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Longstanding partnership becomes official

As a nine-year-old working weekends filling up waters for the thoroughbreds trained by John Hickmott, Carrina Riggs never imagined she would one day be co-trainer at the same stable.

Fast forward two decades and that’s exactly where she is, with the Murray Bridge-based pair announcing a training partnership which officially commenced last week for the start of the 2021-22 racing season.

It was off to a flying start on Saturday, with Marina and Anna Jordsjo delivering the pair their first winner in the sixth race at their home track of Murray Bridge for the season’s first metropolitan meeting.

The duo is one of an increasing number of trainers in South Australia, and across the country, deciding to share the workload which comes with being a trainer – and in some cases developing a succession plan – by going into partnership.

“When the results from last Monday’s trials at Balaklava come out and I saw my name printed there for the first time alongside John’s, I was pretty emotional about it,” Riggs said when asked about the partnership.

“It’s probably been on the cards for a couple of years now.

“Even before I got my assistant trainers’ licence, when I was working as a foreman for the stable, I thought and hoped I would take the next step.

“But it’s very exciting and quite overwhelming to finally be here.

“To have my name on the paperwork shows in black and white it’s my effort as well as John’s moving forward.”

While it’s only just become official with Racing SA, the partnership unofficially started more than 20-years-ago when Riggs’ father started working for Hickmott.

A young girl at the time, she she started tagging along on the weekends which soon turned into after school as well – eventually leading to full time work with the stable.

“Carrina has a huge love for the animal. She has loved horses since I first met her when she was 9-years-old,” Hickmott said.

“That shared love is why it’s worked for so many years. She can catch a horse that I have no chance of catching!

“We both have similar ideas. It (the partnership) won’t change a lot, she has been assistant trainer for the last few years and before that she was doing the job without being official anyway.

“I guess if things don’t go too well I can blame her,” he said with a laugh.

“But seriously, she deserves it, she works hard.”

Riggs lives on the Hickmott farm with her partner and 12-year-old son Isaac who now fills the waters up and does a few of the jobs around the stable which she did when she was young.

“He (Isaac) knows more about the horses than I do sometimes,” Hickmott chuckled.

“He loves them and does his bit. It works well.”

Riggs echoed Hickmott’s belief that making the partnership official wouldn’t change much for either of them.

“Having been there for so long, I know how to run the show anyway, so it’s not going to be much different,” she said.

“We have similar ideas, and if we have a different idea on something we sit down and work things out. We have really good communication between us.

“I’m very grateful to John for the opportunity. My goal has been to be a trainer, to go into partnership with John, so now I’ll be concentrating on building the partnership.

“We have quite a few nice young horses coming through. We will just keep doing what we have been doing. There’s no need to fix something if it’s not broken.”

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