Picture: Donovan wins on five-year-old gelding Mellenkamp in just his second meeting as a permanent resident in Australia.
Former KZN champion apprentice Donovan Dillon and his wife Tayla have secured permanent residency in Australia and this has given Donovan the freedom to go freelance.
He said, “It was a huge relief to get our permanent residency. We have only just started riding for other trainers now but we had our first outside win on our fourth ride, so we are hopeful that we can get up and going quickly. It’s been really hard over the past 2,5 years but really the hard work has only just started and I have to get my face out there so hopefully we can get up and going quickly.”
On January 2 at Muswellbrook racecourse, which is about a three hours drive away from the north of Sydney, he had his first win as a permanent resident in Australia on the Allan Boyle-trained five-year-old Impending gelding Mellencamp, who won an Aus$30,000 event over 1500m paying Aus$5.00 on the Tote.
He has four rides on Saturday at Glen Innes racecourse, which is about a seven hour drive away from Sydney and four hours away from Brisbane.
All four of the rides are for different trainers.
Donovan is based at Australia’s world famous stud farm Arrowfield, which is in Scone and is close to the aformentioned Muswellbrook racecourse. Scone also has a raceourse, so that would be Donovan’s local course.
Arrowfield have a small racing yard with the horses being trained by Paul Messara and Leah Gavranich, a partnership which started in September last year, with Paul having been on his own before that. Paul is the son of John Messara, the founder of Arrowfield.
Donavan had eleven winners for the Messara racing operation in his first two-and-a-half years in Australia, but rides were rare and he was also out for a long time with a serious injury when kicked by a horse, tearing the muscle away from the bone on his thigh.
All in all in Australia his 12 wins have come from just 43 rides, so his strike rate is a high 27.9% and his place strike rate is 62.8%.
Considering the calibre of jockey coming out of the world famous South African Jockey Academy coupled with his hunger, Donovan’s career should take off.
Tayla has also been doing well working for a neighboring stud farm called Ridgmont, which is not related in anyway to the South African Ridgemont.
