A tribute race to remember jockey Corey Gilby, who died at the corresponding meeting in 2011, will be staged at Julia Creek Turf Club on Saturday.

A track accident claimed the life of Gilby – a popular and well-respected jockey – after the last race at the Julia Creek meeting three years ago. He was only 25 years old.

Gilby rode winners from Melbourne to Darwin and scored a career highlight listed a win on Adavale Hornet at Doomben in January 2006.

In a show of unity from the industry, the Corey Gilby Memorial maiden plate (1100m) will be the feature race of the day with extra prizemoney on offer –after jockeys, trainers, the Queensland Jockeys’ Association and the Julia Creek Turf Club dug deep to strengthen the race’s profile.

Those close to Gilby remember him as a shy, yet motivated and determined young man.

Gilby finished his apprenticeship with Mount Isa trainer Jay Morris in 2007 and the pair formed a close bond.

Gilby rode Morris’s first official winner with Quick Man in Tennant Creek. It was the second meeting for which the pair had teamed together and their third overall runner.

Gilby was a man of few words, and it was that characteristic Morris recalls when the pair ‘‘broke the ice’’ on the trip across the Queensland-Northern Territory state border to the race meeting at Tennant Creek.

“We joked that he only started to talk when we crossed the border,” Morris laughed.

“We looked at each other, going ‘what’s going on here’?”

Gilby left Mount Isa for a few years but returned to ride in the region in 2011.

The freak fall that claimed his life was not the first out-of-the -ordinary accident involving the affable jockey.

In January 2005, he was struck by lightning as an 18-year-old apprentice riding trackwork at Tocumwal, on the New South Wales-Victorian border.

‘‘It was like chain lightning. It gave two or three of the other boys a bit of a shock, too. But Corey got the brunt of it and was thrown off the horse. It didn’t leave a burn mark on him. It just threw him off the horse,’’ trainer Brett Cavanough said.

Morris said Gilby was understandably petrified when a storm came over the racecourse after the incident in Mount Isa.

“Whenever a storm came along at trackwork Corey would be hiding in the corner and I’d be joking around with him telling him ‘nah, nah you’ve got to get on this one’,” Morris laughed.

But despite a few scares in his life, Gilby was brave when it came to horses and was considered a Mr Fix-It with rat-bag gallopers.

“He liked horses who played up and had a bit of character about them,” Morris said.

“He liked putting time into them to straighten them out and he got a real satisfaction out of getting them right.

“He was an animal lover.”

Morris believed that passion for educating horses could have led to a training career down the track.

On and off the track, Gilby loved new gadgets and tinkering with technology.

He was before his time with technology on the racetrack.

Video cameras are now built into jockeys’ helmets to show exclusive, exciting footage from the saddle – but it is only now becoming part of racing.

Gilby was ahead of his time with revolutionizing the industry.

In 2011, Morris says Gilby had manufactured a camera to install in his helmet while riding trackwork.

“You wouldn’t have even known it was there,” he said.

“He was always changing and trying out new things.”

Morris also remembers the time he teamed with Gilby for a winner in Townsville and the pair set off to the local markets after the races.

Gilby, fascinated by new toys, bought thousands of dollars’ worth of DJ gear and within a few weeks was spinning tunes at the Mount Isa Race Club after meetings.

“We’d just had a decent winner in Townsville and we went to the markets and he decided he wanted to become a DJ,” Morris laughed.

“The next thing I knew I could hear him mixing his tunes at 4.30am in the morning from his place down the street from mine.”

A BLACK armband was sported by Rhiannon Payne, Gilby’s fiance ́, as she rode at Rockhampton on Thursday. She knows more than most the inherent dangers of being a jockey but continues to ride – she knows that’s what Gilby would’ve urged her to do. “Not a day goes past that I don’t think of him,” she said. She was humbled when told of the tribute race at the Julia Creek Turf Club and the support of the racing industry. Payne is based in Wondai and regularly rides at race meetings in the region.

AUSTRALIAN Jockeys Association Workplace, Health and Safety officer Kevin Ring will be on track at Julia Creek to offer his support to the racing industry in the North West on what will be an emotional Saturday. Veteran Mount Isa jockey Keith Ballard, who helped collect money from fellow riders to raise the stakes for the tribute race for Corey Gilby, said it was coup for Mr Ring to attend. ‘‘He felt the association’s presence at Julia Creek was warranted,” Ballard said. “He has come all the way from Tasmania to salute the little bloke.”