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THE neat little bloke in the blue and white silks cut a notorious more than a familiar figure as he waited to be legged up for his first race ride in 10 months.
He shook hands with the owners, accepted a kiss from a well wisher, pulled up his shiny new boots and ignored the questionable humour being thrown over the fence.
"Hey Damien, what have you backed."
Damien Oliver, the dual-Melbourne Cup winner and consummate champion jockey, answered the hecklers and everyone else with a winner at Geelong on Friday in his first ride since he was banned last November after admitting to betting on a horse he was riding against.
In one of the most controversial cases in modern Australian racing, Oliver bet $10,000 on the horse Miss Octopussy in a race at Moonee Valley two years earlier.
Miss Octopussy won, Oliver finished unplaced on his mount, consoled himself that he at least doubled his money and forgot about it - until someone rang the racing integrity commissioner Sal Perna during the last spring carnival and told him about it.
Despite being dumped from rides in the Cox Plate and the Melbourne Cup, Oliver landed three Group One winners last spring, including Happy Trails in the Emirates Stakes on the last day of the Flemington carnival.
Two days later Oliver admitted to the bet and was duly disqualified for eight months and suspended for a further two, a penalty that sparked as much debate as the crime.
Many believed the ban and the timing of Oliver's plea to be contrived, part of an unseemly deal between him and the stewards. A further investigation by the racing commissioner said it wasn't.
Oliver began riding trackwork two months ago and at Geelong resumed race riding in much the same way as he had left it.
His comeback mount Lion Of Belfort started favourite at $1.40 and Oliver hardly moved in the saddle scoring by four lengths.
"I'm just happy to back, obviously," Oliver said.
"I'm coming off a decent break, but I'm ready."
Oliver's chose the Geelong meeting for his comeback rather than make a grand return at Moonee Valley a day later.
"I'm not into show business," he said.
A jockey whose keenness for a dollar is obvious, Oliver might revise that view if he can get himself onto a chance in one of the big spring races.
One such possibility comes up at Moonee Valley where he will be back aboard Happy Trails in the Dato Tan Chin Nam Stakes, a race the horse won last year before Oliver partnered him to victory in the Emirates Stakes.
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