By Jordan Gerrans
For the Sunshine Coast-based Mackinnon clan, their racing stable is like a family business.
So, it made perfect sense for Taylah Mackinnon to take on a training partnership with her father Stewart.
Stewart has been conditioning horses at Caloundra in his own right for decades – preparing more than 50 metropolitan victories across his tenure.
The Mackinnons have entered a new venture as a father-daughter training partnership over the last month, which was headlined by their maiden victory as a team last Friday evening on their home track of Corbould Park.
Taylah and Stewart join the Darling Downs-based combination of Tony and Maddysen Sears as father and daughter co-training partnerships in the Sunshine State.
The 22-year-old Taylah has been around the gallopers for much of her life and had long spoken with her father about taking on this next step.
“I kind of walked straight into it,” Taylah said.
The Mackinnon barn work their horses at Caloundra on most mornings, where Taylah’s brother is a curator at the club.
“It is kind of like a family business more than anything, Mum has worked with Dad for the best part of the last 25 years,” Taylah said.
“She has always worked beside him as a stable hand in the mornings and in the afternoon.
“We kind of spoke about going into a three-way partnership with my Dad and my brother, but my brother wanted to concentrate on his job.
“Dad is not old, but he is getting older, so we thought about going into partnership together.
“It has been something we had planned to do since I was a little girl, so the timing was right and we went from there.”
It did not take long for the new partnership to get the monkey off their back for their maiden winner.
It was just under a month since the co-training combination officially launched and at their eighth starter.