It’s probably not the sharpest recollection of Victoria’s latest premiership winning jockey – that’s Daniel Stackhouse – that you’d expect comes first to mind.
Not that defining seal when Stackhouse won the Deane Lester Flemington Cup on Saturday on Mimi’s Award, spoiling Jye McNeil’s preferred story ending.
(Daniel Stackhouse - middle) with Paddy Bell (left) and Jake Duffy on that op=shop couch at that Jockey's Trust Cricket match 2013. (supplied - by Stacky)
It is Stacky sitting on a sofa, but that sofa was perched in the back of his blue ute, as he watched the inaugural National Jockeys Trust charity match at Red Hill on the Peninsula back in 2013.
“Yeah, I remember that, I brought my own grandstand,” he said.
“We stopped off at an op shop along the way, bought the couch, put it in the back of the ute so I could to watch the game. I reckon we got dressed up for it as well, it was a bit of fun.” Stackhouse recalled.
Stackhouse had only been in Victoria a short time, he started here in 2010 “winning” a two week stint (replacing then on-loan Taylor Lovelock-Wiggins) with Peter Moody for taking the South Island premiership in New Zealand with 38 wins, before Moody’s then off-sider Tony Haydon recommended he stay. He did and the winners haven’t stop flowing.
But this premiership winning season hasn’t been any overnight success, he has ridden more (138 in 2018/19), and with this week off via suspension he rests on 125 in Victoria (130 overall), and without cliché it comes down to that old “the harder you work….”
“Yes it was a goal of mine at the start of the season, coming back off injury and getting back into the wing, I just wanted to be consistent and it’s good to tick that off now,” Stackhouse said.
He’s not one to be blasting achievement on social media, but quietly as proud of his on track achievements as he is of a personal best one hour 25 minutes for a half marathon, and an impressive three and a half hours for a full marathon.
“I love exercise, running, cycling, I just don’t like relaxing,” he says.
Something backed up by rival and close friend Damian Lane: “He would be one of the fittest jockeys in the room and that shows in the results on the track,” said a Greek holidaying Lane.
“We have done a fair bit of running together over the years and he has a decent engine.”
Like when Lane, along with Stackhouse’s Moody stablemate Luke Nolen, and others including Chris Symons, Jake Duffy, Rowan Waymouth, Paddy Bell started a basketball team in a Cranbourne competition.
“We were called the Tramcars, only because Trumby had a tram in his backyard, we weren’t much good, but it kept us busy, think we last a couple of seasons at least,” says Stackhouse.
When I’m talking to him, he pulls in, with his partner, fellow jockey Tatum Bull, to Nolen’s property to – let’s say “look at horses.”
Nolen, who famously got the gig at Moody’s under misunderstanding, the laconic trainer from Wyandra thinking he was booking S for Shaun Nolen for a couple at Sale, and got brother L for Luke, and some 855 winners together later including the Black Caviar story, grabs the phone.
Stackhouse has some 115 winners for Moody, Nolen three Melbourne premierships as well, but wants to relate a tale against themselves but from the mouth of Moody. You can sense the good fun right?
“I’ll tell you one thing about Stacky,” Nolen says with some glee as he inserts himself into the yarn. We are talking noses, or Super Imposes for rhyming slang purposes and racing terms.
“Moody always said he could retire if my nose was filled with second hand furniture,” says Nolen with no hint of embarrassment.
“But when he saw Stacky’s, he said if that was filled with gold, it was happy days.”
Fact checking and ignoring the obvious personal slander - Moody says correct: “Yeah that would be fair”, Stackhouse allowed invoking his right of reply – “yep, sounds about right.”
No problem. We knows (pun intended) what’s going on here. That no fuss get on with it approach suits Moody, as much as Stackhouse and his riding career and their partnership.
The Moody bakes the “GR” – good ride “BR” are well known, the sprays quick, hostile and somewhat direct and targeted, the fallout as quickly forgotten.
The Stackhouse story is somewhat typical, pony club, bored of school, transition to a jockey’s career, but there is a little more substance in this one.
His grandfather a trots trainer in New Zealand, his sister a rider, his parents Vicki and Ross, carting the talented aspiring horseman around the islands but for nothing more than ribbons.
“We came from Ashburton not far from Christchurch, I’d do trackwork before school and I wasn’t much good at that so it was something I always wanted to do,” Stackhouse said.
“We’d be away for a month at a time on the north island, a great way to meet people and to learn a work ethic. I loved it.”
And he was good at it, Grand Prix class ponies, a palomino, a falcon, terrific results and eventually an apprenticeship that started with Ricky Donnelly at Riccarton before getting chances with Te Akau and jumps jockey Tom Hazlett, time spent when young Stackhouse struggled with weight marrying jumps with the flat.
“It was probably a bit of pubity and growing and not knowing what I was doing at the time. I was meant to ride the Great Northern winner one year but we had trouble getting there and I missed that but I don’t miss the jumps now.”
But the Aussie movie? “It was like growing from a boy to a man, leaving my country I came over green and raw and it did take time to find my feed and think if I am good enough, but I stuck to it.”
And he did and he is. He still – like most riders – balances weight with work. Normally 58kg, this well off will see him 60kg, he’s ridden recent Cups as low as 52.5kg but it is always a struggle, bit such is the modern way, like a football club, there is always a support team.
“I’ve got a bloke called Mark Cromwell doing my form, Steve Arnold helps me with my riding and I talk to James Winks just every day for ideas. I’d say I’m my harshest critic, I hate wasting rides,” he says.
There have been serious injuries, heart scares, a Kilmore fall that left nine broken ribs lacerations to the liver, a punctured lung ad busted pelvis. “It happens but I’ve never been fitter.”
Stints in “crazy” Mauritius, where there was 18 wins and a couple of domestic Group 1’s has been his other international experience and its Europe not Hong Kong that might be the next goal, but it will be hard to ignore the Stackhouse influence in Victoria and beyond.
None of which will be taken for granted. Improving marathon times and knocking up riding records will be the focus.
Sitting on a couch watching that happen? No way.
Stackhouse knows where he is focussed. Pun intended.
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