THE SUNSHINE COAST NEWSPAPER COLUMN - A TESTING TIME ON THE COMEBACK TRAIL

By Graham Potter | Sunday, August 28, 2016

Graham Potter writes a weekly column for the Sunshine Coast daily. Due to demand from those having trouble accessing the paper these columns are now also published on HRO courtesy of the Sunshine Coast daily.

The ride on the winner of the second race at Corbould Park on Wednesday proved one point .

The way he kept his horse balanced under pressure ... the way he coaxed that extra half-a-percent of effort out of his mount that turned what would have been a satisfactory enough second place into a narrow victory clearly showed that the long enforced layoff had taken nothing away from Luke Tarrant’s extraordinary talent in the saddle.

Riding is his gift and it was good to see him putting his talent to use.

It has been a long road back for Tarrant following an unhappy sequence of serious indiscretions, both on the track and off track, which sent his career spiralling from great heights into a nose dive which threatened to crash and burn his riding future.

Those failings have been well documented. All of them, except one, are past tense and need no further detailed mention here. One matter, which is still before the court, has to be resolved though ... and will remain as a cloud over Tarrant’s future until a verdict is reached.

All Tarrant can do at this stage is try to put his career back together and his early winner on Wednesday was a good start.

While, in that one ride, he proved the point about his talent, Tarrant’s real challenge has yet to come.

A jockey is nothing if he does not get enough support from trainers. Many trainers in the Sunshine Coast racing community, where Tarrant is based, will rally to Tarrant’s cause as one of their own.

While he can be grateful for that, Tarrant should not allow that to lull him into any false sense of security because the fact of the matter is he still has a lot to prove if he is going to once again gain wider acceptance in the riding ranks.

In essence he is going to have to ‘behaviour’ his way into everybody’s good graces.

Not just for today ... or for the first month or two. Rather he will have to do so for a sustained period of time to firmly establish that he has changed his ways.

Therefore it is to be hoped that any euphoria of his early success in this comeback is tempered by the reality of how far he still has to go before he can say ‘I’m back,’ as he did after his win on Wednesday, and have people truly believe him.

Everybody deserves a second or maybe even a third chance ... but there is an end game there. How close Tarrant is to his last chance is what should motivate him all the more.

I’m sure Tarrant is serious about putting in place a healthy and wealthy future.

His talent and a more dedicated focus can get him there and we would all welcome that.

He just needs to understand where he is at and acknowledge that, even if immediate success is to follow, he cannot take his eye off the ball or be distracted by his cheer squad.

The bottom line is there can be no more mistakes.

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