Highly Decorated starred in the Top End last year, so his injury in June just prior to the 2022 Darwin Cup Carnival was big news.
The Nicole Irwin-trained gelding, who suffered a tendon injury to his near fore in his first race back at Fannie Bay, returned to South Australia for Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) therapy at the Morphettville Equine Clinic on June 27.
Highly Decorated had 14 starts in NSW, the ACT and SA for just one win before arriving at Irwin’s Murray Bridge stable after finishing 14th at Strathalbyn in late March last year.
Within a month, the son of Epaulette debuted in Darwin for a first-up third over 1300m (BM54).
Incredibly, he won his next seven starts.
Three comprehensive wins from 1300-1600m were followed by a win on the grass in the Adelaide River Cup (1600m) in June.
The Darwin Cup Carnival started in July, with Highly Decorated winning the ROANT Gold Cup (1300m) and $60,000 Chief Minister’s Cup (1600m) before taking out the $200,000 Darwin Cup (2050m) on the first Monday in August.
Alice Springs-based jockey Jessie Philpot partnered the horse in his last six wins.
Three races back in SA failed to bear fruit before Highly Decorated returned for another Darwin Cup Carnival campaign.
Despite an eight-month spell, he won first-up at Fannie Bay over 1200m (BM79) on June 4 and seemingly pulled up fine.
Irwin’s husband, David, checks the horses most mornings with an infra-red camera, and four days after Highly Decorated’s eighth-straight Darwin win he noticed swelling in the near fore.
The camera was put on the leg and it was “glowing hot”, and when a vet was summoned the next day the tendon injury was confirmed.
Scans were sent to Adelaide and Highly Decorated was soon sent south for treatment.
The six-year-old is now back at the Irwin stable at Monarto, near Murray Bridge, recuperating.
“He’s good, he’s on week 19 of his rehab – that’s 30 minutes walking and 10 minutes trotting each day,” Irwin said on Wednesday.
“He’s still confined, not sure how long we’ll go until he sees the paddock.
“He’s got to have another tendon scan at six months, which is not far off, and we’ll go from there.
“He had two weeks of complete box rest after the operation and then intensive bandaging after that.
“We were still in Darwin, so he was with a friend of mine Leah Conlon at Morphettville – she had him boxed down there looking after him and then he had to slowly start doing 10 minutes walking a day.
“That got up to 40 minutes walking a day and five minutes trotting for the last three weeks – and just this week he started 30 minutes walking and 10 minutes trotting.
“It just gradually increases, so he does less walking and more trotting, and then progressively up to doing some canter work.
“That will be good as we’ve got a treadmill being installed here in a couple of weeks and we’ll get him going on that.”
Irwin plans to return to the NT in late March with a team for the 2023 Darwin Cup Carnival, and she has also devised a plan centred on Highly Decorated’s return.
“It will be nine months from the day of the operation that he can start galloping again,” she said.
“We should know if he’s 100 per cent – he’ll definitely be fit by then and as long as the tendon scans are OK he’ll be heading to Darwin.
“Touch wood we will go the ROANT Cup, the Chief Minister’s to the (Darwin) Cup.”
Irwin confirmed that Highly Decorated would not resume trackwork or race until arriving in the NT.
“Straight up there, fingers crossed he’s doing everything right on the treadmill, all the scans come up good – he’ll go up fit and ready to race,” she said.
“He knows what he’s doing, he doesn’t need to do a lot of trackwork – hopefully he takes well to the treadmill and he’ll do 99 per cent of his work on that.”
Highly Decorated won last year’s Darwin Cup by three lengths (2:03.89), while the Gary Clarke-trained Playoffs won this year’s event on August 1 by two and a half lengths and set a new track record for the 2050m (2:03.57).
Naturally, Irwin contemplates how a fit Highly Decorated would have fared against Playoffs.
She said: “Playoffs, super horse – every day he came off the track I used to say to Gary, ‘I like that horse, he’s a nice horse’.
“I had my eye on him well before I even knew who he was.
“On times, I mean races are always a bit different, I think we would have run second in the Cup to him, but you never really know.
“Highly Decorated was never put under a lot of pressure towards the end of his race, so you don’t know if he could have picked up that little bit more if he had a horse there to go with.
“It would have been an interesting race.”
The Irwins have had a bit on their plate since returning to Murray Bridge after proving highly competitive during the Darwin Cup Carnival, as well as during the Top End premiership.
“We went to the Katherine meeting and then headed home from there,” Nicole said.
“We were going to go over to Kununurra, but we couldn’t secure a jockey and the team we had were getting a bit tired.
“We had a lot of babies here in the paddock, a lot of two and three-year-olds that needed to be started, so we thought rather than go fishing for a month we probably should get back down south.”
Irwin, who hinted that having runners at the 2023 Alice Springs Cup Carnival was an option en route to Darwin, is looking forward to returning to the Top End.
“Although today’s not too bad, it’s 33C – but it’s been freezing since we’ve been back,” she said.
“We’ve had a lot of dramas down here in SA the last couple of months going from a Heavy 10, cancelled races, fast tracks, slow tracks and no races.
“At least in Darwin you know you can pretty much race all the time and the track is consistent.
“I’m going to be a grandmother in January, so we’ll make sure that goes alright and then we’ll head back up.”
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