By MICHAEL GUERIN
Joseph Douglas nearly missed the winning ride in Royal Ways' $100,000 Great Northern Steeplechase at Ellerslie yesterday - and he can't tell you why.
Douglas dropped the bombshell after his victory that he had been one conversation away from giving up riding only a few months ago.
"I don't know what went wrong, I just lost interest in horses," Douglas said quietly as he received universal congratulations.
The 23-year-old did not seem as excited as those around him, as excited as he should be.
He said the wheels fell off his motivation after he left his job in the stable of Cambridge trainer Don Sellwood in late December.
"I freelanced for a while and was about to give it up to go into the building trade. I thought about where I'd be 15 years down the track and thought I might be able to build a house for myself and settle down," he said.
The prospect of riding Royal Ways to his second Great Northern victory would be motivation enough for any jumps jockey through the summer, but Douglas said opportunities, or the lack of them, were not behind his nearly giving racing away.
"I don't know what it was," he said.
His mentor is former prominent jumps jockey Graeme Lord.
"Graeme has really rallied around me, geeing me up. He convinced me I shouldn't give it away."
Lord was solidly in Douglas' ear with motivational encouragement immediately after the race. "I'm really fired up about racing again now, " Douglas said.
Cambridge trainers Chris and Colleen Wood have also helped.
"I ride work for their stable and they have been great to me."
Royal Ways was a raging favourite and Douglas rode him beautifully, tucking him behind the leaders almost from the start.
If you had a tip 1600m out, it would have been that Royal Ways would run away with the race, but he had to work hard for his money, his winning margin over the 1998 winner, Our Jonty, being only one-and-a-quarter-lengths.
Royal Ways had four lengths over Our Jonty at the last fence and Douglas said he knew the other horse was closing.
"I had a couple of peeks. He was closing the gap, but I knew the winning post would come up too soon for the other horse."
Racing: Winning jockey had nearly quit
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