SIX years ago, heavyweight Inverell hoop Scott Sweedman took four rides at the Mungindi Cup meeting  – Swiglars, Brown Brown, Valleseco and Newcastle Dancer – and returned home with four winners

In 2023, he secured three rides at the once-a-year meeting – and rode two winners.

On Saturday, the 48-year-old jockey drove to Mungindi for one ride, and went back to Inverell with a perfect score.

Sweedman, who rarely rides under 58kg, partnered Fast Da to a soft win in the 1400m class 1 handicap for Scott Cover, who renewed his trainer’s license earlier this year after eight years away from the game.

Cover, a farrier by trade, has two horses in work – Skeptical and Fast Da – and trained his first winner this time around when Skeptical won at Inverell on May 23.

Scott Cover and Jocelyn Oliver, with Mungindi class 1 winner, Fast Da (Image Supplied).

Fast Da ($3.80), formerly with Lee Freedman, lumped 59kg on Saturday to beat Ben Waldron’s Snakeskin ($12) by half-a-length, with Stacey Meskin’s Ready to Mingle ($10) third, a half-head away.

“The plan was to go forward and get the lead without doing a crazy amount of work, and it paid off,” Sweedman said.

“He’d never been on the dirt before, and likes to race up on the pace. He only just won, and he probably didn’t handle the track that well, either.

“It was a little bit tight for him, but we got the result.”

Cover trains with his partner, Jocelyn Oliver, on their property midway between Inverell and Bingara, and travels to Inverell for trackwork twice a week.

“I was training about eight or nine years ago, and Jocelyn wanted to get back into it. Jocelyn rides all the slow work at home, and we take the horses to Inverell for fast work,” Cover said.

Fast Da was a $750,000 yearling, bred at Kia Ora Stud in the Hunter Valley, before starting out with Chris Waller and later Lee Freedman.

“Fast Da would’ve been the dearest horse at Mungindi, I think,” Cover laughed.

Cover is Inverell born-and-bred, but learned his craft at Scone. He’s been shoeing horses across the New England district for the last 20-odd years.

“I moved back to Inverell and shod horses, but used to go back and forth to Scone for work at Kia Ora Stud, where Fast Da was bred – I used to do the yearling shoeing there.”

Heavyweight hoop Scott Sweedman unsaddles Fast Da, with trainer Scott Cover and strapper Jocelyn Oliver (Image Supplied).

Fast Da’s stablemate, Skeptical, won at Inverell in May and finished second at Coonamble in June.

“I used to shoe Skeptical’s mother at Aquis. She was the quietest mare I’d ever seen, and that’s why I bought Skeptical,” Cover said.

“Having two in work is plenty, maybe three, and we just train for ourselves.”

Meanwhile, Scott Sweedman, whose last winner was at Armidale in October, has only had four rides this year.

He rode in the Warialda Cup in April – his only ride at the meeting – and took two rides at Goondiwindi in May, before jumping on Fast Da at Mungindi.

“I ride at around 58-59kg through winter. During the summer, and in the warmer months, I can ride at 56kg, but it does take a bit of work,” he said.

Sweedman’s strike-rate at Mungindi is incredible, given the amount of rides he’s taken at the meeting in recent years.

“I’m not sure why that is, but I seem to go all right there,” he laughed.

“As a senior jockey, I’ve had 13 rides at Mungindi and ridden seven winners and a third, and rode there once as an apprentice in the early 1990s.”

Sweedman’s effort to ride four winners from four rides at Mungindi in 2019 is one for the record books.

“You have to have the cattle underneath you, to do something like that. It was a bit surreal that day – everything I touched turned to gold,” he smiled.