Todd on track for third consecutive premiership in Darwin

[Wandering Eyes]

Jarrod Todd is on course to win the Darwin jockeys’ premiership for the third year in a row. (Photo: NT News)

No denying the fact that leading Northern Territory jockey Jarrod Todd is making every post a winner.

Since relocating permanently to the Top End in early 2018, the former Victorian rider has made a serious impact.

All going well, he is on the verge of winning the Darwin premiership for the third-straight year.

After booting home 33 winners during the 2019/20 season, the 34-year-old saluted on 58 occasions during the 2020/21 season and currently sits on 29 winners for the 2021/22 season.

Todd finished second in the 2018/19 premiership with 24 winners behind Brendon Davis (30), who took out the title for a fourth-straight year.

Davis was the leading stable rider for champion Darwin trainer Gary Clarke, but when he relocated to Queensland it was Todd who filled his shoes after initially riding for Phil Cole.

As well as riding at Alice Springs, Tennant Creek, Adelaide River and Katherine, Todd has had 1,642 rides in the NT for 254 wins, 241 seconds and 215 thirds – a winning strike rate of 16 per cent and place record of 43 per cent.

Additionally, he won the 2017 Darwin Cup aboard Royal Request for Kyneton trainer Neil Dyer and the 2022 Alice Springs Cup aboard Count Of Essex for Clarke.

Arriving in Australia from New Zealand 12 years ago, Todd and wife settled in Mornington – 70km from Melbourne – and he continued to ride regularly throughout Victoria before the Northern Territory appeared on the radar.

From 2014, Todd was flying to the NT mainly for the Darwin and Alice Springs carnivals, and in the end the family fell in love with the place.

Come February 2018, the family packed up and headed for the Red Centre, where Todd rode until the end of the Alice Springs Cup Carnival in May.

It was then off to Darwin and the rest, as they say, is history.

“Did my apprenticeship in New Zealand,” Todd said.

“I rode just short of two years as a senior before making the move to Melbourne.

“The last three or four years in Melbourne, I was coming up just doing the carnival and then going back.

“After Royal Request won the Darwin Cup, I went home to Melbourne and we packed up before the following year’s carnival.

“Took the caravan up there and haven’t gone back since – we’ve been permanently up here.

“The racing is going really good, I couldn’t be happier.

“Good family lifestyle.

“We’ve got five acres out at Herbert on the outskirts of Darwin – really enjoying it.

“My three kids Jacob (10), Madeline (6) and Sebastian (2) are loving it, two of them are going good at school, the wife and I are pretty happy – we’re not in a rush to go anywhere.

“We’re quite settled at the moment.”

Todd admits that linking up with the Clarke stable has been a blessing.

“I’m very fortunate – I’m in a really good spot with Gary and wife Sharlene,” he said.

“They’re really good people.

“They’re more like family than just my boss.

“It helps when you’ve got good quality of horses at the moment – they always sort of do.

“When you’ve got good people and good horses around you it makes it a lot easier.”

Todd was the leading rider for the Darwin Cup Carnival in 2014, 2017, 2018, 2020 and 2021, but he has also had periods of misfortune.

On February 12 last year, he suffered a knee injury after falling from his horse during a trial at Fannie Bay.

A few months later, on June 26, he was involved in a three-horse fall in Darwin, and although he escaped serious injury, fellow jockeys Brendan Sweeney and Kim Gladwin were hospitalised.

Sweeney and Gladwin have since recovered.

“I was pretty lucky in that fall,” Todd said.

“It’s unfortunate about the other fellas.

“It’s all good now that they’re all recovering pretty good because it could have been a lot worse – it was a pretty bad fall.

“I got trampled on – I had a couple of big puncture wounds on my hand.

“I broke a little bone in my hand, but I was only out for two weeks.”

To a degree, Todd should not have been walking, let alone riding, that day.

It’s a truly remarkable story.

“Before that fall – I came off one at the trials,” he said.

“I had a really sore leg – my knee actually.

“The horse dropped me, but I landed on my feet – it was the way I landed.

“For about three weeks – I never had a day off – it was really sore, so I went and got some physio.

The physio said, ‘No, I’m not happy, you need to get a MRI done on it. Shouldn’t be getting pain and you’ve got a bit of swelling that doesn’t look right’.

“So I went and got a MRI.

“The results came back – I tore both the muscles each side of my knee, tore my calf muscle and completely snapped my ACL.

“I had no ACL.

“I didn’t know that – I was in a lot of pain.

“I didn’t know why.

“I just kept doing my work – I just thought that I must have jarred my knee or something.

“I just pushed through it.

“Just kept getting physio and it is has come good now – feels pretty much back to normal now.

“I didn’t get it operated on.

“The physio shook her head and said I was mad, adding, ‘I don’t even know how you’re working, let alone even walking’.

“I just don’t have an ACL in my left knee.”

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