Those who had visions of Blake Ryan high-fiving everyone in sight after Momack’s Rosehill Midway win, were doomed to disappointment. As Keagan Latham guided the genuine gelding through the mud to win the BM72, Blake was 390 kms away at Dubbo glued to his phone TAB App service.
“It would have been nice to welcome my first city winner back to scale, but somebody had to take our two stable runners to Dubbo for the Silver Goblet Preview,” said the thirty five year old trainer. “I was standing in the horse stalls with our two colts when Momack raced at Rosehill. My phone started ringing with congratulatory calls as they went past the post. It was an enormous thrill to win a metropolitan race so soon after opening our Hawkesbury stable.”
Eighty minutes after Momack’s win the Ryan duo Sukhbir and Apple Cubed finished third and fourth respectively in the Dubbo juvenile event. “They both raced well in a pretty smart field,” said Blake. “I’m prepared to travel to find races in which our horses can earn some prize money. There’s no point in racing at Newcastle or Kembla where the major stables have so many runners. If my horses need to get right out of town to cover exes, that’s where they’ll be.”
A study in poise! Keagan Latham was at his very best on Momack - courtesy Steve Hart Photographics.
There’s more than one reason for Blake to remember this landmark achievement in his career. His maiden city win coincided with the 67th birthday of his high achieving father Gerald Ryan who by a quirk of fate missed seeing Momack’s win. “He was busy with his own commitments and momentarily forgot I had a runner in the Midway,” said Ryan Jnr. “He was on the phone as soon as he found out Momack had won. Dad’s my greatest supporter and a great sounding board when it comes to my training routine. We talk on the phone most days.”
The win was Blake’s seventh since his solo training career began just over a year ago - a figure exceeded by a healthy number of placings. He joined a special group of Australian trainers to win with his very first starter in February of last year. “Dad and Sterling sent me a maiden three year old filly called Divine Future who was unsettled in a stable environment,” he said. “They felt she’d be better suited in the semi-rural surrounds at Hawkesbury.”
Divine Future settled down noticeably, and just a few weeks later won an Orange maiden with Robyn Freeman-Key in the saddle. The daughter of Panzer Division posted a Cls 1 win at Canberra, and registered six placings before her recent retirement. Blake subsequently won provincial and country races with Miss Nic’N Off, Illustrating Law, Critical Time, and Shoeless Joe before opening his metropolitan account with Momack on Saturday.
Blake watched Momack's win on his TAB App at Dubbo where he had third and fourth placegetters in the Silver Goblet Preview - courtesy Bradley Photographers.
It’s no surprise that the power of genetics was evident in Blake Ryan’s DNA from a tender age. His maternal grandfather was the late Les Coles, an eminently successful jockey whose impressive record boasted a Melbourne Cup win on Even Stevens in 1962. Les Coles’ sister Jan is the mother of former champion jockey Malcolm Johnston. Blake’s father Gerald Ryan was a Group 1 winning jockey who has transitioned into one of Australia’s most successful trainers. The talented horseman has prepared a host of outstanding horses who’ve collectively given him 24 Gr 1 wins. His astute judgement is widely acclaimed.
Blake Ryan at Hawkesbury with Tommy Berry and his cousin, former champion jockey Malcolm Johnston - courtesy Bradley Photographers.
Is it any wonder that from age seven or eight little Blake could be found walking around the house slapping himself on the leg with a jockey’s riding crop and providing a matching race call. Without realising it, that regular phantom commentary triggered the aspiration to one day have a serious crack behind the microphone. Former ace Queensland caller Alan Thomas has vivid recollections of a teenage Blake using a spare commentary box between himself and the late Wayne Wilson at Brisbane metropolitan meetings in the early 2000’s.
“His father was training in Queensland at the time and young Blake was a regular at the Brisbane meetings,” Alan recalled. “He would call the races onto a tape recorder and get Wayne to have a listen during the course of the afternoon. Around the same time he was gaining valuable experience calling an occasional trial for the Gold Coast Turf Club. I think his ambitions were threefold at that stage of his life - riding, horse training or race calling. I don’t think he knew which way to go.”
His strongest emotion was to become a jockey, but it was obvious his weight would preclude him from professional race riding. While sorting out his future, Blake became one of his father’s busiest trackwork riders. Over the next few years he rode many horses of varying temperaments under the watchful eye of a master tutor. He made the snap decision to put his riding on hold in 2005 when an opportunity came up with the newly created racing channel TVN, owned jointly by the Victorian racing industry and the Australian Turf Club.
