Racing: Lynch takes long road to success

Ask Glenn Lynch when he thought he had Saturday's A$500,000 ($591,000) Queensland Derby won on Ice Chariot and he says: "Last August."

That's being confident, not smart-arsed.

Confidence is what today drives the 34-year-old former moderately successful Cambridge-based jumps jockey.

From eight years struggling to make a living with perhaps a couple of jumps rides a week in New Zealand, Lynch is now a highly respected Queensland horseman and jockey.

Saturday's group one Derby was the pinnacle of success for a young man that once thought he'd never ride a winner and came within days of cancelling his apprenticeship licence.

"I never rode a winner as an apprentice," said Lynch yesterday, still basking in the glory of riding a Derby winner while suffering a suspected broken bone in a left foot.

He left school before he turned 15 to work for Peter Hingston in Rotorua. Not long after Hingston severely cut his team back.

"I didn't want to go back to school, so I went to work for Alan Jones, then Barry Cook at Paeroa, then Roger Lang at Cambridge, then David Miller, because I thought I'd become a jumps jockey, then moved back to Roger Lang."

Lynch was into his second stint working on horse farms in Japan when he decided to cancel what was a 10-year contract because he missed New Zealand too much and belatedly decided he wanted to be a jockey after all.

"The penny dropped - I guess I was a later developer."

Success as a jumps jockey started to come his way when in 1997 he fielded a phone call from a trainer in Toowoomba, offering him a contract.

"The leading rider at Toowoomba had just been killed in a racefall and a couple of his fellow jockeys who were friends decided to retire out of respect.

"It meant there was a huge opening for a jockey there."

Lynch steadily built up a useful record on the flat in what is a moderate racing scene, but was rarely seen in the big time on the Brisbane city tracks of Eagle Farm and Doomben.

"If I was offered a ride in Brisbane it would only be one and it would always be a light ride and I was always having to do it tough to ride light.

"It was always a decision between one ride in Brisbane on a Saturday or five or six at Toowoomba."

His other tie was that his New Zealand partner of the time, trainer Maryanne Brosnan, moved to Toowoomba several months later and Lynch was often restricted to riding wherever the Brosnan horses raced.

Lynch has built up an admirable reputation as a horseman.

"Wherever he's gone the stable horses have improved," says leading Brisbane racing editor Bart Sinclair.

The partnership between Lynch and his present trainer, Ron Maund, has been sensational this season.

So has Lynch's confidence since he linked up with a manager, Chris Dwyer, also a professional tennis coach.

"Before this season I hadn't ridden a stakes or group winner.

"This season I've ridden six group winners and four listed winners."

Nothing will probably ever give Lynch more satisfaction than his clever ride on Ice Chariot.

Apart from declaring the horse the Derby winner last August, Lynch had to come up with a spectacular ride after Ice Chariot drew an outside gate.

As the start was made he dropped the 3-year-old back behind the field to find the inside running rail, a tactic that can be spectacularly unsuccessful at times.

This time it wasn't. Lynch found room outside to improve at the 600m, had Ice Chariot aimed at a mid-track gap 300m out and the Queensland 3-year-old's stamina proved irrepressible against outsider Cape Breton and former Waikato galloper Loanhead.

Maund gave Lynch no instructions.

"Ronny said: 'I'll leave it up to you, then I can blame you if you get beaten'."

The Derby nearly didn't happen for Lynch. At Ipswich last Thursday the bit on the bridle of his mount Reasoning broke on the way to the start and the horse bolted.

"I had no reins and it was the first time I've ever had to jump off a horse.

"He can be an unruly little bugger at the best of times, but they put a new bridle on him and I won the race on him."

Lynch suspects he has a broken foot and has damage to the thigh muscle of his left leg, but before the weekend had no intention of allowing official scrutiny and the risk of being stood down.

He has rides on the Brisbane Cup programme today and does not intend having the leg x-rayed until Thursday.

It could have been worse - the bit could have broken during the race on Thursday and I'd have been watching the Derby from a hospital bed."

There was a time when Lynch thought finishing third to Brett Scott and Michelle Hopkins on the 1996-97 New Zealand jumps jockeys premiership was the best thing that was ever going to happen to him.

His future now holds an awful lot more.

He thinks a lot about that Toowoomba phone call.

"I'd probably be still in Cambridge battling along with a few jumps rides."