05/10/2026
🏆 EQUIMILLIONS 2026 🏆
Well, Roconono has done it again. ❤️ Mr Consistent.
1st - Dry Work
3rd - Obstacles
4th - Whipcrack
3rd - Finals Round
🏆 Reserve Champion Overall 🏆
The obstacles round probably deserves its own paragraph… because we got to the gate and apparently I said “rollback” instead of “go through the gate”. 😂 One little “I thought you said…” moment later and we were back on track.
The final was probably the run I was most proud of, though. Roco was tired. I was tired. And I knew he was going to have to dig pretty deep to get through it. (Remember at this point we are 6 days of fairly diverse competition and about 1500km of travelling deep...😴)
Then, because apparently we needed to add another level of difficulty, we got thunder and lightning going off all around us while we were in the indoor. It was LOUD. And this horse just went…
“Cool. Anyway… what are we doing?” He tuned the whole lot out, went to work and gave me everything he had left.
I've always said OTT competitions are my favourite type of competition, and this weekend was a pretty perfect example of why.
You end up surrounded by a bunch of people who are there because they love these horses and genuinely want to see what they can become after racing. It's the one type of competition where I seem to spend almost as much time cheering for everyone else as I do worrying about my own run.
“Watch that rope, the drag is heavier than you think.”
“Careful on that one - she's narrow.”
“They're all dragging to that side.”
“Go on, you've got this!”
There is just this awesome atmosphere of “we're competing against each other, but we're all in this together.” And I bloody love it.
A big thank you to Equimillion , Team Thoroughbred NSW and Racing NSW for putting together such an incredible event and for continuing to give these OTT horses a platform to show what they're capable of. And thank you to everyone behind the scenes who makes these competitions happen — they're a massive opportunity for horses like Roconono.
Someone asked me whether I'd keep Roco if he won me a decent purse. The funny thing is… I genuinely had no idea there was any substantial prizemoney until we were leaving. 😂 So yes, lovely surprise to bring home a little roll. 😂💰
But honestly, winning or losing has never really been what these horses are about for me. It's about taking a horse that could so easily be underestimated because of where they've come from, giving them the right foundations, and then putting myself on the line to prove just how versatile they can be. Winning, in my books, means the horse did the best it could with the tools it had.
Somewhere along the way in these retraining journeys you fall completely in love with them, and that makes it hard to let go eventually - however they deserve to be loved at every stage. There has been a hell of a lot of work put into this horse this year. I've asked him to learn a ridiculous number of new things, taken him to places he's never been, asked him to be patient while I have learnt new skills, thrown new challenges at him and expected him to keep showing up. And he has - every single time.
To finish the Equimillions as Reserve Champion Overall is pretty bloody special - a cherry on top. 🍒
I know there is a family out there somewhere who is going to get this horse and think they've won the lottery. He's just getting started. He'll go on to be the superstar in someone else's life — and I'll find another OTT and start the whole crazy process again in 2027. ❤️
Queensland Off The Track
