Moods

by Helen Thomas

  Success breeds success, in racing as in most businesses, and in this case success came on many different levels. It wasn’t long before the breeders were pushing Moody to target bigger races down south, especially in Melbourne, where the racing calendar seemed to cater better for fillies and mares.

  Having gone to the races up and down Australia’s east coast for the best part of a decade, Peter and Sarah Moody were ready to make another decision about their future. And the timing was right: they’d actually started losing horses, even those of some longstanding owners, to trainers in the southern states.

  The Moodys had visited Melbourne and enjoyed it. The city down south was where they now wanted to live and work. The young trainer also knew the racing history of both cities and felt Melbourne offered them more room to grow.

  ‘Sydney was always dominated by two or three big stables and then there seemed to be a massive gap to the rest,’ he says. ‘Whereas in Melbourne, even when [Colin and David] Hayes and [Lee] Freedman dominated for 30-odd years, there wasn’t that massive gap to the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth trainers. There seemed to be a more even spread across the board.’

  Geographically, too, Victoria was smaller than New South Wales, which was a critical point for a horseman who knew he would have to run many of his charges at provincial and country racetracks as he kicked a toehold in the city’s training ranks.

  Travelling to Melbourne with General Nedyim had helped Moody get the lay of the land. The pair had stayed at a stable run by trainer Jim Conlan, opposite Caulfield Racecourse. When Conlan indicated he was relocating to a property on the Mornington Peninsula, Moody knew he and Sarah had the perfect chance to set up a ‘satellite’ operation in his vacant Caulfield stables. They knew the area, and felt at home there.

  So in the middle of 2001 they made the jump. They leased Jim Conlan’s yard, which had eight ‘boxes’. The landlord was unknown to them at the time, but they discovered he hailed from one of Melbourne’s most infamous families, which was synonymous with the ‘gangland wars’ that were erupting in that city at the time.

  ‘I think the Mokbel family owned the property adjacent to the members’ car park at Caulfield,’ Moody says, ‘and they were my landlords the first few years I was in Melbourne, and [I’ve] got to say I never had any dramas. I paid the rent … but that was as far as the relationship went.’

  Yet the Mokbel moniker would come to shade Moody’s good name a few years later, after he had moved to larger premises up the road. For now, though, the Moodys concentrated on selecting the right horses to bring down from Brisbane to their small southern ‘start-up’.

  *

  It did not take long for the new trainer to make his mark in Melbourne. Within a year, the 32-year-old achieved success beyond the blueprint he and his wife had drawn up as they plotted their transition between the two states. Already well regarded as having a dab hand at nurturing sprinters, and a horseman with a special affinity for developing fillies, Peter Moody had his breakthrough success, ironically, in Australia’s oldest staying test for three-yearolds: the Victoria Derby.

  Amalfi, a young New Zealand–bred colt, got under everyone’s guard, including that of wealthy owners Ron and Jan Wanless, to win the classic event. Based on the Gold Coast, the couple had paid $110,000 for the stoutly bred youngster as a yearling, and then entrusted him to Moody’s care in Brisbane. Although not considered a threat to the regally bred Ustinov, a son of Bart Cummings’ outstanding mare Let’s Elope – a Melbourne Cup heroine – Amalfi and jockey Damian Oliver took charge of the race at the 250-metre mark and claimed the Derby by half a head.

  The official race margin was small, yet big enough to change the Moodys’ lives, and sent a shiver of change through Melbourne’s racing ranks. For three decades the Hayes and Freedman families had towered above their racetrack competition; they probably paid scant attention to the bushie who had thrown down the gauntlet in their direction. ‘Amalfi was the catalyst for us making Victoria our base and Queensland our satellite,’ Moody says. ‘We thought, “Well, this is a chance – if we can build on the back of this …”’

  The trainer approached the Melbourne Turf Club for a bigger stable – if not one large property, then a couple of smaller yards he could weave into his operation. Getting more boxes was a key step, as without extra stalls there would be nowhere to house new horses. He and Sarah were also determined to move on-course, and with the retirement of a couple of older trainers they made it onto Caulfield itself, and slowly built up their numbers: first 25, then 30, then 40 horses. He also started to develop a strategy that helped revolutionise training in Victoria.

