EXCLUSIVE: ‘It ate away at me, the first couple of years were very tough’: Darren Weir’s exile revealed
Limbo might be one way to describe Darren Weir’s current official status. But amid the disqualification and disgrace of the jigger scandal, he is quietly rebuilding his life and reputation.
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Disgraced horseman Darren Weir admits he barred himself from watching horse racing amid a “very tough couple of years” in the wake of the jigger scandal that ended his training career.
Weir, now quietly rebuilding his life and reputation as a pre-trainer for the likes of Chris Waller, Lloyd Williams and Ciaron Maher at his Trevenson Park property in Central Victoria, recently spoke exclusively to Racenet. It was his first official interview since a four-year disqualification for using “jiggers” on racehorses at two of his properties.
“Yes, it ate away at me a lot at the start, the first couple of years were very tough,” Weir, who saddled up Prince of Penzance in Michelle Payne’s famous 2015 Melbourne Cup victory, said.
“But hopefully it’s got to come to an end sometime soon. I don’t even think about the case now until I go to bed, and then turn the TV on and go to sleep and I don’t think about it.
“I used to watch the races a lot when this all started, especially the Saturdays and the big days. Now I’m just too busy.
“I ended up barring myself from watching during the week.”
Weir, however, still remains in a kind of horse racing limbo. While he has now done his time in terms of his suspension, he will in March face 10 new charges related to the use of jiggers on three horses in 2018.
Weir last saddled a runner back in January 2019, when Torreggiante ran last in a last race at a Pakenham night meeting. His career statistics as a trainer remain stagnant on 3677 winners, 36 of those at Group 1 level.
* EXCLUSIVE: Weir ‘had an addiction to winning races’: Chris Waller
The suspension and the resulting disgrace, however, have not prevented Weir from remaining in the industry in a working capacity.
Racenet recently visited his Trevenson Park property in Central Victoria, where Weir has been pre-training of some of the best horses in the land. Group 1 performers like Waller’s unlucky Melbourne Cup runner-up Soulcombe, Williams’ Moonee Valley Cup winner Cleveland, former Hong Kong star Panfield and Maher’s jumping star Stern Idol are all currently at Trevenson. Even the recent Damien Oliver Gold Rush winner Munhamek has spent time there.
Weir has a staff of 30 working from 6.30am to 3pm, “riding all day” to prepare the horses in up to 12-week stints before they’re sent back to their respective trainers “ready to go to the trials”.
Weir himself rides at least 10 horses a day. He’s physically fitter than ever, but the mental scars remain from the jigger scandal that ruined his training career.
“I only want to train for the people that I like,” Weir said, and that list also includes the likes of Gerry Ryan, David Moodie, Ash Hardwick, Nick Ryan and the Australian Bloodstock organisation.
“I could have 300 or so if I said yes to everyone (but) I’m knocking them back. I only want to look after horses for good people.
“The place is great, I’m busy, it’s good to be able to be busy again working with the horses.
“The property is absolutely incredible. I’ve designed it all in my head and we haven’t stopped.
“It is seven days a week for me here. The staff work Monday to Friday – we work them off the motorbikes Saturday, swim them Sunday. The paddocks are designed that way too that you don’t need staff mucking out on weekends.”
Weir pre-trains with no interference from Racing Victoria. The only caveat to Weir’s involvement with these high-class thoroughbreds is that any horse must be moved to a licensed racing stable 28 days before competing in a race.
“Mr Weir is not a disqualified person and thus is treated in the same manner as a member of the public,” Racing Victoria said in a statement.
Weir’s involvement with supportive clients is a two-way street – he proudly points to the likes of Waller and Williams as not just customers, but mentors and confidantes in often troubled times.
* EXCLUSIVE: Weir ‘had an addiction to winning races’: Chris Waller
“Chris (Waller) has been fantastic, he was virtually in from when I first set this up and got it going, a ripper of a bloke,” Weir said.
“Taige (Weir’s daughter, who also works in the industry) spent some time (working) with him (Waller). We talk a fair bit.
“Lloyd sends me a lot of younger horses from Europe. He wanted to send me Cleveland, but I just wasn’t quite ready. Eventually I did some work with him before he went to Kris (Lees), but Lloyd’s been terrific and great to talk to.”
Weir’s Melbourne Cup victory with Prince of Penzance is a distant memory – but that doesn’t stop him from dreaming about another, even if he admits he might need some assistance from Williams to do it.
“If you want to win a Melbourne Cup, if you were ever going to have the chance in a Melbourne Cup, you’d nearly need Lloyd as an owner I reckon,” Weir said.
