Jake Bayliss (left) is 17, 145cm
and weighs just 37kg. He eats pizza for lunch and KFC for dinner. In
contrast, fellow jockey Steve Pateman (right) is 28, 183cm and weighs
69kg. Picture: Colleen Petch
Herald Sun
HORSE racing is full of tall stories about the next big thing, but this isn't one of them.
Jockeys, like the rest of us, are getting bigger.
The weight scale in races was recently increased because towering jockeys were steaming themselves half to death.
Against the trend, along comes Jake Bayliss, 17, an apprentice who weighs 37kg.
He
rode his first winner, at just his second ride, at Werribee last
Thursday - with 20kg of "dead" weight packed in his saddle bags.
He
looked like a doll on a clydesdale. But that's not to say he was out of
his depth. His master, trainer Mick Kent, reckons he can really ride.
The problem is he needs to fatten up.
Pedigree has a bit to do
with it, according to top jumps jockey Steve Pateman, who is double
Bayliss's weight: "His dad was a jockey, mine was a fisherman."
Bayliss has tried everything bar swallowing cement to put on weight:
"The other day I had pizza for lunch and KFC for dinner. I've weighed
the same since I was 13."
Even if Bayliss isn't racing's next big thing - and who's to say he isn't - he will cherish his first winner, You Think So.
He started hot favourite, and Bayliss's mum, Kelly, made a special trip from Queensland to watch him win by a head.
"I
was really nervous," he says. "I wasn't sure if I'd won. I asked an
ambulance driver, who was leaning over the fence, and he said I'd won."
That night, young Bayliss celebrated with a steak the size of Steve Pateman's saddle.
