentalise the tragic passing of a friend and colleague it would be the hall-of-famer Oliver, who unforgettably won a Melbourne Cup just two weeks after his jockey brother Jason died as a result of injuries suffered in a fall.
Oliver won the first three races at Ballarat on the card – the first race meeting held in Victoria since Holland died at Donald on Monday – including the second race named “In Honour of Dean Holland”, and even filled some vacant rides left by some jockeys who chose to take the meeting off to grieve Holland’s death.
Damien Oliver won the race ‘In Honour of Dean Holland’ at Ballarat on Victorian racing’s return to the track.Credit: Racing Photos
“We’re all going to miss him,” Oliver said after winning the second race.
“He was a top bloke, a very popular bloke in the jockeys’ room, and our hearts certainly go out to all his family and all his close friends. We’ll really miss him – he’s left a great mark on a lot of people.”
Oliver described the jockeys’ room as a solemn one.
“There’s usually a lot of banter and fun among the jockeys, but very quiet in there today,” he said.
“Dean was a very popular jockey, really hitting his straps as a jockey and having his career-best season. It’s incredibly sad to lose him.
“It’s just far too soon, too young with a great career and life ahead of him to lose him.
“I can speak from experience, his family and really close friends, their lives will never be the same.”
Jones said Holland’s death had taken him straight back to the moment Hughes died in 2014, after Hughes was struck by a bouncer while playing Sheffield Shield cricket.
Dean Holland after the biggest moment of his career, winning the 2023 Newmarket Handicap.Credit: Getty Images
“It was a horrible time, a harrowing time in cricket, and I was right in the middle of it,” Jones reflected.
“I was there on the day as Cricket NSW CEO at the time and at St Vincent’s Hospital during the week, and seeing a kid die and seeing a family go through that grief was an inexperience I certainly didn’t seek to repeat. That will always be with me.
“You can be prepared as best you can, but it’s an experience you wouldn’t wish on anyone. For cricket people, it was right out of the blue. People didn’t have that expectation that could happen in cricket.
“Racing people understand there are dangers, but we have 42,000 race rides in Victoria alone, more than 100,000 every year in Australia and this is the first fatality in Victoria for 17 or 18 years. It’s a very rare event.”
He said Racing Victoria would look closely at all the falls that have occurred since early March, and whether outside factors such as fatigue or workload had played a role. Ethan Brown, Jamie Kah, Teo Nugent and Blaike McDougall all remain sidelined due to injuries suffered in race falls last month.
“We look at incident by incident. We’ll see if there are root causes, issues that are common across the falls or just statistical variation,” Jones said.
“We’ll look at the racing part of it, which is the immediately obvious element, and we’ll look at the non-racing part of it if relevant, and we’ll look at the mitigation part of it, whether there’s something we can do with equipment so if a fall happens you can reduce risk.”
A number of jockeys elected to stand down from their riding commitments on Wednesday, but after Victorian Jockeys Association (VJA) boss Matt Hyland contacted each one of the riders booked to compete at Ballarat, it was decided the meeting should proceed.
“Certainly from outside our organisation some would say it’s too soon, some inside our organisation may say it’s too soon, but the bottom line is it’s got to be their choice,” Hyland said on RSN radio on Wednesday morning.
“Some people might think it’s better for them to get back into that environment and get back around their mates, and some might choose they want to spend some more time with their family. We just wanted everyone to have that option.”
Jones said Racing Victoria would have similar discussions when a date for Holland’s funeral has been arranged, given it could coincide with the popular Warrnambool jumps carnival, which attracts up to 20,000 attendees from Tuesday to Thursday.
“You’ve got to factor that [Warrnambool] into considerations,” Jones said.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. The Hollands are a racing family, so they may factor into their calculations as well.
“We’ll let the family work through the logistics with the people who are helping them, and then we’ll chat to the VJA and the trainers’ association and anyone else we need to at the time and work out what the answer is.
“Primarily it will depend on the feedback from the jockeys and the jockeys’ association.”
But Des O’Keeffe, former chairman of the Australian Jockeys Association, who was on hand at Ballarat on Wednesday to support the riders, believed the industry needed a race-free day for Holland’s funeral.
“I think there’d be such a wish to involve and attend and respect [Holland by the jockeys], that that would be a really good day to be [having a race-free day],” O’Keeffe said.
“I would be surprised [if we raced].”
Trainers Tony and Calvin McEvoy, who employed Holland as a stable rider and trained the horse he fell off on Monday, said in a statement their stable was grief-stricken following his passing.
“We are utterly devastated and have been forever changed by the death of Dean Holland,” they said.
“Words cannnot do justice to what Dean meant to the McEvoy and Mitchell families, our stable’s staff and our owners.
“Such was Dean’s talent in the saddle and his dedication to his craft that he was our go-to jockey in Victoria during the last two and a half seasons.
“Dean was a group 1 jockey but also a group 1 human and more than his success on the racetrack, we will miss the remarkable man that he was away from the racetrack.
“Our hearts are broken for his [family] … there will never be another like Dean Holland.”
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