Stewart soars in Singapore

Quick quiz question - can you name the first horse ridden by Ronnie Stewart? No? Well neither can I. But what I do know and you may not, is that it was a mechanical horse at the Australian races and Ronnie was just twelve years old.

Born and raised in Adelaide, Ronnie absorbed his father’s passion for racing from an early age and by his teens he was studying at the Torrens Valley Institute of TAFE (further education) learning all aspects of the horse industry and horse management. From there he went to work for trainer Mark Lewis and gained his license at age sixteen. A year later and Ronnie was riding for Bernie Howlett in Canberra, “He was my main sponsor and a great ex-jockey”, says Stewart, “he was the one who taught me to really read races.” Having ridden his country claim out (eighty winners) Ronnie then moved on to Sydney to ride under Gary Portelli where he achieved his goal of finishing his apprenticeship within four years adding eighty provincial and sixty metropolitan wins to his total while bagging the leading apprentice title for 2003-04 along the way.

One year later Ronnie reached Singapore but in his own words his start was ‘treacherous’ – he managed to break his collarbone falling off a motorbike and suffered a bout of amnesia following a riding fall. Although he admits it’s a much tougher life once out of apprenticeship luckily it didn’t take long for things to improve for Ronnie and last season he claimed 46 winners including the 3yr Old Challenge 3rd Leg on Kelantan, finishing fourth overall in the jockeys league table. To date this year he’s running in fifth place with 26 winners in the bag, two of the most recent on Chevron in the Derby Trial in June and Onceuponatime in the Group 3 Magic Millions Juvenile Championship this July. For the Burridge Racing Stables Ronnie has secured winning rides on World Leaders and Tom Higgs as well as a second place on Graduate Boy.

When he finishes up here in Singapore, the future looks bright for this successful, young twenty-three year-old with a possible move to Brisbane on the horizon.