The Hill STAKES by Jessica Owers
Keysbrook trainer Ryan Hill is just two years into his training gig after hanging up his riding boots in Western Australia, but already he is one of the emerging forces of the Perth sale ring. He tells Jessica Owers it’s been the best of starts.
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ccording to Bob Marley, the day you stop racing is the day you win the race, and for Englishman Ryan Hill, fiercely bearded and slightly built, that day came when he gave up the ghost of professional riding. For a decade, Hill had climbed the rigging of Perth’s jockey ranks, riding 479 winners, until late 2021 when he’d had enough. The wasting was too much and his mind had caught up with his body; he would train racehorses instead. Less than a fortnight later he was back at the races with his first runner, a Blackfriars gelding that would later invite a suspension for being uncompetitive. But that’s racing, Ryan Hill will tell you, a man who also thought he’d have eight to 10 horses in full-time work at his peak. Today, just two years into the game, he has up to 40. “I wasn’t expecting that,” he says. “I thought floating around with maybe eight to 10 horses would be cool for a few years, keeping my toe in the water. But then we went to the sales and bought a couple, and then to the winter sale where we bought a heap of weanlings. When the numbers got into the twenties it was getting a bit serious, and then I was a bit shocked when we hit 30 to 40 in work.” For 34-year-old Hill, shock doesn’t arrive in the form of hysteria. He’s a calm, patient type who doesn’t easily fly off the handle. “I don’t get stressed at all,” he says. “I’ve been in racing long enough to know there are ups
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and there are downs, and, to be honest, it has helped that things have got off to a pretty good start for me. I’m lucky that the support has been incredible.” Hill arrived on the west coast in 2008 from the Isle of Sheppey, southeast of London in the well-to-do county of Kent. His parents were racing enthusiasts and, growing up, Hill was light enough to begin race riding after a childhood in show jumping and eventing. He enrolled in the British Racing School where he learned the formative tools of the trade and, after a brief tenure with English trainers John Best and Peter Grayson, he snatched a temporary opportunity to ride work at Lark Hill in Western Australia. That was in 2008, but it took the then 19-year-old two years before he could ride licensed in Perth. In between, he was watched by casual racegoers in the eventing scene, earning kudos for his abilities to sit the difficult ones. Hill had a good seat and wilful patience, which helped coast him to the champion apprentice title by 2011/2012. But none of this had been his intention when arriving in Australia in 2008. He’d come for the sun, and it was largely because of the sun that he never left. “When you grow up in England, you come to appreciate the good weather,” he says. “I was over there, freezing cold, and I came here and just fell in love with the place. There is so much opportunity in Perth if you’re willing to work hard. In England, you could ride four
