Duggan reaches 1,700 wins

Ricky Duggan has become the first Tasmanian driver to record 1,700 wins.

However, it didn’t come via the win of Watchmylips in Hobart Sunday as many people, including this writer thought, until notified after the race.

A steward’s inquiry that was completed late last week from a race held earlier in the year saw the winner disqualified. Duggan drove the second placegetter of that race which was subsequently promoted to first.

So the record books will officially see last night’s victory of Watchmylips as win number 1,701 for the states most winningest driver.

Either way, it is still a massive achievement for a Tasmanian driver.

Watchmylips was having his first start since May 2019 and had won two of his four starts before last night’s win.

From barrier five Duggan pushed forward on the gelded son of Hes Watching to take the lead before sprinting away from the field late to score by 10.9 metres in a mile rate of 2m 1.0s.

“He has always been a nice enough horse, Rodney (Ashwood) has done a hell of a job with him to get him back, that was his first run in about 13 months,” said Duggan.

“He has had a little bit of trouble with him, he has patched him up over a period of time, and the horse had a while off when Rodney was on the sidelines with his knee injury,” added the winning reinsman.

Given the pacer has only had five career starts and last night being his first start in an extended period, you would expect there to be plenty of improvement to come.

“He still does a few things wrong; he is a bit green and babyish really,” Duggan explained.

Duggan was clearly pleased to bring up the 1,700th win, giving a salute as he crossed the line.

“It was nice to bring up the 1,700, well we will claim it was, for Rodney as our family have been great friends with his family for over 30-years. Our boys grew up together and are now teaming up for wins in Victoria,” explained Duggan.

Ricky’s son Josh has driven many winners in recent weeks for Kate Hargreaves, who is the life partner of Rodney’s son Alex.

Duggan has had the support of many owners along the journey and last night’s win was with one of his loyal ownership groups.

“It was also good to win on a horse that was owned by Jamie Cockshutt and Barry Cooper who have been a massive support for me for a lot of years now,” said Duggan.

One thing that many Tasmanian trainers and owners don’t know is Duggan’s lack of desire to travel to race meetings throughout the state, and he admitted he “could have had a few more” wins if he elected to make the trip north from his New Norfolk base on a regular basis.

Duncan Dornauf for Tasracing