John Morrison in the pink colours behind No Fears. Photo supplied.The saying that success breeds success in the horse racing world is a commonly used term.

One only has to casually look into the industry to see that it’s dominated by families who have set the tempo for decades, with the odd new face scattered amongst the crowd from time to time.

But the real industry purists will tell you that it’s not the flashy last names, or the big heaving stables that keep a, sometimes, struggling game afloat, but instead the smaller folk.

The ones who might train two or three horses as a hobby to their main role, they are the ones who are the beating heart of the code.

Mid Canterbury lad John Morrison hails from one of those very families, and he like other local names such as O’Reilly, McCormick, Hay and Hanrahan are just further instalments of long family lines of industry participants trying to foot it from week to week with the big guns.

And he’s doing a good job of it too.

Morrison was bred into the harness racing game, his late mother, Suzy was an astute horsewomen and his father Chris is a renowned saddler and trainer himself around the Canterbury region.

From a young age, even this writer remembers the young Morrison kid hanging around at the races, helping whoever he could – holding conversations with men who were sometimes five six or even seven times his own age.

There was just never going to be anything else that John Morrison was going to do.

But it’s taken a while to get warmed up.

The elusive first win as a junior driver took a while to unfold – and plenty of drives, but Morrison never let it get to him.

“It was frustrating,” he said.

“But I just had to wait for it to happen, there was no reason to get all worked up about it or anything.”

Now though, Morrison’s off and racing – literally.

With 20 wins on the board for the season he sits second on the national junior drivers’ premiership leader board, just one win behind current leader, Sheree Tomlinson.

The season has seen him hitting the road most weeks and heading down into the depths of Southland to take drives and with a strong support base down there, it’s proving to be a successful attack.

“I’ve been really lucky to have got some huge support from a number of trainers down there.

“It’s a big effort to go down there most weeks and it does take it out of you, but driving some nice horses always helps.”

Morrison is splitting his time between driving all over the South Island, doing farrier work around the Canterbury region and also helping out leading trainer Paul Court at his stable in West Melton in the mornings.

And on top of all that, he’s training his own small team of three horses as well.

“Three is plenty for me; I work them around my commitments at Paul’s, where I spend a couple of mornings a week, mostly working on the young ones.”

After highlighting his prowess in the sulky in the early parts of the season, Morrison stepped things up again last month when he claimed his first win as a trainer.

Unlike his first driving success, the first training win took nowhere near as long when No Fears was victorious at only the 14th time Morrison had taken a horse to the races.

And he’d only just got started with No Fears who joined his team a month or so earlier.

He took over the training of the eight-year-old from Patrick O’Reilly after his Aunt, Michelle Baird, sent him the horse on a deal.

“Michelle is my mum’s sister. Their father was Jack McDonald and it is actually his colours that I wear.

“They hadn’t been out for a while (1982) so it was good to get a win in them with the family connection.”

Morrison’s pink colours will be a sight around the South Island over the coming weeks as we enter into one of the busiest racing periods of the season.

The young horseman will be down in Gore on December 27 where he has some strong drives before hitting the road again and being at venues like Motukarara, potentially Reefton and then down to the Central Otago circuit after New Year.

“It’s a busy time of the year, but a great time because there’s so much racing to enjoy.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

© The Ashburton Guardian - 25 December 2018