It has been a frustrating few months for Matthew Chadwick after a long lay-off from injury but a pick-up ride on Group One contender Peniaphobia in the Chairman’s Sprint Prize could be just the tonic to spark a late-season resurgence for the jockey.

Having already spent significant time on the sidelines last term, Chadwick suffered a serious knee injury in the starting gates on October 1 and was sidelined for more than four months after reconstructive surgery, and even with the benefit of a long break, the former star apprentice admits he made a rushed return to race riding in mid-February.

Since then, Chadwick has struggled to gain momentum, taking 59 rides and more than a month to get his first winner, before riding just two more winners since, as a lack of both fitness and then quality opportunities worked against him.

“It has been a frustrating injury and recovery – it took longer than expected but then I also came back a little earlier than I really planned. My body probably wasn’t ready but I had to push through it,” Chadwick said, adding that he was back to 100 per cent fitness, but that the dominance of the top three or four jockeys had left the rest scrambling for rides. “That has been the most frustrating aspect, the quality of rides, although everybody outside the top group is having trouble with it too.

“It’s hard to stay on horses – you get horses to run well for you and you get taken off them next start, so the competition has got a lot tougher. It’s easy enough to get on a horse, but keeping them and being on them at the right time is tougher. But it’s starting to pick up for me now, I just need a little luck and hopefully things can change.”

That stroke of luck, ironically enough, may have arrived with Joao Moreira’s decision to jump off this season’s Hong Kong Sprint winner and Al Quoz Sprint placegetter Peniaphobia, in favour of up-and-coming star Thewizardofoz – granting Chadwick a golden opportunity he is keen to grasp with both hands.

“Peniaphobia is a proven horse at this level, he showed that when he won the Hong Kong Sprint in December,” Chadwick said, with the jockey chasing his first Group One win since California Memory’s Champions & Chater Cup almost three years ago. “The main concern is whether he has come back from Dubai at his best, and while that is always a hard trip to come back from, he seems to have freshened up and he trialled really well. I am confident.

“There are other horses that have had to travel here, the Australian horses might find it tough here and there are a few local young horses coming up that look good but are unproven at this level. It will be interesting to see how they perform when they are running along half a second faster than they are used to in each section, they might not handle it.”