THE TEGAN TOUCH - NO SHORT CUTS TO SUCCESS

By Tegan Harrison | Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Tegan Harrison has joined the HRO stable. A little known fact is that last season Tegan rode more winners than any other apprentice in Australia which means the city success she is currently enjoying has been built on a solid foundation of hard work spurred on by a strong level of ‘dedication and desire’, two factors that fellow HRO blogger and Premiership leader Michael Cahill labels as being essential ingredients behind any success story. ‘The Tegan Touch’, the personal blog of this exciting young rider will appear every Wednesday exclusively on HRO.

My working week is pretty full on.

I generally start at half-past-three in the morning.

I ride work from Monday to Saturday every morning at the Gold Coast. I probably do ten to twelve horses per morning at the moment.

We ride them from home so it takes about half-an-hour a horse.

I ride work for my boss (Bruce Hill) all morning, so I don’t really get a chance to ride outside work.

On Mondays when I get home I look at the nominations and see what’s in for that week. I’ve got an agent now looking after my rides. He does a good job, but I like to keep up with what is happening myself so that we don’t miss anything.

Tuesday is generally trials or jump-outs. I do either, depending what is scheduled.

The time-frame there depends on how many trials there are. Some weeks you are there till eleven o’clock. Other weeks you are out of there by nine-thirty.

Wednesday I generally ride in races in Brisbane.

Thursday I ride if there is a meeting scheduled, like at Sunshine Coast this week … or I have the afternoon off. Friday there is Ipswich, Saturday Brisbane again and Sunday it’s Caloundra.

I try to do that every week … and I’ll go down across the border to places like Murwillumbah (that’s on again this coming Monday) if I can fit in those meetings.

When you take travelling time into account those are all full days.

My fitness comes naturally to a degree with that workload.

I think you have to be riding in races really because that is the best way to get fit to ride racehorses.

I have gone to a personal trainer before. That did help.
Since I picked up the extra meeting in town on Wednesday’s it has made it a bit hard for me to do that, but I do try and get there as much as I can.

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With that demanding schedule you have to be disciplined and being attached to Bruce Hill’s stable has helped me in that regard.

Bruce is very good. He is quite hard. His ideas are good. He is very grounded and, because of that, he makes you stay grounded yourself … which is definitely the type of influence an apprentice needs in their life.

He also doesn’t get ahead of himself and that is probably a good way to be when you are riding as well.

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So there, in essence, you have the two basic requirements for a jockey to have a fruitful career … hard work and discipline.

I’m lucky I’ve learnt these lessons early on, with a lot of help from those who have supported me.

See you next week,

Till then,

Tegan

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