'Starting to wear thin': Inside the diary of a jockey racing in isolation

He'll work that out in a little while, content to see how close he can get to Nowra - 588 kilometres away - before the next day's race meeting.

The 24-year-old jockey spends more time in the driver's seat than he does in the saddle nowadays. It's a lonely road, traversing the countryside, confined to lonely hotel rooms when he isn't searching for a winner on the track.

It's been about a month since Loy left his partner Louise Day in Sydney and moved into his family's Albury home so he could make ends meet in a state gripped by the COVID-19 pandemic. He has no idea when he will see her again.

He doesn't bother adding up the kilometres travelled or the hours spent on the road to get to race tracks all over NSW. All he knows is "my right foot is bigger than my left foot, just because I've been putting my foot down on the pedal that much".

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For the record, from August 28 to September 4, Loy travelled 4041 kilometres just to earn a crust.

"I don't know how you say it, I'm busier than a one-armed bricklayer in Baghdad," Loy said.

"Two seconds mate, I'll just grab the diary. I had Wagga Thursday, Goulburn Saturday, Mudgee Sunday, Tamworth today, Moruya tomorrow, Wednesday off.

"Then I've got Muswellbrook Thursday, Albury Friday, Newcastle Saturday, Gundagai Sunday, either Port Macquarie or Wellington on Monday, and either Scone or Queanbeyan on Tuesday.

"So, fairly busy mate."

NSW jockeys have been made to commit to riding in or out of Greater Sydney amid a coronavirus outbreak health authorities are struggling to control.

That meant Loy had to leave his Alexandria home as he sets his sights on rising from second to first in the NSW Country jockey premiership standings.

But while he spends his nights isolated in hotel rooms, there are others on a similar journey.

"Koby Jennings has got a baby on the way and he can't see his partner," Loy said. "Adrian Layt, he had to move away from his family to keep riding and he has three kids and a wife."

Video calls to his family stuck at home in a Blacktown LGA have become par for the course with Layt forced to move into his mother's home in Queanbeyan on July 23 to continue racing.

His children are two, four and eight.

"It's starting to wear thin now. It was harder the first week, and the past few weeks have been a bit tough. It's starting to drag on," Layt said.

"The little bloke is getting his needles done this morning, I was just speaking to my missus on the phone and they're at the doctors. She probably needs a hand to hold him in a headlock while he's getting that done.

"It doesn't make it easy, especially when you're riding north of Sydney, you're sticking an extra two and a half hours on your trip every time."

Layt "wouldn't have a clue" just how far he has travelled since leaving his family home, but his car just ticked over 140,000 kilometres "and it was only about 125,000 when I left".

"We're lucky, we're still going mate. There's a lot of people that aren't and I feel so sorry for them," Layt said.

"You think about it yourself, if you can't work from home and you're not allowed to go to work, well what do you do? Where's your income? If you've got a young family like I do, you're gone. How do you keep the roof over your head?

"If I've got to do another three or four hours in the car, that's fine by me. I'm still going. I'm still earning. It's a small price really."

How long they have to wait before they can see their partners or kids again is anyone's guess on what Loy likens to an "endless" road.

If the road is endless, Nowra is the next checkpoint. How far to go?

"Ah, about six hours".

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