THE road is always long and the journey never easy but when you love horses so much they are your life, every hardship is accepted, every triumph treasured.

 Hannah Richardson was born in Wondai, one of eight children whose father, Frank English, was a hobby racehorse trainer.

Like most kids in rural towns like Wondai, the children all grew up with horses.

After dad gave up training, the kids started riding in pony club when they got old enough, then they went into eventing and dressage and show jumping.

“I got offered to learn to ride trackwork at Nanango and I rode trackwork for a fair while, probably five or so years before I decided to do my apprenticeship as a mature apprentice,” Richardson said.

“I was a qualified vet nurse before I took out my apprenticeship as a jockey.

“So, I quit my job and started my apprenticeship and I’ve been riding for seven years. I finished my apprenticeship a few years ago now.

“I’ve been pretty lucky; I’ve ridden plenty of winners and had a bit of success.”

More than a bit of success. Richardson has ridden 290 winners, done the hard way; mainly on bush tracks riding second and third hand horses.

Richardson is married to Nanango trainer Glenn Richardson, whose mum Glenda rode in the first ladies' race at Eagle Farm in Brisbane.

She went on to become a trainer in Nanango where Glenn now trains and Hannah rides trackwork.

“We train from the bush and a lot of our stable are country-provincial quality horses so we don’t always come down to Ipswich on a regular basis,” Richardson said.

“I enjoy the atmosphere riding in the country but the tracks are probably not as good to ride on; they’re often pretty wild.

“The tracks are usually hard and fast or dirt and sand and you’ve got to have suitable horses to race out in the bush. It’s pretty tough.

“They’re usually sort of cast-offs; they’ve started out in Victoria and worked their way up through Queensland, they’ve had a go in town and we’re sort of getting them second and third hand down the line.

“But we do enjoy having some two-year-olds in the stable. We’ve had some nice two-year-olds over the last two years that have gone pretty good.

“Because my husband trains and I ride trackwork, we’re there all the time. We look after the horses; we do everything with them so we’re always around them.

“My life as a jockey is pretty different to a city jockey. They go and ride trackwork and go home, whereas we’re sort of living and breathing horses all the time.

“We don’t get much of a break away from them. It’s 24/7; we don’t get a day off and they don’t get a day off. We’ve always got to be there to feed them and look after them.

“(But) you get a lot of enjoyment out of it when you get winners, see them progress. It is very satisfying.”

Richardson made the most of a rare trip to Ipswich last Friday when she rode A Good Chance to victory for Wondai trainer Nev O’Toole.

A Good Chance ($6.50) won the Matthew Bowden Handicap (800m) by a half-head from Songzilla ($6) with Arrow Express ($21) long neck further away.

“It’s always nice to come down here on the nice tracks and ride a horse – and win,” Richardson said.

“It was a pretty tight finish. My horse ended up leading and with three horses across the line it was bob of the head.”

In a post-script to the race, stewards suspended Richardson from riding for seven days for allowing her mount to shift in when insufficiently clear of Ramtastic, who is trained by Glenn.

She sat on a table waiting to be called into the stewards’ room. She wanted to get home to feed her horses.

“My husband trains it [Ramtastic] but it had 64 kilos so we put a claiming apprentice on him,” she said.

“I’m sort of the regular rider of the horse I won on.”