  ‘One thing I did find when I came to Victoria [was] I probably had an advantage: I had very few Victorian clients, [so] I could take my horses all over Victoria. I know the boys used to laugh at me when I’d take a truckload to Bairnsdale and a truckload to Donald and a truckload to Warrnambool. I used to be able to take bad horses to the bush and win and teach them to win, and then they’d be able to come to the city and they’d be bulletproof. They’d know how to win and they’d beat better-performed horses, and that was the catalyst for building the stable. Now I go to some of those meetings and everyone’s there.’

  Perhaps the vast horizons of Queensland helped shape this perspective. But Moody’s approach certainly proved effective, as did his theory of helping his horses gain mental confidence.

  ‘I’m not saying I was the journeyman, or the first bloke to do it, but I did it and now a lot of people do it,’ he reflects. ‘You know, Darren Weir – the bloke who knocked me off my pedestal – he started off at Ararat, or Stawell, and then went to Ballarat, then started building a city clientele a few years later, albeit from a country base, which had never been done before. I didn’t think it could be done, but he did it terrifically.

  ‘So just taking horses anywhere and everywhere to win, teaching them to win, making them bulletproof and racing consistently … I think [building] confidence in horses, [like] a lot of things you do with horses, is similar to people. If you get knocked down or battered a bit, you’ll start second-guessing yourself – whereas if you have a bit of success and you get your head in front, you’ll want to keep running, and the horses are no different, I’ve found.’

  Within two years, the Moodys decided their business in Melbourne was strong enough for the family to move south, and they closed their former headquarters in Queensland. It was an exciting move, but a wrenching one too for this ‘local lad’. Not so for his wife: Sarah had never spent time in Victoria before but was ready for the change.

  ‘I was finding Queensland quite tough,’ she says, ‘because Pete had become quite successful and you get that “people talk behind your back and stab you in the back” kind of thing. And I was not enjoying the social side of racing in Queensland, because I found it had become quite nasty. I found that people were being really cruel, and I didn’t know why.

  ‘I heard some pretty horrible stories, about both of us. I think it’s that tall poppy syndrome: they love a battler, but they don’t like someone succeeding. I remember actually thinking, “My God, why would they be so mean? Why are they so nasty? All we do is work hard and we’ve achieved something, you know?”’

  Perhaps the success this couple were enjoying, and the money that came with it, was just too much for some in the small, competitive circle to accept. ‘I wish they knew how much we didn’t have,’ Sarah Moody reflects. ‘I mean, we were still on the bones of our arse when we moved down [to Melbourne]. I don’t know … it was sad [but] I was happy to leave Queensland.’

  Not much time would pass before a couple of other northerners travelled down to Victoria too, and ultimately rejoined Peter Moody and his family-run operation. Equine chiropractor Michael Bryant and stable foreman Tony Haydon were two very different men, but they shared a belief in the young trainer.

  Haydon, a self-confessed ‘lost boy’ who started working with horses when he was 18, first saw Moo
dy at Eagle Farm in Brisbane. Both were on horseback. ‘I thought, “Who’s this big lard-arse riding a horse? He’s a boofhead,”’ Haydon laughs now. ‘He was riding with his wife, Sarah. I thought, “Oh, he must be a goer – he’s a big boy having a go.”’

  Their first exchange seems typical of the relationship that followed. ‘One day I was on a horse that was dropping its head and I said, “Oh, watch out.’ And he said, “You’re riding the bloody thing – steer it!” I thought, “Who’s this guy?”’

  It wasn’t long before Haydon was working for Moody, even though he admits that, despite having been an apprentice jockey, he knew little about racing at the time, and even less about thoroughbreds.