“He gets it right.”
Making any return to training, however, seems a bigger longshot than the 100/1 price that Prince of Penzance went around in his Melbourne Cup win. During Weir’s disqualification, Racing Victoria introduced a “suitability test” for any person seeking a licence which enables them to take into account an “applicant’s past conduct in relation to any matter related to animal welfare”.
In the meantime, Weir can only pre-train racehorses and work through the many tough days that he expects he’ll have ahead.
“I can make a good living out of this (pre-training and spelling), but there’s just no excitement, that’s the difference,” Weir said in an obvious indication that he misses the competition of the track and still craves a return to training in some form.
That dream remains in the hands of others, for now – something that Weir is used to as he prepares to clock up another year on the sidelines following the conclusion of his original penalty.
The one thing that nobody has managed to stop is Weir’s is relentless enthusiasm for his current task – continuing to build Trevenson Park.
His pride in Trevenson was clearly evident as he gave Racenet a tour in his four-wheel-drive. The property features an 1180m sand track with tight turns to a new, uphill 700m straight training track that has a rise of 10m from the barriers to its peak.
Then there is the drive around to Weir’s ‘Flemington straight’, which is just waiting for sprinklers and grass – “I ran out of money”, he admitted. It’s 1300m long and 50m wide. Two 25m wide tracks is the plan, with horses using fresh ground every day.
“It’s been one hell of a job – two excavators non-stop, did it all ourselves,” Weir said.
We drive past a hedge that hasn’t taken to Weir’s meticulous standards, so it will be replanted. As farmers know, there isn’t much on the land that’s not built and rebuilt.
“It was a blank page when I started. We’ve redone all the fencing, and then slowly redone some barns and the pool, waiting to put another 44 stables in.
“The spelling paddocks are fantastic. I just wanted to build it so I can drive around the whole property and keep an eye on everything.
“We are getting there.”
Every paddock has a hill in it. The round yards have been shifted up from the pool to enable an arena to go in. Machinery sheds house the treadmills and an old brick shed from the former stud days will become a vet clinic.
Stallion yards front the property (Everest winner Nature Strip spent some time there), and the pool takes water from the nearby Loddon River.
During his disqualification, Weir turned to farming sheep. About 5000 of them remain on the property (as do some cattle), but Weir is adamant his sheep farming days are behind him.
“I never want to see a sheep again. No money in them.”
Trevenson’s three key paddocks are named after a trio of Weir’s best gallopers – Prince (of Penzance), Humidor and Trust (In A Gust).
“The girls named them,” he said, the girls being daughters Taige and Bonnie. Right now, Taige is completing her education as assistant trainer for Andrew Bobbin. Bonnie remains at Trevenson, working alongside her father.
“Both the girls want to be involved and hopefully I can help them in some way,” Weir said, proud that they are enthusiastically following their own paths in the racing game.
But all of that remains in limbo because of the 10 new charges levelled against Weir over the “use of jiggers” back in 2018. He faces additional charges alleging corruption, dishonesty and misleading behaviour, as well as infringements around the care and welfare of the horses.
Those charges against Weir, former trainer Jarrod McLean and stablehand Tyson Kermond will be heard from March 18-22.
Support for Weir, despite offence
Australian Bloodstock raced Red Cardinal, one of the horses central to the “jigger case”.
Its chief, Jamie Lovett, was one of the first to support Weir when he started pre-training at Trevenson and he said he hoped to be able to soon send horses to him if he was eventually relicensed. Before Weir’s suspension, they combined for Group 1 victories with Brave Smash and Tosen Stardom.
“Look there are obviously things that have been done that I wouldn’t agree with and I don’t know the full circumstances, but I’m not going to sit in judgment like others who want to hang him (Weir) out for life,” Lovett said.
* EXCLUSIVE: Weir ‘had an addiction to winning races’: Chris Waller
“He’s one of Australia’s greatest horseman – a true and genuine horseman at that. We might be a big industry, but we don’t have many like him and probably none better.
“He’s been lost to our industry long enough, he’s served his penalty and more, so to have him available to prepare our horses is a no-brainer.”
At any one time, Australian Bloodstock has up to 10 horses with Weir at Trevenson, with all then sent on to Lindsey Smith at Warrnambool. The synergy there is unique – it was Weir’s visit to Smith in Western Australia with Stratum Star back in 2016 (when he won the Kingstown Town Stakes) that inspired him to adopt Smith’s heavy sand training methods that are a key part of Trevenson today.
