Just days after receiving the Sovereign Award for Canada’s Outstanding Apprentice Jockey, 16-year-old Slade Jones has returned to his home in Barbados and will not ride this year. According to his agent Tom Patton, Jones, who is nearly six feet tall, was having trouble maintaining his preferred riding weight last fall and the issue has persisted.
“He’s tall and he’s growing,” said Patton. “It’s too bad. I’m not saying he’s never coming back [to Woodbine]. He might come back here to work and gallop horses but for now, he’s gone home.”
Not since the days of Mickey Walls (early ’90s) has Canadian racing had a teenaged jockey burst onto the scene with great success like Slade Jones. The son of successful Barbados and Canadian rider Jono Jones is the grandson of the great Barbadian rider ‘Chally Jones. He began his Canadian riding career in May 2022 and was the leading race-winning apprentice jockey in Canada in 2022 with 61 wins, a 14% win rate. He finished a solid 12th in the overall jockey standings at Woodbine.
“His dad was one of the most intelligent riders Woodbine has ever seen and Slade was heading that way too,’ said Patton. “But Jono also had to do quite a bit of reducing when he was riding and he is not nearly as tall as Slade.”
As for Patton, he will also step away from racing as an agent this year as his other rider from 2022, Antonio Gallardo, will not be returning. But Patton will still be around the track as he recently signed on as a consultant for the exciting new, state-of-the-art animal and horse hospital near King, ON, Dog Tales.
Owned by Rob and Danielle Scheinberg, the hospital is some 56,000 square feet and on three levels. It will serve mainly horses, dogs, cats and some exotic animals such as birds and lizards. The facility will have top-of-the-line equipment not found anywhere else in the province. It will be a 24-hour emergency referral hospital serving all of southern Ontario and will have a standing CT scanner, MRI machines, water therapy pools and hyperbaric oxygen treatment for dogs.
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