Above: Berwick jockey Noel Callow celebrates with his Narre Warren reserves team-mates after his successful debut on Saturday. By Brad Kingsbury
GROUP 1 winning jockey Noel Callow was flying high on a different sporting arena on Saturday as he debuted for Narre Warren Football Club in the reserves after returning from a short riding stint in Malaysia.
Wearing jumper 51 the lively and naturally fit jockey, now 34, played his first game of football since he was an 18-year-old and was at his cheeky best in the midfield for the Magpies.
The keen Western Bulldogs supporter earned a mention among his side’s best players in the Magpies 22-point victory over ROC at the wet and muddy Starling Road ground, but said afterwards that he was not sure how many more games he would play.
“It was great fun, but I’m a bit small for this caper,” he chuckled.
“I wanted to train to keep my fitness up and weight down in preparation for the spring. The Narre Warren boys are good blokes and we had a win so that was good too.”
Callow rode four winners from seven rides in Kuala Lumpur last month before falling foul of the stewards after a routine urine sample tested positive for a banned substance.
Rather than wait for the result of a test on his ‘B sample’, the star hoop decided to return home to his family in Berwick and start preparing for an assault on this year’s spring carnival racing riches.
Callow was shocked at the positive test and said that, unless there had been a change of policy that he was unaware of, it was a mistake.
The 2005 Victoria Derby winning jockey insists that he has not changed his routine for five years and was extremely vigilant as to what went into his body in his daily weight-control regime.
He has been using a legal supplement that does contain a small amount of appetite suppressant ephedrine, but the tolerances were well below those stipulated in the rules of racing and he has a raft of negative tests over that time to back up his claim.
“I’m still not sure what the story is, but I’ve been controlling my weight exactly the same way for years and have never had a problem,” he said.
“I’ve been tested heaps of times here and in Singapore, so I don’t know what’s changed.”
He added that he would probably start riding again in about a month and had not developed a set plan, but a stint in Perth was a possibility leading up to spring.
The star hoop, who has always battled weight issues, had a super successful two-year record-breaking stint riding in Singapore between 2006 and 2008, where he was dubbed ‘King Callow’ and became the first jockey to ride 100 winners in a season on his way to winning the local jockey’s premiership.
