QTIS Leaders for January

Preparing horses for life after racing has always been in the blood for Rikkie Morton, but his retraining has gone to a whole new level since joining the Queensland Off-The-Track (QOTT) Program. The 40-year-old recently signed on as a QOTT Acknowledged Retrainer, with both thoroughbreds and standardbreds in his care. With his parents and grandparents all horse people, Morton has been around horses his whole life and decided he too wanted to make a difference when securing his property at Winwill in 2022. “When we bought our property a few years back, we decided to buy some horses and to put it bluntly, I couldn’t trust anyone with my horses,” Morton said. “So I put in the effort and got myself a couple of mentors and put my natural instinct to work and got to training these horses and it actually flowed on from there where I had friends of friends coming to me and asking me to train their horses and I ended up building a business from it. “What I found was in the market, a lot of the clients that were coming to me were purchasing off-the-track racehorses for a sum of money thinking that this horse is safe and sound for them to jump on and ride and off they go. “It was quite contrary to that - they needed a lot of retraining after coming off the track. “People were buying these horses for cheap, then they couldn’t handle them, didn’t know what to do with them, and were uneducated people in terms of retraining retired racehorses and it wasn’t a good outcome for the horses or the owners either. “I wanted to try and have an impact in that area where I’d been successfully retraining for our clients and I can make it more accessible so I can stop that cycle as much as we can by retraining these horses and then putting them into suitable homes.” Morton operates his business, MCE OTT Retraining and Rehoming, alongside wife Chantelle. The 125-acre property has onsite training facilities and access to an abundance of trails around the surrounding Lockyer Valley region, which Morton frequently utilises when retraining off the track horses. Since joining the QOTT Program in October, he has already successfully rehomed former harness racer Goelitz, who had eight wins from a 56-start career. Morton currently has three other horses on his property who are also being retrained, a number that he says would not have been possible without the assistance of the QOTT Program. “I think it’s a great thing, it’s outstanding for us as retrainers,” Morton said. “I was already doing it where I was either sourcing these horses myself or I had a couple of race trainers that were utilising us. “But the benefit of the QOTT Program to help financially, and know that the biggest costs of actually doing it ourselves was going to be reimbursed when we successfully rehomed that horse, has a massive positive impact. “With Goelitz, I’m about to get reimbursed all his vet bills, all his feed, and for me that seems small, but it gives me the ability to have confidence to get the next horse in.” Morton said the QOTT Program had also helped him with being able to dedicate more time to the retraining process. “We break horses and train horses of all shapes and sizes but our clients are limited by budget so they may say they can only afford six weeks’ worth of work,” he said. “With QOTT, I have six months available to me where I’m covered in terms of bills and that means that I don’t have to rush this horse through in six weeks or accelerate his program and push him on to the next challenge before he’s ready. “That’s where the QOTT Program helps…I can have more horses because I have the ability to be reimbursed once they’re rehomed. “Additionally, the amount of people that have contacted me saying I got your number from Racing Queensland - whether it’s a purchaser or a trainer looking to rehome a racehorse - it just works in both aspects. “It brings more opportunity to me with horses and also helps me rehome those horses to buyers that are buying through trusted sellers so it’s just a win-win all the way round.” Morton says his greatest success story as a retrainer so far has come in the form of former racehorse Maxi’s Taxi. The thoroughbred gelding only started in five races and required plenty of attention when he landed in Morton’s care. “He would never go on a float, he hated a float and would always carry on about it,” Morton said. “It was a process, and it took time and it didn’t happen in six to eight weeks, but it got to the point where I was happy for my kids to ride this horse in the round yard. “The willingness of Maxi to learn and be re-educated at nine years of age was great to see. “Working him through that and getting him through those challenges and to be able to ride him in the round yard - that’s a very emotional outcome when you can get a horse to do that.” While Morton retrains both thoroughbreds and standardbreds, he is most enjoying working with the harness racing breed to prepare them for new homes. “Both breeds have their challenges in terms of retraining them, but in my experience the standardbred is a much quieter, calmer horse for the clients I aim to match them with,” Morton said. “There’s plenty of people out there retraining horses for dressage and for sporting events, that are probably a little bit more of the athletic-type horses so to speak, and the thoroughbreds are really good for things like showjumping. “Whereas there’s a bit of a market out there for middle-aged women who have had kids that are trying to get back on a horse for the first time in a number of years, or ones that have had an incident at some point in their time riding horses.