Hoop’s early career in north pays dividends
A RELATIONSHIP built almost two decades ago as a budding apprentice jockey in north Queensland has handed Lauren Abbott a pair of Townsville Cup hopefuls in 2019.
The now Brisbane-based trainer rode successfully for many years in north Queensland, mostly in the early 2000s, before moving back south, where she married trainer Brad Herne.
When she was a young rider in the north, Abbott was lucky enough to be booked for a ride by Tablelands master trainer Roy Chillemi, with the horse owned by now Cairns Jockey Club president Tom Hedley.
While she was still learning to ride against the best, Abbott thought she had lost her chance to impress the influential pair.
“When I was apprenticed up here as a jockey, I rode a lot for Roy and Tom. We had a lot of winners, actually, dozens,” Abbott said.
“Before that, I can clearly remember it, I got a phone call from Roy when I was a 3kg claiming apprentice looking for me to ride one of his horses for the first time.
“I was so excited to get the ride at Townsville for him and I did not ride it all that well.
“I was shattered and thought I would never get a ride from Roy and Tom again but they rang me on the way home that day and asked me to ride the horse again – I nearly fell over.
“The horse then won in Cairns at his next start and we have known each other well since.”
This afternoon Abbott will start Estikhraaj and Follow Suit in the $150,000 Townsville Cup, both wearing the orange colours of Hedley’s stable.
“By chance, we ran into each other at a tried horse sale for the Magic Millions and I had only just got my trainer’s licence,” Abbott recalled.
“We got to talking and eventually I ended up with these horses.”
Abbott and Hedley will be on the same team this Saturday, but last year in the Cleveland Bay Handicap, his Grey Missile beat her Kievann by almost three lengths.
The Eagle Farm-based Abbott has set herself up in Townsville for the carnival, working her horses at the beach regularly.
She picked up the two geldings who were sold recently out of the Chris Waller stable and she felt they were ideal horses for the northern carnivals.
“I think he is a really good chance,” Abbott said of Follow Suit.
“He needs one long sustained run because he is never going to pick them up, he is just going to grind away.
“They can both then press on to the ($150,000) Cairns Cup and the ($150,000) Far North Queensland Cup,”
Abbott is likely to follow on to the Far North following the Townsville carnival and she expects to see the best of Estikhraaj in Cairns.