BROWNIE'S BLOG - A GROUP 2 WINNER BUT I STILL WENT HOME DEFLATED AFTER DAY ONE OF THE CARNIVAL

By Damian Browne | Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Damian Browne is rated right up there with the best jockeys in Australia. After severe injury setbacks which would have ended a lesser man’s career, this eleven-time Group 1 winning jockey has fought back against the odds to establish a solid reputation both as a person ... through the calm, confident and professional manner in which he goes about his business ... and as a rider, where he has built an enviable race record largely courtesy of his exceptional expertise as a horseman. Damian’s column, ‘Brownies Blog’, will appear weekly on Wednesdays ... exclusive to HRO!

Day one of the carnival and it was nice to go away with a Group 2 win with Srikandi in the Victory Stakes.

It was a terrific training effort by Ciaron Maher. To give the mare that much time off (Srikandi had not raced since last year’s Stradbroke) and then to bring her back so well just showed how much understanding he has of his horses.

It was just a great training performance.

The race worked out pretty well as I was expecting. I knew Rocket To Glory would get along at a good tempo.

I thought Ball Of Muscle was the horse to beat and I’d noticed he’s been beaten by short margins on a lot of occasions so, when I went up to him at the 250 knowing I might be struggling over the last 100m myself with fitness, I wanted to try and put him away quickly.

I was able to do that. I put three-quarters of a length on him fairly quickly which put the race to bed.

My mare probably felt it the last bit, but she was full of class.

How did the ride come about?

Troy Mobbs, the main owner of the syndication, contacted me a few times over the last few months.

Once Buffering went by the wayside, he obviously knew I was available. Then, I think the choice came down to a couple of us and thankfully they went for me.

Srikandi looks to be the benchmark of the horses going through the main three races, the BTC Cup, the Doomben 10 000 and the Stradbroke.

Hopefully I can stick with her and, if she can produce what she looks like she can produce she can go on to better things.

She’s not going to be that high in the weights. She is certainly worth me going a few weeks with not much to eat. I’ll do that for sure to stay on her.

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Last week I spoke about confidence and how things can affect you.

When I was driving home from the track on Saturday I should have been really happy riding what is probably the mare of the carnival looking forward, but I was just deflated to be honest because of what transpired in the Prime Minister’s Cup ... not because The Peak did not win a race I think he really would have won, but just the loss of a lovely horse.

It does affect you.

When a horse breaks down like that at speed, racing at close quarters a lot happens. If you can you’ve got to look after the horse, you’ve got to look after yourself and you’ve got to look after those around you, or they have to look after you ... all in a split second.

Instinct obviously does kick in.

Your job is to try and keep the horse on its feet as long as you can. Thankfully, on Saturday, with the quality of riders that were around me, the action they took was as good as gold.

If they were people with their head down and the bum up, they might have just run up my bum and we’d all be on the ground.

It was a sad ending but all credit to the riders around me that they were able to take the action to dodge me and give me the opportunity to do what I had to do.

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A few HRO readers have suggested that I don’t like riding at certain tracks ... particularly Ipswich, and they have drawn their own conclusions in that regard.

Let me just say that most people know how I feel about Ipswich. There are lovely people over there and that and I was going there when I first came here.

Mostly the meetings were on a Friday afternoon, obviously before the Saturday, and it was taking me four hours to get home on occasions.

It is also a particular track and I got knocked over a few times and I just said, aah, you know what, I don’t need to be going there really.

Apparently it has been picked out that I don’t go to Ipswich, but there are a lot of jockeys that ride there but then they don’t ride at the Sunshine Coast on Sunday’s ... whereas I ride at the Coast most Sundays.

The other factor is that with my legs being the way they are, riding three days a week is probably enough for me.

It’s nothing against the tracks or anything like that. It’s just a practical arrangement for me.

I like to keep the work to a minimum if I can.
Keep the quantity down and the quality up. That philosophy works well for me.

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Riding four winners at the Sunshine Coast on Sunday gave me a lot of satisfaction.

As I’ve said before the owners and trainers of today and tomorrow are just as important as the ones yesterday so it is always pleasing to get a score on the board wherever you are.

Till next week,

Damian

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