Horse Racing
27 August, 2025
Meech a five-time country Vic medallist
Wimmera-based Linda Meech is riding high after picking up her fifth Neville Wilson Medal as Country Racing Victoria’s Jockey of the Year.
Meech was honoured as the 2024-25 winner at the Country Racing Victoria Awards on Saturday night.
Although born in New Zealand and raised on a farm in the North Island, Meech was lured to Australia by a jockey's apprenticeship.
After working first in Queensland and then New South Wales, she finally settled in Victoria.
In November 2013 she became only the second Australian female jockey to have won 1000 races.
In 2018-29 she was the first woman to win the overall Victorian Jockeys Premiership.
In the 2024-25 season Meech had 492 starts in country Victoria for 216 placings: 90 firsts (including four country cups), 78 seconds and 48 thirds.
In Melbourne she raced a further 91 times, adding six wins, 14 seconds and 12 thirds to her tally.
Her season's prizemoney exceeded $2.49 million on Victorian country tracks, $911,400 in the metropolitan area and just under $35,000 interstate.
In Victoria this season her fine form has continued.
To date Meech has had four wins, three seconds and a third from 23 starts in country races, securing $100,830 in prizemoney.
She has also had a second placing, worth $13,500, in the metropolitan area.
Meech is the first mother to have claimed the Neville Wilson Medal, having resumed racing only four months after giving birth to her son in 2021.
The day after picking up this latest award she was back in the saddle, guiding the Hobson family's Reward The Sheriff to victory as one of her six rides in Swan Hill on Sunday afternoon.
