Why have you rated the 2017 victory of Regina Coeli as your sporting highlight?
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I work for my brother Ciaron. He trained Regina Coeli, but I did all the work with the horse in the lead up to the win in 2017.
Regina Coeli won the Grand Annual in 2015 and ran sixth in 2016.
She came back into work on August 10, 2016.
The main goal for us in that campaign was to try and win the 2017 Grand Annual.
We gave her a flat run at Ballarat in January 2017, and then she had a couple of steeplechase trials before she was brought down in a jumps race at Bendigo in April 2017.
A horse fell in front of her at Bendigo with 1400 metres left in the race.
We were facing a battle against time to have her ready for the 2017 Grand Annual, so she had a run in a steeplechase at Pakenham on April 23 to try and get the race miles into her legs.
I used to take her down to the Mordialloc beach and walk her in the water for hours in the weeks leading up to the race.
I thought the ride by John Allen on Regina Coeli in 2017 was great.
John rode her to win the 2015 Grand Annual, so he had a good understanding of the mare.
John walked the track a few races before the Grand Annual.
He found the inside of the steeplechase track had some wet patches and he rated it a heavy 10, but he said the outside was better going and he rated it a soft 6.
I would say through the professionalism and dedication of John helped us win the Grand Annual in 2017.
Ciaron has now trained four winners of the Grand Annual. Why is it such an important race for your family?
The Grand Annual is the grand final of jumps racing.
The race carries so much history. I can remember as a child going into watching the Grand Annual.
I suppose the race means so much to us because we were raised in the area.
The Grand Annual is what makes the Warrnambool May Racing Carnival.
Jockeys, trainers and owners all want to win that race.
Ciaron has trained four winners and we're hopeful of adding more winners to the record in the future.
Declan, away from racing for a moment. Have you played any other sports over the years?
I played junior footy at Koroit. Ciaron played in a couple of junior premierships. I think he started on the bench in those flag wins.
My mum Eileen used to drop us up at footy training.
Koroit had a lot of kids playing in the junior grades back in that era, so there were a lot of players who never got a game.
I switched over and played footy for five years at Russells Creek before I joined Dennington.
Darcy Lewis was coach of Dennington at that time and his brother Sam played there. I'm pretty good mates with them, so I joined the club.
We lost the 2010 grand final to Kolora Noorat by eight points. I ended up winning the reserves best and fairest at the club in that season.
Personally, it was not a bad result, but I would have loved to have played in a premiership side.
How did you get involved in racing?
It was probably following behind Ciaron.
I had done some hunting and eventing.
Ciaron was doing some work for Shane Fisher and I just tagged along before he became an apprentice jockey with Noel Arnold.
Shane used to pick us up from our farm at Winslow and we would go into the race track on Saturday mornings.
I used to think if I went to trackwork it would save me from milking the cows at home.
My parents have been really supportive and been there to help their four children with what they have wanted to do.
I was just over 16 years old and went over to work at Lindsay Park Angaston in South Australia.
The late Peter Hayes and Tony McEvoy were running Lindsay Park at that stage before David Hayes came back.
It was a wonderful experience to work for the Hayes family.
Here I was a young lad who was just over 16 years old and I was working at an outstanding horse property.
I stayed there for eight months before working on farms.
I then traveled over to England and Ireland to gain more experience.
Declan, it's been well documented that Darren Weir was disqualified from racing for four years in early February and Ciaron has taken over Weir's stables at Ballarat. You're heavily involved with the running of the Ciaron Maher-David Eustace stable from that facility. How's it all going at Ballarat?
We've been very, very busy. I started work at Ballarat on February 11.
I work very closely with Ben Johnson, Luke Archibald and Simon McCartin in overseeing the Ballarat side of the training operation for Ciaron and David.
We've got 150 horses in work and got over 60 workers at Ballarat.
We're really lucky that we've got such dedicated staff who all want to see the Maher-Eustace stable succeed.
We start at 4.30am each morning and we're flat out working horses.
It's a wonderful, world-class training facility which we are using.
We've working with lots of well bred horses.
The Maher-Eustace stable now trains horses at Caulfield, Pakenham and Warwick Farm.
So, you can see it's a big operation.
It's all come a long way from when Ciaron left Warrnambool with three horses on a float to train at Caulfield.
We are only weeks away from another Warrnambool May Carnival. Does the stable have many jumpers in work for this jumps season?
We've got about 10 jumpers there.
A few of them used to be trained by Darren Weir.
We've got our fingers crossed we might find another Grand Annual winner in our stable.