It hasn’t taken Peter Robl long to get on the board since returning from a 12 month ban at the end of last month.

The former top jockey went to Canterbury yesterday looking to claim that city winner and get himself heading back up the riding ranks.

A prime opportunity presented itself with a ride on the Grahame Begg trained Dreamworker, a $4.00 favourite.

“Grahame rang to see if I would ride this filly and it was too good an offer to refuse, so I had to do a few hard yards in the past two days,” Robl said.

The hard yards he mentions involve a serious drop in weight to get down to the light weight of 53kg the four year old was allocated.

It would be no easy feat for Robl at the best of times, let alone when he’s so fresh off a year out of the game.

“I had been sweating 40 minutes a day for the last three weeks,” he said.

“Monday night I sweated for an hour and (Tuesday) I sweated for a couple of hours and then (yesterday) morning I went for 40 minutes and I was right.”

Robl had to shed more than 10% of his body weight to reach that level based off the 61kg he got to at his heaviest.

“When I got the 12 months (suspension), I didn’t care about anything. I pretty much stopped for three months – ate, drank and sulked,” he said.

“And then I think you just get to that point in life where you say, ‘hang on a minute, this is serving no purpose. Wake up to yourself’.

“And that is what I did.”

Now though he’s trying to turn the suspension into a positive and is working off the mindset it may add years to the end of his career.

“I’m more eager to ride winners now than when I first moved up to Sydney four years ago,” he said.

“I think having the year off will be good for my career in the long term because it has allowed me to get fresh in the mind and I feel good.”

It’s Robl’s second win overall since making his return as the 40 year old also got up at Canberra on Sunday