Moods

by Helen Thomas

  16

  FEW HORSES, OR human sporting stars for that matter, achieve Black Caviar’s perfect score: 25 for 25. The unbeaten Frankel went 14 for 14 and is believed by many racing experts to be the United Kingdom’s finest contemporary galloper, and indeed the best horse they have seen. He raced at Royal Ascot in 2012 too, his reception almost as rapturous as that for ‘the Wonder from Down Under’. In 2015 American Pharoah, the first horse to win the coveted ‘Triple Crown’ in the United States in 37 years, also became a ‘pop icon’, although beaten twice in his illustrious 11-race career.

  The trio shared two major attributes: each had outstanding ability, and each drew crowds to racecourses that had been languishing for years. Racing authorities in three nations hoped their star thoroughbreds would encourage a new generation of fans to the sport.

  But Black Caviar’s winning streak was especially rare. The record books show only one other horse – and a mare at that – had a better strike rate. Kincsem, born in Hungary in 1874, won all of her 54 starts, racing across Europe and through four seasons; amazingly, she won her first 10 races as a two-year-old. The chestnut retired at seven, and after a short career as a broodmare, died on her 13th birthday from colic. Flags in Hungary were flown at half-mast, and newspapers edged their pages in black to mark her passing. Her life-sized statue still stands in Budapest’s Kincsem Park, not far from which is the Kincsem Museum. It is safe to say no horse will ever surpass her miraculous victory streak.

  But more than a century later, Black Caviar went as close as any galloper is likely to get. Celebrated as the world’s best sprinter – quite literally the fastest horse on earth – she was also crowned Australia’s Racehorse of the Year for three years in a row. She changed the lives of everyone involved with her, personally and professionally, and must rank as the punters’ truest friend.

  She also reshaped her own family dynasty. If undue significance had once been placed on her sire line, as so often is the case in thoroughbred breeding, now the general belief was that her explosive speed came as much from her mother’s side, as well as that double-dose of Vain. Her siblings were sold for small fortunes, and breeders were on tenterhooks to see which stallion her owners would choose for her first dalliance as a broodmare, the speculation well documented across the national sports pages.

  While the decision was being made, Nelly was relaxing – ‘letting down’, in racing parlance – at her trainer’s farm, under the watchful eyes of the Moody family. At some point, her former jockey suggests, Peter Moody actually rode her around the paddock near the house – ‘just so he could say he had done it’.

  Without exaggeration, Black Caviar was like a rock star who had retired at the height of her fame. So what would life at Peter Moody’s stable be like without her? Somewhat lacklustre, many outside Moody’s camp speculated.

  As well, the trainer had already hinted that he was not going to be doing the job, at least in the same way, for much longer. Moody had no intention of dying with his boots on, so could this be the perfect time to walk away? The racetrack was full of scuttlebutt and innuendo. But as is so often the case, much of it was simply talk for the sake of it.

  As Black Caviar took up her second career, Moody Racing adjusted to life without her and continued producing winners. There were promising young horses in the system – Brilliant Bisc, Dissident, Flamberge, Moment Of Change, Weinholt – most of them testament to the trainer’s ‘expert eye’ at the yearling sales. There was also the stable’s growing roster of imported gallopers, stayers taking aim at Melbourne’s Spring Racing Carnival. The best of this group was Manighar, an OTI acquisition. But he had company: Ibicenco, Kesampour, Quest For Peace, Voila Ici and, of course, Lidari.

  With the exception of Chris Waller, a rising star in the Sydney training ranks, Moody was the trainer of choice for wealthy owners keen on buying middle-distance performers overseas, with the potential to run well in Australia. Having taken on the world with his grand sprinting mare, many ‘internationals’ were now coming to him at Caulfield. Even without his equine queen, the trainer had an enviable line-up of talent to work with.