  ‘I loved animals, but dealt with cattle and pigs and cats and dogs,’ he says. ‘Never had much to do with horses, and especially race horses. But I loved it, absolutely loved it. I loved the smell of it. I loved how horses work, like how they act and stuff. I’ve always liked that more than anything else – how the horse is behaving in its box, how they react to certain bits of work. How horses come on when they’re getting fitter, how they change, stuff like that. I liked that side of it.’

  When Haydon was first hired to work in Moody’s Brisbane stable, he understood none of this. While he could ride a horse in morning trackwork, he did not know how to ‘rate’ or time a gallop, which is the most vital tool for any trackwork rider. But Moody instructed him, particularly in the art of the all-crucial ‘evens’ – that is, being able to control a horse to run a furlong (200 metres) in 15 seconds during their work.

  ‘He wouldn’t remember it,’ Haydon laughs, ‘but he told me to get a clock, because you’ve got to learn to count to 15 … He said, “Get a watch and start walking around the stables timing yourself, counting to 15 until you get it right.” And I remember there was a stablehand there, [who was] just joking but stirring me, you know? Like saying, “Oh, you’re counting time.’ Moods said, “Well, at least he’s having a bloody go.” And that’s when he won me over.’

  Time, it became clear, was one of the critical factors in Peter Moody’s life with horses. ‘He’s very big on the stopwatch,’ his former foreman says now. ‘Moods is very big on his times.’

  Haydon did his best to meet the precise requirement of his new boss. ‘I got it going pretty good, because I wanted to. I was an average track rider – probably give me an E for effort! It didn’t take me long to pick it up, but every horse is a bit different – some horses you can do it easy on and other horses you can’t. Some have a different stride to others, so you can get one that takes little steps and you’ve got the ones that take big steps.’

  On top of this daily dance of synchronised striding, Tony Haydon also took on more responsibility around the Brisbane stable, eventually learning the rhythm of that regime too. In those days he and Moody would spend a lot of time walking horses during the day. ‘Yeah, it took me a long time [to learn Moody’s training method] … he’s a perfectionist. He’s got to know everything that’s going on, especially when he was younger and he could remember everything. He had a crazy … mind for remembering horses, and things to do with horses.’

  Initially Haydon travelled down to Victoria to join a friend working with owner Lloyd Williams’ team; this was about the time Peter Moody was setting up his satellite stable on Kambrook Road, opposite the Caulfield track. After Amalfi snared the Derby, Haydon simply could not withstand his old mentor’s pleas for him to join his team.

  ‘He asked me if I wanted to come across and be foreman,’ Haydon recalls. ‘I said, “Oh, not really. If you get a foreman, I’ll be their right-hand man if you want,” because I was still riding a bit of trackwork back then. And he kept ringing and pestered me a bit. He said it was time for me to grow up and have a go. So that’s how it all came about. That’s what you like about Pete. He’s got vision. He gets a plan going in his head and then you’re just along for the ride. He just drags you along.’

  When Haydon arrived at the fledgling Caulfield yard, Moody and his family were still living in Brisbane, running the main stable at Eagle Farm. Moody would fly down to Melbourne once a fortnight or so, trusting his new foreman to keep him updated on his small team of eight horses down south.

  ‘We’d speak every day on the phone,’ Haydon says, ‘so I was sort of learning as we went along, one way by myself and another way I still had to answer to Moods on the phone.’

  It sounds like a fledgling version of the arrangement Bart Cummings developed with renowned foreman Reg Fleming at his stables at Flemington, talking to him a couple of times every day from his office in Sydney. Both trainers – one an old master, one a young contender – had systems in place that they fiercely believed in, with their love of horses their driving force.

  ‘[Moody] teaches his horses to win and to be competitive,’ Tony Haydon reflects. ‘And he does the same with people around him. It’s hard not to lift when you’re around Pete. You just naturally lift.’

  *

  At the start, there were no stable stars. ‘There were just good honest horses, just good war horses,’ according to Haydon. That would change, though, and quite quickly. The foreman admits he had no idea when he signed on at Caulfield exactly how high the stable would fly. But the core of the operation was its strong routine.