“Imagine being able to call on Weiry as your pre-trainer? We will continue to support him,” Lovett said.
Chris Waller posted on Facebook and social media recently of Humidor, a Weir import and hand-me-down who won a Group 2 Feehan off a 735-day drought.
Waller mentioned the “deserving life Humidor enjoys now with Weir’s daughters Taige and Bonnie and main track rider Henry O’Leary embarking on another career.”
“He is thriving as a polocross horse while spending his days out in the paddock of their beautiful Maldon property,” Waller wrote.
It was emerging Flemington trainer Nick Ryan that encouraged Weir into pre-training business. Ryan uses horsebreaker Bruce O’Dell who has a property at Eddington, close to Trevenson.
“It just worked in well – they’d go to Bruce, have a spell next door with Weiry, go back to Bruce and (wife) Jane’s for a refresher, and then he suggested we get Weiry to pre-train them,” Ryan said.
“Logistically it just made good sense – he’s got a magnificent set-up and of course he’s a brilliant horseman so it works perfectly with my system.
“They do all their base work with Weiry, six to eight weeks maybe, come in fit, need a couple of gallops and then are ready to go to the jumpouts and the races.”
Weir’s four-year ban ended in February 2023 – by then, clients were queuing up for his services.
“By April, I was back on a horse,” Weir said.
“I started with just two of Nicks and was doing all the work myself. Word got out, Gerry (Ryan) sent me some and it just snowballed. I thought if I can keep doing this, I’d be right.”
Has Weir paid his penalty?
Weir was the former trainer of Nature Strip, a $20 million earner. Only $350,000 came when in Weir’s stable. There’s also Melbourne Cup winner Verry Elleegant, who earned $15 million – only $350,000 with Weir before she became a superstar with Waller.
Longtime Weir financial adviser Mick Leonard was once quoted that former stable horses had won about $130m since his client’s suspension.
“You know, I wanted those horses to do well, I’m rapt,” Weir said.
“I still like seeing them race well for all the owners.
“What’s fantastic is the last horse I ever bought was Through Irish Eyes – I bought him for Rod Lyons (Nature Strip’s owner) and that horse is here today. Rod hasn’t changed from day one, great bloke. As soon as he knew I was up and going here, (Through Irish Eyes) was doing rehab here for a tendon. It’s a thrill to have the horse here.”
While Through Irish Eyes hasn’t raced for two years, the now-five-year-old gelding is well on his way to a racetrack return for the Maher-Eustace stable.
Weir has long been ferocious in ploughing all his earnings from racing back into property and Trevenson Park is no different.
“I’ve spent millions and who knows, I will finish it one day.”
It’s on the Baringhup Road, just outside of Maldon, which is probably only famous for Australian cricket captain Bill Woodfull and the SBS television series Scrublands.
Weir currently lives in a renovated four bedroom “guesthouse” while the property’s original 1870s original homestead gets a makeover that only those on at The Block or Grand Designs could imagine.
“I can’t wait to live there. I don’t like living in a place that isn’t finished,” Weir said, showing off a just-installed irrigation system that he runs on his phone.
“The extensions plans will start after Christmas – a new office, we’ve done the bedrooms, new posts on the veranda. It’s a big job, 12 months – there will be a viewing platform out over the pool to watch them swim.
“It’s amazing how they built them back then, the old original oven (which doubled for hot water) is still there. These were properly built, nothing out of square. It is going to look unreal.”
Cellar to become ‘special place’ for Cup trophy
Weir’s Melbourne Cup memorabilia? It all remains hidden away in a former cellar beneath the homestead. There’s the trainer’s Cup trophy, the framed rug, photos capturing the day that he always craved, dreamt of and chased.
“We will build in a TV and replay facility and get it looking good, it will be a special place here,” he said.
The aviary Weir has built alongside the guesthouse is a nod to his father Roy (“Boss”), who built a similar one alongside his house at the old Ballarat stables that were sold to Ciaron Maher when Weir was suspended.
There, like at Trevenson, the aviary is more than a place to admire the birds – it’s a haven away then from racing’s outward pressures.
“See them, those red ones (Macaws), about $20,000 a pair,” he said without a gloat.
“Singo (John Singleton) has got them – there is a blue one, used to be about $10,000, much cheaper now.
“But look up the back, there’s an African grey (parrot). He’s the best, he’s a beauty, he can talk.”
Originally published as EXCLUSIVE: ‘It ate away at me, the first couple of years were very tough’: Darren Weir’s exile revealed
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