  His influence was also starting to rise in another, less predictable way. A number of race horses he had trained, all with Group 1 wins on their CVs, had retired to become stallions at stud and were making a mark in Victoria’s breeding ranks. Magnus, the stable warrior who ran second in four Group 1 sprints before finally grabbing an elite victory in Sydney, and the first horse Moody took to Royal Ascot, was the initial ‘retiree’. At time of writing, he has sired 201 winners standing at the Eliza Park (now Sun) Stud in Euroa, with prize money earnings of more than $19 million, and Group 1 winners Malaguerra and Magnifisio.

  Reward For Effort was the next to prove a progressive sire, for the smaller Chatswood Stud. The Group 1 Blue Diamond Stakes winner, who raced on as a three- and four-year-old, was Victoria’s Champion Freshman Sire in 2015, with 10 individual winners, one of them in South Africa. Studmate Anacheeva, the Group 1 Caulfield Guineas winner for Moody in 2010, was also a popular choice for smaller breeders looking for stouter bloodlines.

  But as important as these stallions have been for Victoria’s breeding industry, much more is expected of four-time Group 1 winner Dissident in News South Wales’ Hunter Valley region. Currently standing at Newgate Farm for a service fee of $33,000, Australia’s Horse of the Year covered 197 mares during his first season at stud. Hopes are high enough for his progeny that one broodmare in foal to him was sold for $580,000 at a national sale.

  So Peter Moody was earning one of the most sought-after, and lucrative, descriptors in the business: perhaps inadvertently, he had become a fledgling ‘stallion-maker’, a horseman with the nous not only to condition outstanding race horses, but also to source and prepare potential sires. The best of these stallions become money-making machines for their connections; if their offspring prove sound investments on the track, over time hundreds of mares will line up to meet them in the breeding barn.

  If they have been exceptionally successful as race horses, and prove particularly effective in the breeding barn, they might also be ‘shuttled’ to the United Kingdom to stand a second season for the year, in the Northern Hemisphere spring. This only happens with the ‘best of the best’ – Exceed And Excel, Fastnet Rock and So You Think are current examples. Their service fees range from $49,500 to $110,000 and even higher; a discreet ‘CS’ for ‘contact stud’ is listed against Fastnet Rock’s entry in the sires’ directories. Popular, potent stallions are gilt-edged investments.

  Not every outstanding race horse turns into a top stallion, and sometimes comparatively mediocre performers become ‘sire sensations’; it’s a never-ending game of genetic roulette. But the young man who, two decades earlier, helped nurture General Nediym, a horse who developed into a principal Australian sire, was repeating the trick. It was not being reported in the nation’s general news media, but Moody was having an impact on Australian breeding. Yet to win even one of the nation’s four most important races, he nevertheless had a wizard’s touch with colts as well as fillies.

  ‘Obviously, you look at pedigrees and think, “Well, this might lead to something,” if you can get the job done,’ the trainer muses. ‘I think everyone steps out to try and “make” stallions, because its financial rewards are pretty good for trainers and connections. Unfortunately, it doesn’t come to fruition too often. I had a go at buying some big prize pedigree colts four or five years ago [with] that aim. And it just doesn’t work.’

  The trainer is now of the firm belief that good colts just ‘come along’. ‘You buy a nice, correct, athletic type, and good horses make their own pedigrees and if they end up becoming stallions … Have a look at General Nediym: he didn’t have much of a pedigree, but he made his own. Then we get the likes of Magnus, Wanted, Hinchinbrook – they all had fair pedigrees, but made their own. And Reward For Effort, a Group 1–winning two-year-old colt. They always find a place at stud, those horses, and you hope, beca
use of your connection to them, they go on to be good stallions. But there’s probably just as much chance of them getting the job done [there] too, you know?’

  Clearly, breeding is just as competitive and fraught with risk as racing, and Peter Moody’s track record was becoming stronger than that of most trainers. Even so, months after Black Caviar’s retirement, the mare was still the main reference point for most Australians when his stable was mentioned. This unsurprising fact is not lost on his greatest supporter, his wife.

  ‘Nobody speaks about Peter as a stallion trainer,’ Sarah says, with a small laugh. ‘They speak about other people as stallion trainers and yet we have trained some very good horses [that are] now some of the leading stallions in the country. But nobody mentions that. It’s all about Black Caviar.’

