23/04/2026
I was recently asked my experience when it comes to retraining off the track thoroughbreds and why I believe I'm suitable to tackle the job.
So for those who are new - ish to me and don't know much of my history, I actually spent most of my early 20s riding track work around Melbourne tracks and then eventually a short stint up here in Bendigo, too.
I was very very privileged when I began trackriding that I spent the majority of my years in a top end metro stable riding horses around Caulfield and Cranbourne. My time at that stable was spent amongst some of the best and most knowledgeable people in the industry; whether that be the trainers themselves, the jockeys who taught me how to ride fast work, the vets, the old stable hands who'd been in stabes longer than my parents have been alive and the other riders who came from all walks of life and brought different experiences and scopes of knowledge.
Between my time between Caulfield, Cranbourne, Pakenham and Bendigo, I got experience a massive range of things with the racehorses such as
• timed gallops •barrier work •jumpouts •beach riding • jump training •bush tracks •yearling parades •lead pony work etc
Not only did this give me a massive insight into how gallopers are trained, I got to be a part of their early training and enjoy putting quality work into them each morning.
A few trainers trusted me to take horses home to Keyson Park and cross train them mid race prep - some I took up into the bush at Kurth Kiln, some I took XC schooling and some spent a week or two hacking about the Nangana farm chilling out for a bit. Some even sent horses to me for pretraining or dressage work before they went back to the track for a prep.
I never actually had much care for the race days themselves, couldn't tell you the first thing about strapping one and my perception of each horse didn't change whether it was the slowest horse in the stable or a group 1 winner. What I cared about was trying to make them slightly more educated every time I got to sit on their backs.
Could I canter leg yield from the inner rail to the middle and back without the horse changing pace? Could I get them to stretch down into the contact and loosen their backs whilst doing slow work? I used to have so much fun thinking up little exercises to do with them whilst doing laps.
So not only had I already been retraining gallopers into Equestrian horses since my teenage years, that deep knowledge and insight learnt on the track only strengthened my ability to retrain them into suitable horses off the track.
Some of the horses I have retrained have gone on to be
• Eventers
• Showjumpers
• Barrel horse (Barrel training not by me, I sold him as an adult riders horse and he ended up a junior barrel superstar 😆)
• Junior mount
• Lead ponies
• Dressage horses
• Trail horses.
• Feedlot horse
• ARC/ Interschool/PC all-rounders.
I'd highly recommend any aspiring young horse trainers to spend some time at the racetracks learning how to work with gallopers. The knowledge you will gain is phenomenonal.
If you are looking for a trainer to help you retrain your Thoroughbred off the track, feel free to shoot me a message.
Enjoy some pics below from back when I was still doing it 😊
