by Helen Thomas
This colt has certainly already proved he is one tough customer. Born and raised in Victoria, he was sent (by truck) to Perth for the Magic Million Yearling Sale and then returned to Victoria (by truck) after Robbie bought him for $80,000. Clearly, he is a robust lad and it isn’t surprising that he now has a bevy of admirers as he leaves the ring. But I wonder how easy his ten shares will be to sell, at $10,026, especially taking into account that that’s not the end of it, financially. The buy-in figure for all these youngsters covers the costs incurred by Robbie buying and caring for them. The monthly upkeep bills will soon follow once the keen buyers sign on the dotted lines!
This is Robbie Griffiths’ Class of 2009, all bar one—the King of Roses/Poetic Waters filly—chosen (or bred) by the trainer and all set to have their second birthday on August 2009.
Their parade has been a professional, down-to-earth showcase and the feeling around the yard as it ends is positive and friendly. The crowd stays on to wander through the stables and look at the youngsters who are now back in their stalls, with the little Black Hawke filly drawing the biggest audience.
As expected, she is sold out and Luxapal’s Amazonian daughter looks set for solid support too. Hers is the box Deane keeps gravitating to.
‘I reckon this is the girl for me,’ he says. ‘Robbie said she was beautiful and she is.’
Despite assuring me just hours before he had no intention of buying into another horse, especially as he already owns 100 per cent of the yearling he bred himself, there is no doubt he is set to buy into this one.
She really is stunning, I think, gazing at the filly, who gazes back at both of us with unabashed disinterest, such attention already just part of her everyday life. In some ways, she’s everything Rosie is not. At least not yet.
But I reckon spirit must count for something in this game, and the more I admire this $70,000 star of the parade, the more I think Rosie is a match. On that score, at least!
Still, this show has to get on the road and so the weekend before Rosie is due to leave for Melbourne to join the Class of 2009, I walk her and Roxie back up the hill to the stable they spent so much time in earlier in the year. This way they can be drenched and learn again, Rosie especially, that they are racehorses-to-be and not brumbies running wild through the southern tablelands, a role they are both beginning to enjoy.
But once their halters go on and the lead ropes clip under their chins, they walk out of the paddock quite professionally, despite Rosie’s half-sister Swirl’s sudden agitation at being left alone. The daughter Poetic Waters was not supposed to have—who raced, fittingly enough, as Miss Unexpected—has been in the paddock with the yearlings for the past month as a steadying influence and it has worked well for all concerned. It gives the fillies a calm point of reference, and the young mare has the chance to be boss of the yard.
As she is the youngest in the farm’s band of mares, she is always at the end of the pecking order and so has enjoyed life with her two young charges … until this point, as she watches them disappearing over the rise.
Once I get the fillies re-settled in their stalls, I bring Swirl up to the stable too, putting her in the box she was born in six years earlier. She is not quite as happy with the arrangement as the young ones, especially when Rosie starts banging around in her box, cheerfully demanding to be fed.
But once dinner is served, the trio settles down happily enough and I close the stable’s big doors, front and back, for the night. The next morning, it is windy and cold, a typical autumn day in Braidwood, and Swirl isn’t at all pleased about being indoors.
I put the two fillies in the round yard, where they spent so much time in summer as part of Rosie’s recuperation, and walk Swirl down the hill. As soon as she knows she is heading back to the older girls, she settles into step beside me and walks calmly in with the others, happier to be out in the wind than listening to it whistle through the stable.
After cleaning out the stalls, I bring the fillies back in and check what was once the gaping wound on Rosie’s neck. It is now a thin, six-inch scar over slightly puckered skin. It is almost unnoticeable under her mane and it really is hard to believe that it was as bad as it was a couple of months ago. This filly obviously has a hardy constitution.
And good as she is during this inspection, she eventually decides she has had enough of being fussed over when I start to groom her, and somehow manages to bite me, under my right arm. It is just a quick nip, but within 5 minutes, an angry red bruise appears. So much for the grooming, I decide, and when they have finished their breakfast, we walk back down to the paddock.
