Schofield learns the right way

Thursday 27 September 2012, 2:57pm

Glyn Schofield is a father who wouldn't mind if his son learned about riding racehorses in the same way he did.

But in the absence of the almost feudal system under which Schofield senior learned his craft in South Africa, he's happily settled for the methods that are turning the boy into a rider already on the way to being the equal of the father.

Chad Schofield is already a champion apprentice, thanks largely to the lessons taught at home and the guidance of his first "master", Sydney trainer David Payne.

Now in his third season of riding, Schofield has left home in a bid to improve himself, transferring his indentures to David Hayes in Victoria in late August.

Already the move is proving mutually beneficial with Schofield's arrival coinciding with a surge of winners from Hayes' new training base at Euroa.

Chad Schofield has ridden more than a dozen winners in less than a month and on Sunday has five rides on the Sir Rupert Clarke Stakes card at Caulfield.

His Testa Rossa Stakes mount Pago Rock is an early scratching.

"David has given me a lot of support and I'm riding a lot of winners," he said.

"He's got a lot of really nice young horses coming through, his stats speak for themselves, he's a truly great trainer."

The admiration is working both ways with Hayes declaring Schofield to be on the way to the top.

"I don't want to start pumping him up too much, but he's a very good natural rider," Hayes said.

"And it's so obvious he's had the right sort of guidance all the way through."

To Schofield, 18, his first time away from the family home has been trauma free thanks to the care and attention Hayes and his family put into every aspect of the business.

It's left the young rider to give all his attention to learning his job.

"I'm getting so many good opportunities down here, so many trainers are putting me on," he said.

"At this stage I'd say I'll probably be staying a bit longer than the original three months we'd planned."

While the setup at Euroa doesn't offer any picnics for teenage riders at the bottom of the pecking order, Schofield senior wouldn't mind if it was tougher.

In his day in South Africa boys who wanted to be jockeys had their dedication constantly tested at the country's jockeys' academy.

No contact with parents or home for the first six weeks, no time off and 12 hour work days.

"It was a boarding school environment," Schofield snr said.

"In your first year you had to look after the senior boys ... do their laundry, clean their riding gear, make their beds."

On top of that a new boy had to muck out stables, tend to horses, learn to ride and go to the academy school.

"A riding master taught the lads to ride and it was done properly," he said.

"It sounds tough, but it sets you up for life with respect for others and proper moral values."

No such regime is in place at the Hayes stable, nor at Payne's in Sydney.

But there is no doubt the lessons the father learned have been taught to his son and the instinct to stay grounded wavers only slightly.

"It is a huge privilege to be learning from someone like David Hayes," Chad Schofield said.

"I just hope one day he talks about me like he does about Brent Thomson, Michael Clarke, Dwayne Dunn ... the great jockeys he's been associated with."

– AAP

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