IN many ways Darin Sewell was the gentle giant of racing. Quiet, ever polite and unassuming. He was in essence the gentleman of his profession. He was for years north’s leading jockey.
Darin and his dad, Errol, the north’s leading trainer, were a formidable duo for nigh on two decades. Then the jockey, fed up with demands of the racing game, walked away in October 2002.
It had become simply too much for the mild-mannered horseman.
He had a young family and there were financial obligations that racing alone could not guarantee.
“As much as it hurt, I had to,” he said as he pondered on his
career. The good times and the not so good.
And he also pondered on the question of a comeback that for a while has been eagerly anticipated by his long list of supporters and friends – not the least his dad.
“I really feel so sorry for Dad. He still battles away every morning with his horses at Cluden . . . but there is a
dire shortage of trackwork riders and jockeys . . . I have been thinking about it for a few months. Part of me wants to bounce back into the saddle. Part of me asks how can I start track work at 4am every day, knock off the painting at 5pm and have a life.”
Then there are the mid-week race days.
“It’s nearly impossible to do the two. But I would love to make a comeback. I know I could make it. You never know – we’ll see.”
No doubt his desire to ride again has been somewhat encouraged by the successful return to the saddle by Graham Watson after a 10-year break.
Watson, near 50, rode a winner at Mackay TAB on Thursday and in fact has made quite a successful return considering he doesn’t have a particular stable supporting him.
Darin Sewell would be welcomed back into the riding ranks by many trainers besides his father.
The duo just about controlled racing from the 1970s to the ’90s. Errol was leading trainer for several seasons and young Darin, who had his first race ride at 15 in 1978, rode his first winner
two weeks later at his third ride and was leading apprentice in his first season, a record that still stands and is unlikely to be bettered or equalled.
He doesn’t know how many winners he rode all up. But he remembers his first ride on Misty Point at Cluden and his first winner Baguette Star at Home Hill. He remembers his last two rides as well.
“I had decided to give riding away when Brett Baker talked me into riding his horse Moonaghee in a race at Cluden on October 12, 2002,” Darin says.
“I finally relented, rode it and it won. Next week Dad asked me to ride Prior Planning and reluctantly I agreed, only because it had 57kg, and he won too. I walked off the track that day content with my career as a jockey, happy the starvation diets of wasting and the dramas, the early morning starts, were all over. But now . . .”
Yes, there were many highs and a lot of lows.
Perhaps his greatest disappointment was not sharing any of the three Townsville Cups that Party King won for his dad. Darin was the only one who rode the horse in work for all his three preparations – but he only ever rode the horse in one race – a WFA at Cluden in the off-season – and ran third to Le Flambeur. One of the reasons was that the horse didn’t get his race riding weight. Amazingly the three cups that Party King won, he carried just over the minimum weight.
Party King seems to have reserved his best efforts for the Townsville Cup – for three years in a row. Or it was perfect planning.
Each year after the cup, he would be sent to Brisbane to Laurie Mayfield- Smith and never saluted in any start there. As a result he slipped down in the weights and was virtually on the minimum when he returned.
Darin recalls there was grave doubt if he would get a start one year. But he did and lightweight Keith Mahoney guided him to a remarkable treble of cup victories while Darin cheered him home from the stand.
Naturally he lists Party King as the best he rode but there is another he believes could have been anything – Rhondak, probably unknown to most.
He won his first three starts in a canter and severely damaged his hock. He was sent to Sydney for an operation, but he was never really the same.
Darin Sewell was a serious contender as a jockey. He was always the gentleman and, the other jocks will tell, always the joker.
One day in the jockey’s room he put a plastic spider in the riding boot of fellow jockey Chris Whiteley, known for his
arachnophobia (fear of spiders). All jockeys were in the know and just when Whiteley was about to put on his boots steward Daryl Griffith appeared and summoned Darin. He got to the
stewards’ room and said, “Can’t it wait?” Why? “I just put a plastic spider in Whiteley’s boot and I want to see his reaction.”
“Get out of here,” said the stipe and Sewell arrived just in time to see a somewhat distressed and colour-drained Chris Whiteley with one boot on – and the other hanging from the rafters.
