Chmiel joins 10,000 drive club

By Dave Di Somma, Harness News Desk

Here's one for the trainspotters.

In last Friday's Maurice Holmes Vase at Addington Raceway, Terry Chmiel teamed up with B D Joe in what was his 10,000th drive in New Zealand.

In doing so he became the 18th driver to reach the milestone.

"I wasn't aware of that, it's quite a few isn't it?" Chmiel says, "specially as I haven't been driving that much in the last few years."

This year he's had 73 drives and last year he had just under 100. Compare that to when he was regularly driving around 400 a year with his busiest year being the 589 he drove in 2007.

Chmiel has had a rollercoaster time of it in recent years. In 2022 he sold his property in rural Canterbury and was set to be a stipendary steward based in Brisbane, only to have a change of mind for family reasons.

"It's odd," says Chmiel, "I was a bit sick of it but then I started to miss it a bit."

Now he seems to have his mojo back. He's working in the industry fulltime for trainers Steve and Amanda Telfer at Stonewall Stud's state of the art stables at Weedons, just outside Christchurch.

"They are great to work for - it's an unbelievable set up."

Tim Williams is the stable's number one driver but Chmiel is looking forward to a lot more time in the sulky in the future.

"They have a stack of yearlings and two-year-olds and down the track there are going to be so many opportunities."

"There are plenty of horses to go around."

Included in his now 10,002 drives have been 739 wins and stakes earnings of over $6.6m.

There have been many highlights along the way but Sunny Action's upset win over the great Lyell Creek in the New Zealand Trotting Free-For-All at Addington in 2000 was right up there.

It ended the champ's 20 race winning streak, four shy of Courage Under Fire's New Zealand record. Following his defeat Lyell Creek then won his next 13 races, and 56 in all.

The "busiest" driver in this country is seven-time New Zealand Cup winner Ricky May. He is just 212 drives shy of 25,000.

Of this country's female drivers, Sam Ottley has driven in the most races - 7878 in all.

The 10,000 Club (according to latest HRNZ data) :

Ricky May 24,788
Maurice McKendry 23,640
Tony Herlihy 21,164
David Butcher 19,718
Blair Orange 19,358
Colin DeFilippi 19,261
Peter Ferguson 19,177
Jim Curtin 17,316
Brent Mangos 15,013
John Dunn 12,657
Todd Mitchell 12,604
James Stormont 12,523
Mark Jones 12,107
Anthony Butt 11,952
Dexter Dunn 11,852
Matthew Williamson 11,539
Craig Thornley 11,190
Terry Chmiel 10,002

The top 5 women drivers (race drives) :

Sam Ottley 7878
Nicky Chilcott 7867
Kirstin Green 4186
Michelle Wallis 4041
Sheree Tomlinson 3881