Rosie behaves perfectly on her long lead rope as we head out, occasionally nudging my back in contented fashion, while Roxie plays up, dancing on her toes and squealing with anticipation as we head over the lip of the hill and she spies Swirl waiting at the gate below. Seriously, I think, it is time for these two young ladies to start learning how to be racehorses.
A week later, Rosie’s biggest day yet, the day she is being picked up and driven down to Robbie Griffiths’ property in Victoria—Saturday, 2 May 2009—dawns clear and very cold, as if determined to get us all up and moving early. Winter has arrived early, along with the ice on the windscreen to prove it.
All the mares are near their gates, keen for a warming breakfast, and as I clip the halters on the two yearlings and lead them out of their paddock again, their older companion Swirl starts to move along the fence line, aware that something is up.
But the fillies are halfway up the hill before Rosie stops and refuses to move for a minute or two, ears flicking as she listens to Swirl’s whinnies. But she doesn’t whinny back. The older mares in the adjoining paddock are also restless, alert to this significant change in routine, and the filly gazes over them too, taking it all in. Then she turns away, perfectly poised, and continues to walk to the stable and into her stall.
Both she and her lifelong friend tuck into their feed bins unfazed by their family’s concern, completely at ease with the world.
Rosie even lets me groom her without incident and when the unnecessary intrusion is over, grabs her lead rope hanging on the door of her stall and swings it around, delighted with the noise it makes as she bangs it against the wall. She’s bright and cheerful, much more settled than Roxie, who is uncharacteristically fidgety, walking between the bin full of hay at the back of her stall and the now empty plastic feeder hanging at the front.
I drag the old fold-up chair into the sun hitting the stable breezeway and look out over the river, waiting for the transport truck to make it to the causeway over the river. The car radio is tuned to Sydney’s racing station and as the yearlings tuck into their second course of hay, amazing memories of the late, great mare Sunline flood back. The winner of 32 races in Australia, Hong Kong and New Zealand and $11 million in prize money, she died yesterday after a long illness, and the network is paying tribute to her with a special sound montage of her best wins set to music. When I turn the sound up the fillies come to the front of their stalls, ears pricked.
‘Have a listen to this, you two,’ I tell them. ‘And be inspired.’ Intriguingly, they actually do listen to this new series of sounds quite intently. I push the volume up even higher for maximum impact and Rosie leans over the door of her stall, all the better to stare at me standing near the car. Roxie’s not quite as focused on either me or the wall of sound, but she has also moved right to the front of her stall. Looking at them, I realise if either has a sliver of Sunline’s natural talent, let alone her courage, we will have been blessed.
No more than 10 minutes later, the unmistakable yellow transport truck rolls over the Shoalhaven River crossing and I drive down to the front gate to meet driver Barry Flynn. The former trainer looks cheerful and much warmer than I am as he jumps down from his cabin.
‘How’s things?’ he asks and we plot the best way of loading the young racehorse-to-be.
As I head back up to the stable, he turns the truck around so that it is in line w
ith the open gate and I know the back door will be open and ramp down by the time I return with Rosie.
Both fillies are waiting with great interest, no doubt having heard the truck roll down the road, and I walk back in and untie the orange and green lead rope Rosie’s been playing with for the past half hour, snipping it onto her halter. She walks out with a determined air, straight past Roxie and into the winter sunshine. She looks at the round yard she knows so well, but keeps walking towards the front of the farm, as if she knows the truck is there to take her on her big adventure.
She is on her toes, yet not really toey, just keen to see what’s up. As we head down the hill, her ears flick back as Roxie calls to her and she whinnies back. But again, she is not really fussed. Then, halfway down the hill, she sees her mum—Poetic Waters—watching from behind the poplar trees in the front paddock. And like all daughters under their mother’s gaze, she gets a little jumpy, pirouetting around in a full circle on the hill before coming to hand again quickly. Amazingly, as we reach the bottom of the hill, she focuses on the truck at the gate, and falls in by my side, head down like a true professional, walking calmly up to Barry.
