RSN927
By Matt Stewart, Racing Editor
The morning after Ciaron Maher and
Dave Eustace trained the quinella in the South Australian Derby – another notch on the belt of this extraordinary, youthful training duo – a wily rival trainer quipped: “look at them in the yard.”
“Sprinters, stayers, jumpers, they’re all the same,” the trainer said. “They just lope around, heads down. You look at a lot of trainers and their horses are yanking at the bridle, wasting energy. Ciaron’s horses are so relaxed. He gets inside their heads. The man is a freak.”
The ability of 37-year-old Maher to “get inside their heads” has been the magic ingredient of his training since the very start, way back when he had six boxes at his old man’s farm on the outskirts of