THE SUNDAY STORY: BACK FROM THE BRINK AND READY TO GO AGAIN. DARREN BELL RETURNS TO QUEENSLAND

By Graham Potter | Sunday, August 27, 2023

Darren Bell is back in Queensland and once again building a team as a trainer in his own right out of his Bahram Lodge base in Toowoomba.

Coming full circle ... from Queensland to Queensland ... has been quite a six year journey for Bell, a career horseman whose raft of experience and expertise includes time spent as a young man working with the late Colins Hayes at Lindsay Park, an invaluable grounding under an unmatched mentor.

“We’ve currently have got ten boxes and yards at Bahram Lodge at Westbrook, just outside Toowoomba,” said Bell. “It’s a shared facility ... Pat Webster and Jake Capewell, amongst others, train there. It is a beautiful facility ... there is a track, water-walkers, we get the use treadmills ... it is a really good set-up.

“A couple of the owners who used to be with me are back in already. I haven’t chased too much at all at this stage, but a few people knew we were coming back so, yeah, we have got some clients from before and dad (Peter) has a few horses with us.

“As I said, we’ve got stabling for ten horses at this stage. I think they will try to help accommodate us if get any more, but ten horses is a nice starting point for us.

“It’s pleasing to have a little team together already, because that was one of the difficult unknowns moving back. When we were looking for stabling, I didn’t know what sort of support we would get client-wise ... how many boxes we would need. Not that it is easy finding stabling in Queensland anyway.

“Decent boxes and facilities are hard to find, so we have been pretty lucky all around.

“Toowoomba was always on the radar. When I trained in Queensland previously, I always thought that Toowoomba would be a good place to train, mainly because of the weather.

“I know it gets cold during the winter months, but in the summer months I think horses are advantaged in Toowoomba because they don’t get the same humidity ... it’s a few degrees cooler which I think is a real benefit for them in those warmer months.

“We’d enjoyed out stay down in Victoria, but it was definitely time to come home.

“Dad’s up here. Both of my daughters live up here. Danielle, my partner who has also worked in racing all of her life ... her family is all up her as well.

“For us, Queensland has always been home, and the itch was always there to get back to training in my own right and now we have brought those two factors together.

“We are in a good place and very happy to be in a position to take up a new challenge.”
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Bell is positive about his return to Queensland and buoyed by the prospects of building up his new stable, but that is a far cry from the forlorn prospects he faced six years ago.

You certainly wouldn’t have wanted to change places with Bell back in late 2016 and early 2017.

Bell’s life was put through the wringer all those years ago when his Deagon based stable was decimated by circumstances beyond his control.

When Bell, one of racing’s nice guys, did the right thing by reporting that a horse in his stable had contracted strangles ... a highly contagious bacterial disease ... he could not have foreseen the serious repercussions it would have for his life in general and his livelihood in particular.

Stewards immediately shut down the entire stable ... twenty-four horses in two barns (one in which no horse tested positive for strangles) ... and Bell did not have a runner from December 2016 to April 2017 ... a four-month period in which stress ruled and rising debts become a formidable, ever-present adversary to Bell’s well-being.

Bell’s training business had been crippled. His resolve had taken a battering and, feeling defeating, particularly, by the way the whole matter had been handled, Bell decided to back off and hand in his training license.

*Adding insult to injury was the fact that, around about the same time, the then Godolphin’s employees John O’Shea and Henry Plumptre were fined for failing to notify stewards of a strangles case in the Godolphin stable. It is believed that, unlike Darren Bell’s case, the stable suffered little to no inconvemience beyond that.
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Fifteen years of running his own stable had been ground into the dust.

“It all got too much. It just buried me,” said Bell at the time. An industry fund-raiser did help soften the financial blow, but Bell needed to find a path forward and that came via the old Lindsay Park connection who were not about to let Bell’s expertise go to waste.

An offer to work for the David Hayes and Tom Dabernig training partnership ... and then with Ben Hayes added to the mix when David went back to Hong Kong, gave Bell a new lease on life ... as well as a new learning curve watching and being part of a top stable, working at close quarters close quarters.

“Going away was a very positive thing,” offered Bell. ‘Working for Lindsay Park and then going on and working for Tom (Dabernig) when he separated from Lindsay Park ... it really opened our eyes for both Danielle and I.

“Apart from being a good experience, we’ve learnt a lot more ... and I was lucky to be given a good job at both places which, importantly, helped us get back on our feet.

“I ended up being assistant trainer for the training partnership and then I had the same position with Tom when I moved to Warrnambool.

‘Working in different racing centres ... and everything you are exposed to ... you learn so much, from what you could or should do ... to other things that you might have to think about first.

“My experience with the Hayes’ ... from working for Colin as a young man, and then David, and now seeing Ben and JD doing so well has been amazing.

“On a personal level, it really pleases us to see the success Ben and JD are having. They are both great young fellas.”
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Running a stable ... established or new ... large or small ... forever remains a work in progress.

Starting out training afresh without a major client is as daunting a challenge you can find in racing, but if you have the expertise to tackle the task at hand, the work ethic to complement that and a good standing within the industry, things can become just that vital, little bit more manageable.

Bell has all of that going for him.

It has been a long road back to formal training under his own name, but Bell has put his time away from having his name of the door to good use, the type of use which you would expect to see serve him well moving into the future.

It still won’t be easy, of course. It never is ... but Bell is on his way!

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