Changing places – Ryan’s drive also opens the door for Dilmi

The new racing season means fresh adventures for Sara Ryan and Nacim Dilmi. But before Ryan hands over her training responsibilities to Dilmi at Domeland and heads out on her own, they will have a few days to reflect on how a one-time biochemical engineering student from Sydney and an aspiring but unsuccessful French jockey found themselves on the precipice of their next big opportunity.

Go back five years and Sara Ryan, who will next month depart the Domeland operation for a Wyong-based solo career in training, will tell you she never saw racehorses in her future.

“I would have laughed if you’d told me I’d be a trainer,” she tells The Straight. “I had very little exposure to racing growing up. Pretty much none, really. When I started working for Domeland, that was the first time I actually went to the races.”

In the affluent North Shore suburb of Turramurra in Sydney, Ryan grew up far removed from a racecourse. Her father was a doctor, her mother a nurse, and straight out of high school she enrolled in a biochemical engineering degree at the University of Sydney.

Nearly three years into it, the boredom was eating her.

“I told my tutor one day that this was the most boring thing I’ve ever done, and he said I’d better get used to it because this is what I’d be doing for the rest of my life. I walked out that day and I never walked back in,” he said.

For anyone who knows Ryan, that is how she is. Iron-willed, hard-headed and absolute. Her mother once told her she was the most stubborn child she’d ever seen.

“When I walked out that day, there was no doubt in my mind that biomechanical engineering wasn’t what I was going to be doing for the rest of my life,” she says. “I didn’t enjoy it. I wasn’t driven by it.”

That drive is why the 30-year-old is venturing into the domain of public training. For the past six years she has worked for the Central Coast-based Domeland, the last two as its head trainer.

In that time, and with her first runner at Taree in September 2021, she has logged 60 race wins and 105 placings, the latter featuring five in black-type company. Her career prize money earnings have slipped past $6 million.

But it was the I Am Invincible gelding Attractable, a horse she described as ‘a comedian’, who rocketed her to stardom, same-day delivery. Just a year into training, she won the $3 million Big Dance with him at Randwick and, suddenly, everyone knew her name.

This year, she followed it up with the Maurice gelding Matcha Latte, who snatched the $1 million Provincial Midway Final at The Championships.

“Those victories were validation that my methods work, that I can produce a horse on a championship day,” Ryan says. “Were they catalysts for the decision to go out alone? Probably, because if you didn’t have the confidence that you can do these things, it would be hard to achieve what you want.

“Domeland gave me incredible opportunities when I was, basically, starting from scratch. Up to then, I’d seen myself making it to the Olympics as a show jumper.”

Ryan’s equestrian skills, in her opinion, are the key to her success. After walking out of biochemical engineering, she spent six months in Florida riding show jumpers for Thaisa Erwin and fell into Domeland on her return, assisting with managing its racehorses and, eventually, pre-training and then training.

On any day, Ryan is riding the horses in her care, be it in trackwork or flatwork back home in her own arena. She cannot imagine doing her job without knowing what it’s like to bring a horse onto the forehand or work a perfect 20-metre circle.

“I don’t know how people train horses if they’ve never sat on the back of one,” she says. “It actually baffles my mind. You don’t necessarily have to ride all your work, but you have to understand how a horse moves. We’re expecting these athletes to perform at their absolute maximum, but if they can’t canter a circle and hold themselves up, how do you expect them to pick their legs up fast enough?

“You see a lot of racehorses with a big under-neck, for example, but that’s not the muscle that will pick their legs up. It’s the back muscles that will do it, and you can’t build over the back if they’re not using themselves correctly. You have to teach them how to do that. It’s the absolute foundation.”

In a modern game where metro trainers have 200-plus horses and are never seen in the stirrups, Ryan is a point of difference. When she takes up her boxes at Wyong racecourse on August 7, she will use her own property to continue schooling her thoroughbreds in English saddles.

“When I walked out that day, there was no doubt in my mind that biomechanical engineering wasn’t what I was going to be doing for the rest of my life,” she says. “I didn’t enjoy it. I wasn’t driven by it” – Sara Ryan

However, goal number one is breaking her black-type duck. The closest she has come to this was with Attractable when, first-up after his victory in the Big Dance, he rattled home to be second to Loch Eagle in the Group 2 The Ingham, the summer feature formerly known as The Villiers.

“My first goal with Domeland was to get a winner, then get a provincial winner, then a midweek winner,” Ryan says. “Then it snowballed from there and, after the Big Dance, I started to dream.

“My first goal solo is to break black-type, but if you asked me what the ultimate is, it would be to win a Group 1 and be one of the top trainers in Australia because if you aren’t aiming high, what are you in it for?”

Ryan’s tenure as Domeland’s in-house trainer will finish with the new racing season, but she will spend several days in a handover to the outfit’s new trainer, Nacim Dilmi.

Dilmi, for the past two years, has been in Melbourne as assistant trainer to the outgoing James Cummings at Godolphin, essentially running that stable in Cummings’s absence. He has worked with Godolphin for eight years.

Speaking to The Straight, Dilmi says; “When Sara announced she was going out on her own, Domeland opened up for applications and I spoke to James Cummings about it. It was already public what was happening at Godolphin, and James said if the job was there at Domeland, I should go for it.

“After a few meetings with them, and I wasn’t the only applicant, I was lucky enough that they chose me. It’s a big step-up for me but I’m really looking forward to the new challenge.”

Frenchman Dilmi arrived in Australia in 2009, initially on a six-month staycation. He had served a short riding apprenticeship in the stable of Criquette Head at Chantilly, rode 17 races without a winner and, in his own words, butchered a few “easy kills” that Head had given him.

That was the end of his jockey career.

In Sydney, Dilmi worked at Tulloch Lodge, then Leilani Lodge, before joining Godolphin. It’s been a quick ascension for the mild-mannered Frenchman, who is married with a young son, but he admits that the Domeland gig will be something new.

“Working at Godolphin, I was answering to multiple people before me, but now it’s basically me in charge,” he says. “Now it will be me training the horses, me that has to answer the questions, and all the results will have to come from me.

“At the moment I’m really excited, but the closer I get to it, the more I’m probably going to feel the pressure.”

Likewise, Ryan is feeling the lean of change. Of course there’s excitement, but she wouldn’t be human if she wasn’t nervous.

Dilmi to head up Domeland

Nacim Dilmi has been confirmed as the new trainer for Domeland, replacing Sara Ryan.

The StraightThe Straight News Desk

“I wasn’t really panicked about it until I woke up the other day and realised my final pay cheque was coming in soon,” she says. “But, you know, if you’re not willing to risk it, you won’t get the rewards.”

For a brief few days, the incoming and outgoing trainers will cross paths at Domeland. Dilmi is looking forward to that experience. He says Ryan’s results for Domeland in such a short time have been remarkable, especially in the big prize money races.

“And with older horses, in a lot of cases,” he says. “I really do wish her luck in her next adventure.”