Kilcoy Race Club preparing to honour Pat Duff

28 October 2026

By Paul Dolan

Legendary Queensland jockeys Mick Dittman and Larry Olsen will be on hand to present the Pat Duff Memorial trophy at this Sunday’s Kilcoy Race Club meeting.

The two former hoops and the late Queensland Racing Hall of Fame trainer have strong connections to the venue from their very early days in the caper.

The highly successful and respected trainer Duff obtained his training license at Wondai in 1940 when he was aged 21, and was also the location of his first winner.

He progressed to train at Toowoomba, Peachester, Eagle Farm, the Gold Coast and finally Deagon, passing away at the age of 84 on November 23, 2024.

Duff’s last winner was Optimus Maximus at Ipswich on November 1, 2024, where the rider was Emily Lang.

His latest winner prior to that was at Kilcoy, with Darling Heart winning a 1200m maiden on October 10, 2024, ridden by Julie Busuttin.

It is rather appropriate that Duff's last two winners were ridden by women, with the conditioner a staunch advocate for female participation in the riding ranks.

As well as knowing how to train racehorses, Duff had great success guiding and helping apprentices on their way to stardom.

In the female ranks, Mandy Radecker was a headline-making Duff apprentice, along with Dittman, Jim Byrne and Michael Pelling, to name a few.

Dittman and Olsen accepted the Kilcoy RC's invitation to present the Pat Duff memorial trophy to the winning connections this Sunday, with Pat's twin brother Cedric and other family members expected to participate as well.

The two Queensland Racing Hall Of Fame members have much in common, including the fact that each won a Melbourne Cup during their illustrious riding careers.

Dittman won on Gurner's Lane in 1982, running down the great Kingston Town in the last 100 metres.

Olsen won the famous two miler in 1987 on Kensei, in similar fashion to Dittman, proving that the shortest way home is via the inside, beating the great New Zealand mare Empire Rose.

As young apprentices, Dittman and Olsen rode at Kilcoy, with a 16-year-old Olsen having his first ride as a newly licensed apprentice in 1964 on the Mal Barnes-trained Fort High.

“Mal was very astute at setting horses for races at tracks which he thought would suit them. In the case of Fort High, he aimed for a race at Kilcoy,” Olsen recalled.

''He loaded up Fort High and four others and floated them to Kilcoy for some searching gallops.

"They were like your own barrier trials - Darby McCarthy, Jim Childs, John Baker and Jock Gollogly rode for Mal in those gallops, as well as myself.'

''Come raceday and the bookies bet as much as 33 to 1 about Fort High.

"I got him home with a rails run - I remember when coming back to scale, one of the owners, a member of the Heffernan family, was tossing his hat very high in the air.

"It was apparent that a decent win had been had by all.''

From 1964 to 1972, Kilcoy staged a handful of midweek TAB meetings per year.

At the end of 1972 it was decided to introduce non-TAB Saturday meetings on a monthly basis, with the final TAB meeting coming on Thursday, November 16, 1972.

Among the riders competing was a then-relatively unknown apprentice by the name of Len 'Mick' Dittman. His results for the day included four rides for two seconds and two unplaced.

The 88-time Group 1 winner fondly recalls honing his craft at the Kilcoy venue.

''I rode at Murwillumbah and Kilcoy and lots of provincial tracks for about five years from 1968,'' Dittman recalled.

''Those tight country tracks were where the young riders such as myself learned how to ride.

“The layout of the Kilcoy track was certainly unusual, it felt like there were two home turns. One thing was for sure, you wanted to be in the forward pack over any distance.

“I recall that the Kilcoy track surface was always pretty good."

Assuming that the weather gods smile on Kilcoy this week, Sunday's seven race card starts at 12:45 pm, with the last race at 4:25 pm.