‘She’s good,’ he says as we walk towards him, just as his 20-year-old gelding Ginger—on board as Rosie’s travelling companion—whinnies in greeting. Rosie looks somewhat taken aback, yet doesn’t break stride. Even as I step onto the ramp leading into the truck and ask her to follow, she still doesn’t seem fazed, although she does stop at the ramp’s slight step to get a better look inside. I walk back down and encourage her in and this time she doesn’t hesitate, walking forward easily and taking her place in the compartment next to Ginger.
‘Good girl,’ I compliment her. ‘Well done!’
She is much more interested in Ginger now, unperturbed at having just taken such a big step towards a brand new world, a huge step into the future.
Even as Barry closes the door of the compartment and I move back down the ramp, she stays steady, as if she has actually been listening to all I have been telling her over the past month and is completely in sync with what lies ahead.
Moments later, I laugh out loud as she stomps her foot a few times, clearly a signal for Barry and me to stop talking by the side of the truck and let the journey begin. It is exactly what her mother does, every time she leaves the farm on this truck.
‘I’d better get going’, Barry says, swinging back into the cabin. ‘We’ll take care of her, don’t worry.’
Three-and-a-half hours later, I ring his wife and business partner Piri to make sure Rosie’s exited the truck in the same positive frame of mind. ‘Good as gold,’ Piri assures me. ‘I haven’t seen her myself yet, but I didn’t hear a thing about the trip and that means there’s nothing worth mentioning.’
‘Right now,’ she says, ‘Rosie is enjoying lunch with the other horses in the holding yards.’
We agree to touch base again in the next day or two, so I can let Robbie and his team know when to expect her down south. As I hang up, I feel a wave of genuine excitement. Rosie’s rolling!
Two mornings later Piri phones me at work.
‘What’s that trainer’s name again?’ she asks. ‘I know she’s going to Cranbourne, but to whom, exactly?’
I grin as I remind her. The numbers of horses moving around Australia every day is quite extraordinary. How so many are shifted across the country without incident has always astounded me; that so few get lost, or even temporarily go missing along the way, is even more amazing. It says a great deal about the professionalism of the men and women doing this specialised work. What is a little disconcerting is that it sounds like the filly is in for an overnighter.
‘They’re picking her up later tonight,’ Piri says, voice raised from the driver’s seat of one of her own trucks. ‘She’ll be there in time for dinner tomorrow night!’
I try to get some idea of how many times they will have to stop en route for the drivers and horses to have a break, but Piri doesn’t know their exact routine. The company’s website suggests their main Victorian depot is at Diggers Rest, so I imagine they will have a quick pit stop somewhere along the Hume Highway, before unloading everyone at the depot for a few hours.
Sure enough, when I ring them 24 hours later, that’s exactly where Rosie is, apparently doing fine. They assure me she will be at Robbie’s early in the afternoon.
Actually, she is not going to his training yard. She is heading for the Cranbourne Equine Training Centre, which is just around the corner, where many of his youngsters go to be pre-trained—in a sense, the equine equivalent of primary school, compared to high school and college as they progress.
This will be a huge learning curve for the filly. While she has been handled since the day she was born and learnt very early in life to wear a halter and walk up well on a lead rope attached to that halter, she has never even seen a bridle with a bit, let alone a saddle. This is what everyone still refers to as being broken in, an unfortunate term that does imply breaking a horse’s spirit.
But the last thing Robbie Griffiths or anyone at this property, also known as Victory Park, wants to do is to break anything. This is a learning centre.
Rosie finally arrives there at 4.15 in the afternoon.
Her soon-to-be-trainer forgets to call me for a couple of hours, but when he remembers, the news is good, if not exactly flattering.
