WHEN we were last in contact with Comber native Laura Morris, she was one of many Irish people working at the Euroa training facility of the Hayes family’s Lindsay Park Racing Stables, 150km north-east of Melbourne.

Wanderlust got the better of her once again and while she is still living in Victoria, she is now mainly based at Matt Cumani’s yard near Ballarat where work commences each day at 5am. And, if that isn’t early enough, Laura first rides out for Co Cork’s Mark Dennehy who recently trained his first winner, Burning The Clock, a five-year-old bay gelding by the British-bred Akeed Mofeed.

“You may remember that when I was working at Euroa, I also worked part-time at Aintree Park Stud where Mark was the foreman at that time,” related Laura. “Well, he too has moved to Ballarat where he has the same job with trainer Nigel Blackiston. However, he is also able to train his own horses from the yard and had his first winner with just his third starter when Burning The Clock landed a 1,125m handicap at Terang on January 2nd.

“The horse, who was ridden by Neil Farley, is owned by a syndicate but runs in his trainer’s name and colours. It was an extremely proud moment for Mark, who has just one other horse in training, and I’m proud to be part of this Irish work rider/trainer combination.”

Morris describes Dennehy as “a great bloke” and if anyone wants to remind themselves of the Kanturk native you can watch an introductory video on the news section of the Blackiston Racing website.