#2 - Denise Martin

It was an honour to be joined by the founder of Star thoroughbreds, Denise Martin,  to talk about her upbringing in Tasmania, some of her favourite memories in the industry, and her next potential superstar in Aeliana 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome back to Tie In with Jacob Tyson. I have the absolute pleasure today of being joined by one of the most influential people in the sport, one of the most successful people in the sport, the founder of Star Thoroughbreds, Denise Martin. Denise, how are you today?

SPEAKER_00 0:16

I'm very well and thank you very much for calling me.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Thank you for your time today. There's so much to discuss with you over the course of this interview, obviously. But I wanted to start it off with, you know, the early life growing up in Tasmania, your father was inducted into the Tasmanian Sporting Hall of Fame. You know, what what was the what's the connection for you with Tasmania? I know with Star Thoroughbred you you send a lot of horses down there. You do do a lot for the Tasmanian horse industry. What what's your connection to Tasmania now and and sort of growing up?

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Well, look, I was born in Tasmania. I was am the eldest of two girls, and my parents always had, in a small community, I guess, in Launceston originally, and then on the northwest coast of Taddy, in a place called Devonport, they had a fairly high profile. Dad was one of those natural sports people who I think could pretty much do anything. He ran forth in a stall gift. He was a very good cricket player and an exceptional Australian rules player. And as a very young girl, um, my dad was offered a chance to go and coach, I beg your pardon, to play in Victoria originally, in what was then the VFL, now the AFL. And he'd always been associated with the Melbourne Football Club. So they asked my dad to go and play with them way back in the early 60s when I was really young. And my mother didn't want to go to Victoria because I guess travel wasn't as it is today back in the early 60s. She didn't want to go to the mainland, as Tassie calls, you know, everywhere after Tassie, Victoria. And so her family, dad's family, mum's family, they were both the middle of three, dad the middle of three boys, mum the middle of three girls. She felt that she wanted to be with her family in Tassie. So Dad declined the first offer to offer to go and play AFL for Melbourne in the uh Aussie Rawls competition. But two years later he was asked again, and much the same response, didn't want to go, leave the family, said no. Then he was asked to go and coach in Victoria and be one of the leading clubs' coaches. And the same thing, the response was always the same because of the family ties in Tassie, so it didn't happen. And because Dad had a very high profile in the state in general, he was at the time he was the state manager of Shell Oil because back then the sports people had quote a proper job. Sport wasn't a full-time profession, people weren't sponsored really to uh you know to promote brands. But at about the time, by this stage, it was the mid-60s, Dad was asked to be Tasmania's agent for brands, sporting brands that people didn't know at that time, Agatus, Puma, and Reebok. Everybody knows them now, but way back then they weren't known. So Dad became TASI's wholesaler and retailer for those three brands. At the same time, he was asked to go and appear not as a permanent staff member, but as a guest every month or two on the newly opened commercial television station out of Lobsystem. So at that stage, the brands that my dad was promoting in Tasmania would have international representatives, be it a very famous tennis player or a sports player from North America or a football player from Victoria, you know, international sports people who were known throughout Australia, would come to Tassie, they would appear on what was then Channel 9's Lonsiston Channel 9's wide world of sports. Dad would be up as an honorary commentator for cricket in summer and sporting winter. So he'd meet these people and they'd come back to my parents' house for lunch on Sunday. So I'd go to school when I was younger than you, but uh still, you know, pretty young. I'd go to school on Monday and the teachers would say, What did you do? Oh, we had a lady at our place yesterday, and her name was Mrs. Fraser, Dawn Fraser. Or if it was a tennis player, we had somebody at our place called Mr. Hode, or we had a very famous golfer called Clary player, whoever it might have been. So I was sort of brought up in sport as a very natural extension of family life. Um I captained Hattie way back then in schoolgirl um uh netball, it was basketball then, netball then, and my sister and her daughter have become over the years very successful equestrians. So between Dad and yours, truly, who was not anywhere near as talented as Dad in the two sporting pursuits, but it was just uh it was a sporting family. So when Dad became when he finished uh competitive uh competition himself, coaching and playing cricket and in Australian horse football, he became involved not really directly but indirectly with racing because he had some friends in Victoria he'd met through his association with the football teams in Melbourne who would go to Flemington and Caulfield from time to time. And if Dad was in Victoria, he would go along. So when I was in my early teens, Dad decided that you know he'd have shares in a couple of horses in Cassi. I think originally he bought a couple from Victoria, he didn't train them, other people did, but they were successful. And I thought, well, this is pretty