Seventeen years had passed since Wilson rode at a race meeting and it was at Bedgerabong when he won the 2002 Picnic Cup on Sports Fair.

Since then he’d been a long-serving stable foreman for the late Brian Buckley at Orange and more recently a trackwork rider at Narromine.

Justin Stanley trains at Narromine these days while still living in Dubbo and it was his horse Wollarant which took out the feature in Bedgerabong’s special 100^th cup meeting.

In front of a bumper crowd almost double the 2017 attendance, Wilson produced a fine ride on the ten-year-old Wollartant, owned and bred by Terry Marskell a bookmaker from Mudgee.

Dubbo-trained pair Drummed Out and Our Sarastro, trained by Peter Reynolds and Connie Greig respectively, jostled with Tearful Kitty for the lead down the back straight before Wollartant worked to the front near the home turn.

Running well in strong company at recent TAB meetings, Wollartant ($6) held on strongly to win by two lengths from the 2018 Cup winner Lulu’s Destiny (Maddison Wright, $1.60 favourite), trained by Rodney Robb, and Drummed Out (Alan Barton, $6).

Robb and Wright missed out in the feature but they did score their own winning treble each at Bedgerabong.

The pair combined to win with Northern Myth and Cheeky Charley while the Nyngan trainer also enjoyed success with the John Eady-ridden Madison Gardens.

Wright’s third win came with the Allan McRae-trained French Giggle.