  Sarah doesn’t resent this, and she certainly understands the adulation the mare inspired. ‘What she and Peter and Luke achieved was very special. But for me, that is not what we’re about – that is not who Peter and I are. Nelly was a massive but small part, if you get what I mean. Her presence was huge, but it was for a very short time. There is so much more to Pete’s story than that couple of years Nell was involved, as big as that was …

  ‘I don’t think you can say Pete is a trainer of anything, specifically. I think he gave every single horse that came through his yard, whether it was a filly or a colt or a mare – you know, a stallion, a two-year-old sprinter, whatever – I think he trained them all on their merits. I think he made the best of what he was given, he was able to get the best out of whatever he was given and that is a talent. It’s an art. It’s not something you can train for, or you can learn.’

  Sarah Moody believes it is her partner’s ability to know horses that lies at the heart of his success with them. ‘I think it’s just something that’s naturally there,’ she says. ‘You just have it or you don’t. Pete has so many horses in his head. Even early days in Queensland, we would ride out of the tunnel [at trackwork] and he would just see the horse and know who it was. And at that stage, he had probably 60 or 70 [horses] on the books, and you wouldn’t even need to say what you were on – he would know it and he would tell you what work to do on it. Meanwhile, there’d be several others coming through the tunnel as well, and he would know all of them.’

  Sarah also watched him keeping tabs on horses who were taking a break from training, and spelling at various farms. ‘He would go out to the properties just to make sure they were doing okay, and suss out when they were ready to go back into pre-training – and he would walk into a paddock and he might have three horses in that paddock of six or eight, and he would know which ones were his.

  ‘And when you’ve got 300 horses on your books, to be able to know each and every one of them, that is dedication and that is love. And that is something you don’t get without being 100 per cent dedicated to your business, to your job.’

  Jan Moody also has a clear recollection of how precise her son’s almost intuitive focus could be when it came to the horses in his care in Brisbane. ‘He’s always been fastidious around his stable,’ she says. ‘We used to laugh [about it] here. All the bridles and halters were hung up in rows, and he might be away for a couple of days and he’d come home, and he wouldn’t say anything, but just while he was talking he’d move the rein from this way to that way, just walk along while he’s talking to you and put the reins the way they should hang, not the way someone had just thrown a bridle on.’

  *

  As well as such a deep commitment to their horses, successful thoroughbred trainers with a big business base have to be effective promoters of their operation, and of racing generally. New owners keen to buy horses are the lifeblood of the industry, and high-profile trainers can provide the most accessible point of introduction. Given the hugely publicised deeds of his famous mare, Moody had to become skilled at addressing large groups of racing fans as well as prospective new clients, his ‘big bloke’s bluff’ overcoming his natural reserve at these public gatherings. But he was never good at general gladhanding.

  ‘I can go and do that in front of a group of people, but it’s not something I’ve ever done privately, and it’s probably to the detriment of my career and business,’ he admits. ‘You know, if you need someone to hold your hand and piss in your pocket, you’ve got the wrong bloke. I’d rather spend time with the horses. But it’s a big part of [the business], and it’s that part I’ve always struggled with.

  ‘The spare time we get away from the actual stables and the racing, I try and spend it with myself or my family. But some people require more than that, and I think it’s a big part of it now – client service. And I probably get a little bit left behind on that front. I wouldn’t say I’m too old to change, but that’s me. It’s sort of take it or leave it, unfortunately.’

  For many trainers, there is an even more intimate issue mixed into this scenario, involving how close they become to their clients, the owners of the horses they are trying to mould into winning professional athletes.

  ‘I find you probably don’t want to be too personal with clients,’ says Moody, ‘because it can end up being a shitfight in any form of business. But at the same time, you can be respectful and you can be mates. You can be friends, but you don’t want to take it too personal, you know – because things usually end up in a shitfight, don’t they? From my experience.’

