It’s been a long road back in the saddle for well-travelled hoop Jordan Mallyon and he was finally rewarded with a win astride Commander in a Class 4B handicap over 1400m at Sungai Besi today.

Mallyon rode here between 2017 and 2019 and has been away from race riding for the best part of the last two years. He has been working at trainer Matthew Hoysted’s stable in Brisbane in that time, often taking horses to provincial and country meetings as Hoysted’s foreman and race day representative.

He recently started riding trails and eventually got the bug back.

“As soon as I started to do some trials, I really started to miss it and thought I should give it another shot”, he said in an interview.

Recently-married Mallyon only returned to riding in October and was on a plane to Kuala Lumpur shortly after.

On Commander, he jumped well from barrier 1 and held a narrow lead early on the inside of a bunch of horses.

Eventually, Wealthyness took over the running making the turn out of the back straight with  Cheval Pegasus keeping him company from the 600m. Commander stayed a handy third.

Cheval Pegasus raced past a beaten Wealthyness to lead into the straight. Commander quickly moved up to second with his sight firmly on the new leader.

Commander ranged alongside Cheval Pegasus at the 300m and these two drew away to fight it out. It was only in the last 50m that Commander proved too strong, pulling away to win by 2-1/4 lengths.

“It was a relief to finally ride my first winner back,” said Mallyon.

“I had a long break before I came back over to Malaysia. It’s taken me a little bit of time to get up to speed. It’s my third weekend here and I think I’ve finally caught on. And I had a good horse to do it today.”

Commander won once in 14 runs at Kranji and began his Malaysian campaign with a back-to-back wins in September last year.

The son of U S Navy Flag had another win in December and has been consistent throughout the year, winning once and was placed seven times before today’s comeback win.