“They have a great relationship with Warren [Kennedy] who is obviously their main rider, but they were so great letting us stay in a cottage at Cambridge Stud when we got here. It is an amazing place.”
Okay, since those dots didn’t quite lead from England to Waikato you can imagine it must have been Irish jockey Joe Doyle, who Stott says “was about the only other person I knew in New Zealand since we were apprentices at the same time”, who lured him here.
“Actually, that isn’t right either,” the 30-year-old says with a laugh.
“I know Joe and knew he was here so when I was thinking about coming out and I rang him and he told me it was great, but that was about it. I think we only had one chat.”
So how did a jockey who has triumphed on the biggest stage in world racing end up at Trentham last Saturday?
“Well, it was very random,” Stott tells the Herald.
“It was getting toward the end of the flat season back home and I was riding at Wolverhampton one night and John Egan [former G1-winning jockey] asked me what I was doing for the winter and had I considered New Zealand,” explains Stott.
“I hadn’t really even thought about it. I had ridden in Dubai and Australia in our off seasons and I’m not really light enough to get enough rides in the US.
“So I told John I was interested, then he rang Bruce Sherwin [NZ racing expert and administrator] right there and then and that is how it all got started.”
Stott admits jumping on a plane to New Zealand was very much a journey into the unknown.
“We hear a lot about Hong Kong and Australian racing back home, but very little about New Zealand.
“But we are loving it here and that was a huge thrill on Saturday because she is a very good mare.”
Like other talented riders who have come to New Zealand, Stott is well acquainted with racing’s judiciary system here, admitting he is not a fan of the way some of our rules are enforced.
“Rules are rules and they are different in each country and I realise you have to abide by them.
“But I think here not a lot of emphasis is placed on what the jockeys actually say in the room.”
Stott copped that on Saturday when what looked like a minor careless riding charge when racing clear in the Telegraph cost him $4000 and a seven-day suspension.
“I didn’t think it was worth that,” he says matter-of-factly.
While that means he will miss a Trentham return trip on Saturday, he can ride at the Wellington Cup meeting the week after and, more importantly, the far more lucrative Karaka Millions on January 25.
Stott says he hopes to be in New Zealand until at least March and maybe even into April when Group 1 racing ends here, and that would tie in nicely with the resumption of more regular flat racing back home in England.
“We are loving it here and I’d really like to make it an annual thing.
“I know some trainers are funny about putting riders on who aren’t here all year around, but it seems most of the big races here are between October and April and that works in perfectly for somebody in my position.
“So we want to keep coming back.”
Amazing the opportunities that can pop up on a cool autumn night at Wolverhampton.
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s racing editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.
