Whiz-kid Wiremu will be a winner or waste his talent
Sharrock faces tough task to tame teenager
Attitude underpins racing for horses, owners, trainers and stable staff. And jockeys. You can make a case it’s more important for jockeys than any other group in the industry. More talent has been wasted by emerging young jockeys than competitors in any other sport/industry.
Which brings us to racing’s latest whiz-kid apprentice jockey Wiremu Pinn. Explosive is the only word to apply to the impact the 18-year-old who hadn’t been on a horse’s back a couple of years ago, has made in the seven weeks he’s been at the races.
But to maintain that momentum after what can only be described as a blink in terms of time and to take his career through to highly successful jockey is like training to be an international airline pilot times three and walking up the steps of Air New Zealand for the first time. That’s where Pinn is at although he probably feels he’s got the game beaten already.
Guiding that job comes down to Taranaki trainer Allan Sharrock, mercifully one of racing’s hard men. He will need to be.
Pinn was a troubled South Auckland kid. Despite having never patted a horse, Pinn was advised by a vocation guide to link up with the high profile Autridge-Richards stable in Matamata. Behavioural issues ended that.
Enter former top class jockey and now apprentice mentor Noel Harris. He called Sharrock, saying: “I’ve got a kid here — on a good day he’s as good as Michael Walker, on a bad day he’s three times worse.”
The significance of that is Sharrock pulled Walker up by his bootstraps, despite injury and huge attitude problems to be champion New Zealand apprentice and now one of Australia’s most sought after jockeys. If you think that was easy, call Sharrock.
Changing direction for a moment, this writer answered a call one afternoon three years ago from Sydney jockey Josh Adams. He wasn’t greatly known here, but for the first two years of riding he had been Sydney’s leading apprentice and you can barely realise how good you have to be to attain that title. These are among the world’s best emerging jockeys.
“Will you please do [organise] my rides [as an agent] in New Zealand?”
Adams had been banned for a period in Sydney after a positive drugs test and was going to try his luck here.
I hadn’t met him, but it took as long it takes walking to the letterbox to realise this is a rarely-seen talent. Not long after arriving, he rode two in trackwork for prominent trainer Nigel Tiley and Nigel, a friend, called to say: “This kid got off the horses and told me as much as I knew about them. He’s special.”
So was his appetite for trouble. He wasn’t a hard sell and he was quickly riding for Richard Collett and Roger James. Roger put him on the favourite for the group-rated Eight Carat Classic at Ellerslie on Boxing Day.
That morning Adams called me and said: “I can’t ride today, I’m not well.”
It will be 20 years before we are allowed to publish Roger’s reply when I called him with the news. The filly won, the lucky recipient being Micky Dee, at Ellerslie only because he was on his way to what is now a highly successful Australian career in the saddle.
The following day I had a call to say Adams was playing drinking games on Facebook. He called and said: “What do you think I should do?”
Go straight to the airport and fly back to Sydney was the reply.
Mercifully he did. You can’t manage a jockey who cannot even spell professionalism no matter how massive the talent.
Just before his first drugs disqualification in Sydney, Adams was seen at a nightclub burning A$100 notes simply to show off. The modern trend in Australia is for trainers not to take a fee from their apprentices’ earnings. At the top of the young heap Adams was pulling in A$2500-A$3500 a week. Too much money too soon, which can be like a cancer.
Around that same time a youthful Sam Clipperton started a Sydney apprenticeship. His boss, former champion jockey Ron Quinton, rarely allowed his teenage apprentice out after 8.30pm during the apprenticeship. Temptation was eliminated.
The difference? Adams, not long returned from a second bout with methamphetamine, is struggling with middle of the road type rides around provincial NSW meetings.
Clipperton has a million dollar contract in Hong Kong.
Sharrock says in most ways Pinn is more difficult to handle than Walker. “Mickey was never easy, but thankfully you could get through to him when it really mattered. He knew what a payday was and how to achieve it.
“When Mickey was apprenticed I’d set The Gifted Shifter for the Marton Cup and I gave him the ride.
“The night before the race he came home at 2am as pissed as he could possibly be. He got up early and I told him to go back to bed.
“All the way to the races I abused him like you can’t believe.
“The horse drew the outside of the 18 runners and before he got to the winning post the first time he had it in the one-one.
“I remember thinking ‘You might be a dickhead at times, but you’re a gifted dickhead’. He always had enough street savvy to know when to pull it together.”
After nearly four months Sharrock admits he’s not sure Pinn has that quality.
“He has to learn it’s my way or no way at all.
“It’s all very well getting the headlines he’s getting, but he has to learn to be professional. If you don’t conduct yourself in a professional manner, people quickly lose faith in you.”
Only time will tell whether Pinn goes down the path drawn by Clipperton or follow the opposite direction of Adams.
It will come down to one element — attitude.