  But just as the physical trauma of being the world’s fastest horse took a toll on the big mare, there were signs that the daily grind of training, as well as the tsunami of media and public affection for her, were taking a toll on her trainer too. Over the course of a year, he was hospitalised twice for blood poisoning.

  Somehow Moody managed to keep the first occurrence, in 2012, off the media’s radar. He was not so lucky the second time round, given the national focus on Black Caviar’s imminent return to the track. Just a month before the big mare’s second-last race, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the trainer would not be on course to see his stable’s Moment Of Change start favourite in the $1 million Newmarket Handicap.

  The paper’s headline made light of his absence – ‘Moment of Septicaemia for Moody’ – and, as always, the former Queenslander tried to laugh the scenario off when pressed by reporters. ‘Yes, I’m laid up in hospital with blood poisoning in a leg and I won’t be at Flemington tomorrow,’ he told the Racing Network. ‘Put it this way, the horse is in much better shape than his trainer.’

  He would not admit it, but in fact his condition was serious enough for him to remain in hospital for 10 days, which meant he was forced to supervise part of Black Caviar’s final preparation from his sick bed. Was the hard work and strain of the last few years proving too much even for this bear of a man? Respected turf writer Brendan Cormick described the blood poisoning as ‘a condition not new’ to Moody.

  Less than a month later, in the build-up to his mare’s retirement, the trainer hinted at a dramatic personal development. He, too, might nearly have had enough of racing. Intriguingly, it was a journalist based in Brisbane, Nathan Exelby, who had the story. ‘Moody insists he is the same knockabout who headed off to Melbourne with stars in his eyes 10 years ago,’ he wrote. ‘The difference now is, everyone wants a little piece of him and the man who has done more to promote racing in the past two years than anyone in the previous two decades is set to make a change.’

  ‘My biggest problem in life is saying no to anyone and that’s why I ended up in hospital,’ Moody told the paper. ‘I try and promote racing, because I’ve got this superstar. There’s only so many hours in the day and I’ve got a big business to run. Twice in the past year I’ve ended up crook and I don’t think it’s any coincidence.’

  In the unusually candid interview, the trainer admitted he needed ‘to get a bit of life balance’. ‘Trainers never get to take a break,’ he said. ‘If you have a bit of a dynasty … it might be a bit different. But if I’m away for a weekend, the clients think, “Who’s looking after my horses?” I’m no
t going to train forever. I would think I will be involved in racing, but not as a commercial public trainer. Whether I look at pursuing something overseas or in a private manner I’m not sure, but it won’t be 300 horses and 1000 clients.’

  Racing’s grapevine might not have been far off the mark: this band leader was clearly mapping out a new direction, a life away from the spotlight.

  *

  Other members of Moody’s team were making changes too. Tony Haydon, foreman at the Caulfield stables for 13 years, decided to leave at the end of 2013. Basically, he was worn out, and he and the trainer had one blue too many.

  ‘We used to blue every day,’ Haydon recalls. ‘Every day. About horses, staff; I’d be defending [them] or sometimes I’d tell him what I thought about a certain horse, and he’d tell me I was too soft, and stuff like that. You either get on with Moods or you don’t, really. If you can’t handle it – like, if you’re a bit precious – you won’t handle it. He’s a champion, but that’s just the way we worked. And it worked for us.’

  For more than a decade in Melbourne, Tony Haydon literally lived and breathed this stable life. The ‘back half of the office’ of the big house at the front of Moody Racing’s main stables had been his home. But when he finished up, he made a clean break.

  ‘I just gave him his keys back and his phone, and that was that,’ he says. ‘I was pretty buggered. I was quite crook and I was just worn out. I just had enough, because you’ve got 40-odd staff you’re dealing with every day, plus you’ve got Moods and the horses, and because you’re racing in Victoria, you’re [working] nearly seven days a week, and evenings in summer. It gets long.

  ‘I was there 24/7 … and the phone just doesn’t stop. I was just getting buggered, and I was probably becoming more sensitive, so it just felt like it was time. Afterwards, I thought, “Well, what have I bloody done?” But that’s life. It’s just the way things are.’