He gained invaluable experience in production and presentation over the following seven years, and acted as understudy to the station’s chief race caller Mark Shean. He got to call several full race meetings on TVN at one stage when Mark was on extended sick leave. One of those days remains one of Blake’s most cherished memories. “I was behind the microphone when Darren Beadman broke his own record for the most number of metropolitan wins in a season,” he said. “He brought up win number 142 on a horse called Mushroom. It was great to be involved with a little bit of history created by a great jockey.”
Jockey Blake Ryan after a win on Armidales Pride at the Grenfell Picnics - One of his 30 wins as an amateur jockey - courtesy Bradley Photographers.
During the TVN years Blake didn’t sit on a horse for five years. When he left the organization in 2012 he was itching to get back into the saddle, and predictably Gerald was more than pleased to have his son back on the trackwork team. Blake’s urge to ride in races was rekindled the moment he regained a degree of fitness and a semblance of rhythm. Young Ryan was 25 when he made his picnic debut at Cootamundra in April 2012, and what a start it was - an easy win on Armidales Pride for Parkes trainer Leslie Bryant. It’s doubtful that grandfather Les Coles was any more elated when he won the Melbourne Cup fifty years earlier.
Just one week later Blake made the trip to Grenfell where he notched a winning double - another success on Armidales Pride and the Grenfell Picnic Cup on Shot Putt. He maintained the momentum for many weeks and won ten races from his first twenty five rides. Two and a half years later Blake terminated his riding career with a record of 30 wins from 150 rides. He was more than satisfied, and most importantly the hereditary urgings had been appeased.
With race riding and media aspirations done and dusted, the gifted horseman felt the need to generate a future in his own right. Blake had been impressed with the “Ready To Race” sales concept introduced by Inglis a couple of years earlier. He saw it as the way of the future and was anxious to offer his services in the education of young horses in preparation for the October “breeze ups”. He was commissioned to put the polish on four two year olds in 2019, eight the following year, a dozen in 2021 while he has twenty one horses booked in for this year. He’ll have around fifteen racehorses in work at the same time. “It’s pretty hectic for about three months of the year, but I’ve got a great team around me and we manage it comfortably,” said Blake.
Ryan Jnr still occupies a dozen yards and shelters he leased at Noel Mayfield-Smith’s former Angst Lodge when that trainer moved to Coffs Harbour in 2020. He expresses gratitude to Randwick trainer John O’Shea who supplied him with a number of “pre trainers” in his first tough year as a solo trainer. Blake is in the process of moving to stables owned by Graham Mapp which will enable him to accommodate more than thirty horses in the immediate future.
Blake won’t forget this mare in a hurry. Divine Future was his first starter and first winner at Orange December 2021. Here she is in her second win at Canberra a few weeks later with Adrian Layt in the saddle - courtesy Bradley Photographers.
Preparing horses for Ready To Run sales, and commercial racehorse training might seem an unlikely match, but Blake says one compliments the other. “Pre-sale education has introduced me to new owners who sometimes have a racehorse or two among their interests,” said Blake. “In fact Phillip Pollicina originally contacted me to educate some Ready To Race entries, but came back to me later offering me Momack to train. That connection led me to my first metropolitan win. You never know what’s around the corner in this business.”
The demands of motherhood are currently preventing Blake’s wife Jess from having a hands on involvement with the horses, and for good reason. The couple are the proud parents of Jack (4) and Grace (2) but Blake has released the news that a baby sibling is due in October. “Jess is the daughter of former apprentice jockey Steve Mitchell and is an excellent rider in her own right,” he says. “She got her early education in three day eventing but later became a valued member of Chris Waller’s trackwork team. She got to ride a few pretty valuable horses in their work, and still dines out on the fact that she rode Winx in early gallops. I recall her coming home one night and telling me the Street Cry filly gave her a good feel, very early in proceedings.”
Blake’s well aware he’s embarking on a professional career at a time when people are going to bed as plumbers and waking up as horse trainers. All he can do is give it his best shot and put his years of preparation to good use. Fate has decreed that he’ll never get to emulate his grandfather by riding a Melbourne Cup winner, but he’ll be doing his best to train one.
Blake was deputising for his father Gerald when this one was snapped - he's with Mitchell Bell after a win by Klammer at Hawkesbury 2015 - courtesy Bradley Photographers.
(Banner image - A defining moment for Blake Ryan - Momack gives him his first city win under grey skies at Rosehill - courtesy Steve Hart Photographics.)