She still harbours aspirations of being able to ride a winner again, but Mel Bolwell is finding some appeasement in trying to train a winner.
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After starting in training about 12 months ago, the Tamworth jockey-come-trainer currently has four horses in work.
She will send three of them around this weekend with Ready To Go Go and Trust In A Star heading to Muswellbrook and Jonesy out to Coonabarabran.
The latter is especially close to Bolwell's heart - her affinity for the three-year old running much deeper than an inherent love of horses.
The gelding was her "first start into training" and is a tribute to her friend and mentor Darren Jones.
Known affectionately around the racing fraternity as "Jonesy", Jones was tragically killed in a race fall at Warialda in 2017. Bolwell was also involved in the fall, the accident leaving her with a traumatic brain injury, a fractured neck and fractured ankle.
Her father Jason purchased Jonesy as a weanling at the Inglis sales at Scone while she was was still recovering at the Gold Coast University Hospital. It was his first race horse purchase.
"Ever since I started my apprenticeship I always used to say to my dad, you should by a racehorse dad and he would never buy one," Bolwell said.
"Then when I was in hospital with my brain injury and it was unsure whether I could return to riding, Dad knew how much I loved the industry and just wanted to give me something that if I couldn't return to riding I could continue on with."
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"The name just stuck. We asked all the family whether they were okay with it."
Bolwell's partner Jack McGrath broke him in and Sue Grills, who Bolwell was indentured to at the time, also helped out a lot.
"He's the first horse I ever raced and hopefully he can become by first winner too. I would love that," Bolwell said.
She had also nominated him for Sunday's Armidale meeting but opted to run him at Coonabarabran after drawing "a very good gate".
"You can't not have a runner out of barrier one," she said.
The Mulaazem-Al Manara gelding has had five starts so far for a best result of third at Gunnedah in March, but Bolwell has high hopes for him on Saturday, especially with the favourable draw.
"He's been working enormous and I hope it shows race day," she said.
She said he has come back this preparation a lot more switched on and wanting to be as good as he possibly can.
"He's a lot stronger horse too. He's got a lot more muscle," she said.
"He's still not a very big horse but he's a stronger horse."
"And he wants to do it - he loves it."
Bolwell is still riding trackwork for Grills and said she still wants to return to racing.
"I don't know if I'll ever get there but I would like to return to riding if I one day can," she said.
For now training is filling the void a bit.
"The training thing definitely fills that little hole that was there," she said.
Grills will take Jonesy out to Coonabarabran, where she also has several runners, while Bolwell will go to Muswellbrook.
Ready To Go Go will be first up, and she hopes lives up to her name.
"She has a lot of weight on her back. I've put the apprentice on her to claim three kilos off her back," she said.
Trust In a Star will jump in the next race in what will be a bit of a last hurrah for the five-year old.