  ‘[Moody] always got a good system in place: three-thirty [a.m.] all the staff are there, and then we get the feeds and waters out, we check their temperatures. They’d all be written up on the board, so when the boss would walk through at quarter past [four], he’d go up to the whiteboard and see on the work sheets what they were feeding and if they had a temp[erature] or not. And it’s just all systems go from then on – just push horses out to the track, keep the big boss happy and you just keep going until we stop. They get their feeds afterwards.’

  Haydon ended up working at Moody’s stable, on and off, for nearly 20 years. ‘Oh, it made me, it did,’ he reflects. ‘It made me realise there’s other people in the world besides yourself, and you’ve got to treat people with respect, how you want to be treated. It’s no different dealing with animals; you treat them how you want to be treated. I used to practise that with the animals, with the horses, but more so I learned to practise it on people.’

  Mick Bryant was living in Brisbane at the time Moody’s Melbourne stable was being established. The equine chiropractor is now one of the trainer’s closest friends, having met him back ‘when he had hair’, and remembers how, initially, he did it tough at Caulfield. He had only a handful of horses to prove that he could train with the best of them. Bryant, who had worked with Peter Moody for more than a decade by this time, knew what he was capable of. He never doubted he would succeed.

  A mutual friend had introduced them. ‘The first couple of times, he held the horses and just watched the way I worked, and then, after that, it became someone else’s job. So he just sized me up to start with,’ Bryant says. ‘That’s the way he tackles thing. He’s so intense. He’s the sort of person that if he was a politician, he would become the prime minister. If he was a postman delivering letters, he would finish up the postmaster-general. He’s a natural, just a natural. And politics would be perfect for him, in my opinion, because he’d get the job done, fairly and properly. That’s the way I see it.’

  Bryant has a lot of respect for the way the horseman works and the results he gains – with the people he works with, as well as the horses. ‘He has this ability to get not only the best out of his horses, but also out of his staff,’ the chiropractor says. ‘He gives the young kids a go, gives them responsibility, and when they do a good job he pats them on the back. Being a race horse trainer, you’ve got to be multi-talented. You can’t just be a trainer, you’ve got to manage staff, manage [long] hours, and he has the ability to do all that.’

  Mick Bryant would fly down to Melbourne once a month to look at Moody’s small team of gallopers, and he observed him steadily making ground. As the stable grew, so did Bryant’s involvement with it, and after tw
o years of flying up and down the east coast, he and his family also made the move to Melbourne. Even now, he does not regret it.

  It proved the best of times, and the most frustrating. For both men.

  7

  FOR SOME LAWYERS, accepting a brief involving a globally famous horse trainer and a substance as contentious as cobalt might not be an easy decision. Most cases prosecuted by Australian racing authorities ended in prolonged disqualifications, even as argument raged about the science surrounding the mineral. What legal eagle in his or her right mind wanted this challenge?

  Apart from anything else, they would need to be able to grasp the myriad complexities underpinning the case, and have a robust constitution in order to withstand the media’s full glare.

  Melbourne-based barrister Matthew Stirling was well aware of what Peter Moody faced, and was up for the task of defending him. Tall, with short-cropped greying hair, and still lanky at 48, Stirling was a natural physical counterpoint to the tall, balding and solid trainer, now visibly strained.

  The pair did not have long to wait before they confronted what quickly became relentless media scrutiny. On 24 July 2015, Moody – along with the four other Victorian trainers who had been charged with breaching the Australian Rules of Racing, after nine horses in their collective care returned cobalt ‘positives’ – was issued a show-cause notice by Racing Victoria. In simple terms, this demanded that he explain why his licence should not be immediately suspended until his cobalt case was dealt with.

  With 350 horses in various stages of work in and around his stables in Melbourne and Sydney, this was a bridge too far for the trainer, and Matthew Stirling made this point firmly in his first appearance for his new client before stewards four days later. After quick consultation, both men also rejected the stewards’ suggestion that the trainers embroiled in the cobalt saga should have their share of any major prize money they won through the upcoming Spring Carnival frozen.