‘Is that the expectant mother?’ Robbie asks cheerfully. ‘Sorry, I just got caught up and then forgot all about you. But she’s fine,’ he laughs. ‘No dramas at all.’
Those reassuring words embolden me to ask his opinion of her. He doesn’t hesitate.
‘She’s backward,’ he says, direct as ever.
‘And she’s a bit on the small side, Helen, to be honest. But she’s a correct filly; her legs are straight, her knees are good and I like her attitude. We gave her a feed and she put her head in the bin and cleaned it out. So we gave her another, and she did exactly the same thing. And that’s a good sign. Some of them won’t eat after a big trip like that, it knocks them around a bit mentally. So that’s a positive, a very good sign.’
I, of course, am still stuck on the word ‘backward’.
‘Well, she’s just come out of the paddock, so she’s not as strong and developed as the yearlings who’ve been prepped for the sales … she’s behind them, that’s the simple fact of it,’ Robbie says. ‘But she looks well within herself and as I said, her attitude’s good.’
This is probably as much as I can hope for at this stage and, again, I realise how good it is to have a trainer who doesn’t spin things. It is always best to know exactly where things stand. And at this stage, Rosie is exactly where she needs to be, even if she is the last kid in class, who now has a bit of catching up to do.
But she is eating up as she has always done at home and is in expert hands.
There’s not much more I can ask for, at this point!
Chapter 12
Southern lights
More than a month passes before I get the chance to visit the two horses in their new surroundings, Harry at Robbie’s stables at Cranbourne and Rosie at the pre-school up the road. In that relatively short time, Harry’s fortunes have changed dramatically.
After weeks of concentrated dressage work to strengthen his neck and shoulders and a series of muscles Robbie suspects the gelding has been under-utilising, he improves steadily enough for the trainer to nominate him for his Victorian debut in a 1200-metre sprint at provincial Sale on 18 May.
And happily, he does the stable proud, powering down the centre of the track, stretching out like he has never done before under jockey Peter Mertens’ vigorous riding and just failing to catch the winner by the barest of racing margins: a nose.
Watching the race with Robbie and Deane, I am overjoyed with this performance, this apparent form reversal. It is a remarkable result, vindication of us moving the horse down to Melbourne as well as continuing to trust he possessed some galloping talent.
Thrill
ed, I thank Robbie, expecting at least his trademark grin after such a tight finish. Instead, he turns to me apologising.
‘I’m really sorry, Helen, you should have won that race,’ he says. ‘Peter just got a bit too far back on him, so when he made his move he had too much catching up to do. He ran home well, that’s for sure—but we really should have won that, and got his maiden win out of the way.’
As he continues to explain the nuances of the race and further reasons why Harry should have been a good length in front at the winning post, I realise I am staring at the trainer with what can only be a truly stunned expression. Doesn’t he understand what a turnaround this is for us, and probably Harry too?
‘I just wanted to get an early win on the board for you,’ Robbie says. ‘But on the strength of that, it shouldn’t be far away.’
Little does he know what lies ahead for us, and Harry, over the next couple of months.
Hard as it is to believe, and as hard as Harry tries, getting that maiden victory behind him proves a bigger undertaking than moving interstate, changing stables, even having a quarter of his blood drained from his body—and this despite the fact that he looks and probably feels stronger than he ever has before.
As Rosie eases in to her first light training preparation, the gelding settles into the third campaign of his career, and has his second Melbourne start at Kilmore—again over 1200 metres, again ridden by Peter Mertens, again flying home for … second place. A couple of weeks later, he travels to Pakenham for a 1400-metre maiden. Being a Sunday, his regular jockey is having a day off, so Dale Smith takes the ride, but the shilly-shally track seems to get the better of him and the pair run third.
Two weeks later, with Peter Mertens back in the saddle, Harry goes to Seymour for his first attempt at 1600 metres, flying down the centre of the track, and again runs … second.
