Tori hits the jackpot with her second starter

Young Central Victorian horsewoman Tori Hutchins wasted no time in posting the first win of her training career – taking the spoils with just her second starter at the St Arnaud harness racing meeting on Friday (Dec 29).

McArdom (McArdle) was given a sweet trip on the back of the leader by Hutchins’ partner Luke Dunne, and showed a good turn of foot to score an easy three-metre victory in the Our Volunteers Two Lifetime Wins Pace.

“When he strode past the leading horse up the straight, I felt more relief than anything else because Luke and I have put so much time and money into getting him right,” Hutchins said.

“To see it all finally come together was really good – it felt a bit surreal hearing the trainer and driver combination being read out over the speaker after the race!  I knew it would happen at some stage, but we’ve gone through so much together to get to that point that it just felt so real at that moment,” she said.

McArdom, at his previous start at Charlton, went within a short half head of giving Hutchins a first up maiden victory.

“That second gave us confidence in the horse, and he felt really good going into the St Arnaud race.  I was hoping it wouldn’t take me too long to get my first winner, but at my second starter that was pretty exciting – hopefully it’s all up from here!” Hutchins said.

The 22-year-old and Dunne share the workload at the Carisbrook stables of Luke’s dad Paul Watson, who is recovering from a leg amputation earlier this year. Watson also trained at winner in the very next race at St Arnaud, with Foregone Conclusion (Art Major).

“Foregone Conclusion’s win for Paul also felt super good because Luke and I have been doing the bulk of the work with all of his horses since he’s been out of action,” Hutchins said.

“It really felt more to us like our first winner and first double together on the day since we had so much to do with Foregone Conclusion as well – and not to play favourites, but he’s definitely up there because he’s just a super awesome horse to have around,” she said.

“Paul is going really well, he’s back home now. He’s got his prosthetic leg on, and he’s starting to do a lot more walking and getting around better. It’s still going to take a lot of time for him to adjust but we are just glad he came through it all.”

Hutchins found her way into harness racing through her dad Shane who had a share in metropolitan class square-gaiter Star Gun (Wagon Apollo) trained by Mattie Craven at Ecklin South, in southwest Victoria.

“I started going out on school holidays and whenever else I could to help out,” Hutchins said.

“I then did track riding with the Monte horses (Star Gun was a Monte competitor) that Mattie had and that really ignited the spark for me – I was always into riding horses, so harness racing just combined my love of horses with racing.

“Then I started getting into the retraining side and Marg and Jason Lee really supported me through that. They had retired horses that they needed help finding homes for, so I offered to take on a few.

“I was always still helping out at their stable riding their racehorses and helping them at races as well.”

Which, of course, was how she met Luke, relocating to Carisbrook about 12 months ago and, with Luke and Paul’s support, pursuing her interest in training.

“I really wasn’t keen on driving – I’ll leave that to Luke.  But I really love the training side,” she said.

“Luke and I seem to work really well together.  Most of the time we have very similar opinions on what the horses need, and we both love giving them the one-on-one treatment – we really believe it makes them feel like they’re good horses and they want to give us their best.

“There’s so many people to thank – I couldn’t have done it without my family behind me every step of the way, but I honestly couldn’t have done it without Luke. We’ve taught each other so much and I wouldn’t change it for the world.

“My goal now is to really get our name out there as a young training couple – we have some terrific current owners and as we start having more success, hopefully we will have more people who are prepared to give us a chance.”

by Terry Gange, for Harnesslink