Champion jockey Damien Oliver sent packing from Warrnambool Grand Annual meeting

THE one good thing for Damien Oliver is that of the 17,500 people who crowded into the Grand Annual meeting yesterday, he was clearly among the most sober on course.

• Oliver partied until 1am before failing grog test

THE one good thing for Damien Oliver is that of the 17,500 people who crowded into the Grand Annual meeting yesterday, he was clearly among the most sober on course.

In truth, nearly everyone except a few designated drivers — and maybe the horses — would have topped the piddling .038 per cent blood alcohol level the champion jockey reportedly blew when the stewards “breathalysed” him early in the day.

If it hadn’t been the Melbourne Cup-winning, record-breaking, ice-cool iron man of racing, no one would have cared less.

Oliver: Before.

And after.

The fact that jumps jockey Paul Hamblin had to be replaced on his Grand Annual mount hardly rated a mention.

If Oliver’s mount in the Warrnambool Cup, Cafe Society, had been beaten in a tight finish with a lesser rider aboard, the fact that Gai Waterhouse trains the horse might have led to a kerfuffle.

But the horse ran nowhere and Gai didn’t say a word.

A stony-faced Oliver, meanwhile, had discreetly left the course during the running of a race halfway through the program.

He was spotted hauling his red suitcase full of gear through the birdcage area into the jockeys’ carpark.

Macca’s take on the Oliver reading.

A couple of photographers followed him out, only to be warned by a television cameraman that “he’ll run over you”. It wasn’t a joke.

Back in the racecourse bars, no one seemed to care, although by the end of the day most punters had seen a photo of Oliver snapped at a well-known Warrnambool pub late the previous night.

The good news is that he now has a month’s holiday.

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