Busy behind the scenes but still time for a winner

Busy Victorian harness racing trainer Jason Hackett hasn’t been seen at the races too often in 2023 – but that just made a first-up win with three-year-old Alannah Miki (Always Be Miki) at Melton (Sept 19) so much sweeter.

Hackett and his partner Cassandra Troon work full time on pre-training and breaking, but like to race one or two as the opportunity arises.

“I really only got Alannah Miki because Josh Dickie and Sammy Kilgour were having a few problems getting her brother (Ata Rangi) going and they sent him to us to see if we could sort him out,” Hackett said.

“We got him to the education trials stage for them, and they were pretty happy. Josh and Sammy suggested to the owners to give us a go with Alannah Miki as well,” he said.

After showing good prospects in her two-year-old season, Alannah Miki has mixed her form and struck some bad luck in three-year-old attempts to break her maiden status.

“There weren’t any real problems with her – I think it was just a change in environment that she appreciated,” Hackett said.

“I really didn’t feel that confident going into the race, and she hadn’t shown too much at home, but she felt the winner the whole way – maybe she’s just a race day horse!”

Hackett was introduced to the sport by his parents, who were hobby trainers at home in New Zealand.

“I just got the bug.  I left school to work with (trainer-driver) Kirk Larsen at Invercargill who had some great horses, like Howard Bromac (17 wins including the Gr 1 New Zealand Free-For-All and Auckland Cup),” he said.

“I was lucky to make the junior driver championships and came over to Melbourne for the series in 2008. I loved it over here and I had a mate who knew Lance Justice well – he kept telling me that if I wanted to come back, Lance would have a job for me.

“I went home, then went to Sweden and that was a real eye-opener.  I went for the Elitloppet and then worked for Timo Nurmos for six months and he is a very, very good trainer.  That was a great learning experience.

“Then I came back to Victoria and worked for Lance for probably five or six years, had a wee break for a year working for Adam Kelly and Gavin Lang, then went back to Lance’s for another four or five years before I went out on my own five or six years ago.”

The fact that Hackett has had only nine starters at the races this season (for two wins and two placings) is no reflection of the scale of his and Cassandra’s involvement.

“It’s basically the pre-training and the breaking that we’ve been doing since I went out on my own.  The two of us work together on that – we broke in 64 yearlings last year and usually we have between 10 and 20 pre-trainers,” Hackett said.

“But we’ve always had a racehorse or two, and I’ve got a good mate who always races a few with me.  We thought we had a nice little team together earlier this year with a three-year-old trotter Bacardi Spirit and a pacer Gamer. But as can happen, we had a few things go amiss, and so it’s really only Alannah Miki we’re racing at the moment.

“We’ll keep her ticking along for the time being because she seems to be improving. It was nice to get that win for (NZ owner) Kevin Stanley and a couple of his friends who are first-time owners.  They got a real buzz out of it.”

by Terry Gange, for Harnesslink