good, not having any remote inclination that many, many decades later racing would be uh my my chosen career. So when I left school, I originally wanted to be a lawyer, and in Tasmania at that time, there wasn't a law degree available. There was arts and there was commerce and there were other degrees, education, but not law. So I would have had to go to Victoria to study, and I thought, oh, mum's thing again, I'm gonna leave the family, I'm not gonna go. So I got an education degree and I taught for a couple of years in Tassie, uh, primary school, I had a three-year course degree, and then I taught for a few years. Then I wanted to go and live overseas, not to stay overseas, but to just travel. But always, like a lot of Australians, the idea of travelling was really appealing, and so I decided to go and live in England. I thought I'd be away for about six months. I stayed away for nearly seven years, came back with a South African husband, another story, but wide out of here. And so the the racing side became uh, I guess, uh, a little bit of an interest, not a passion at that time, but something of an interest, mainly because Dad uh Dad's father had horses, and then dad had a number of horses, and they would it was an appealing thing to watch, and I felt very engaging. So the first interest in racing was generated because of Dad's interest, number one. When I live overseas in England, I lived in London initially, and then I lived out of London in an area where horses were trained. So I'd go and watch the horses trained at New Market, I'd go and watch them on race day. I always thought it was really a wonderful sport, wonderful, wonderful thing to watch. Again, having no notion that I'd be involved in racing in any way. So my my second career, as it were, after school teaching, which I did in Tassie for three years or so in London, was a hotel business. I became involved in hotel management in a very junior way, and that became a 20-year-old career throughout Europe. I went to live in South Africa, which was the most interesting place in the 70s and 80s because the country is bilingual, and so it was very difficult for me to get an operational job in the hotel business because with two languages, English and Afrikaans, of course I didn't speak Afrikaans, so that became a bit of a problem. So this is where my hotel interests really took off because I told people all these years later that something rather funny happened. I thought, well, I'm unemployable, I'm in South Africa, I don't speak Afrikaans, I've got to work, and what am I going to do? So I went to an employment bureau called Drake International, and funny enough, a girl I didn't know called Denise, nothing to say, from Melbourne was head of Drake International in Johannesburg. So I said to her, look, I've done this academic course to get my you know leading certificate, we called it matriculation then. Uh, you know, ancient history, really helpful, not, geography, really helpful, not, biology, really helpful, not for for, you know, when I say helpful, meaning for a gainful career. If I wasn't going to be medicine or, you know, teaching ancient history, what was I going to do with those subjects? So I said to the lady at Drake in Johannesburg, I just need to do something. She said, Can you sell? I said, No, of course I can't, no idea. She said, Well, there is a very famous musical appearing in South Africa at the moment. This was the mid-70s, and television had just started in that country. Being bilingual, it was quite strange. On a Monday, English would be the first three hours from five o'clock to eight o'clock, and Afrikaans would be the second three hours from eight o'clock to eleven o'clock. There was only six hours of television in the early days. It was really strange. Anyway, so she said, Well, if you can sell, um, there was a very famous musical appearing, the length and breadth of South Africa called Epitombi. And it was back in the 70s where people still bought cassettes, believe it or not, and sometimes even records. And she said, This gives you a car, and you're travelling around what we would know to be Westfields, all around Johannesburg, taking orders. So this is quite funny, off I go and orange citroen, that was the company car. Nothing. I said, couldn't they give me a white one? Orange, you you'll have orange and you'll like it. Yes, you're right. So I get my little orange citroen. Off I go to uh, as I said, the equivalent of what we would know as Westfields in and around Johannesburg, to go to the various uh record outlets, you know, you'd know what they are now, not so much now because of streaming, very different, but in those days, people would order big quantities of cassettes and records. And the Africans, you know, only just having television at that time, loved them, loved them and now their music. So they would go to the shopping centres and buy, you know, literally dozens every week from different outlets of these of the Epitomby cassette records and so forth. So I'd finish the order taking, that's all it was, it wasn't even selling. I'd go to I'd go to Westfield, say Paramatta, the equivalent of, and I'd go to Capital Records, and the guy would say, he'd say, Oh hi. Uh I I mentioned to him that I was there to take some orders for the different record company, you know, um uh you know, records that they had available, including every tomb. And he'd say, I'll have 25 of those. No, you don't. Look, take them down the road, got fifty. Oh, well, you better give me 50. And I I I'd finished that by about lunchtime, one o'clock. What am I going to do? Well, I don't know why, but I decided there were quite a few provincial race courses like Gosford, Wyong, Hawkesbury, not very far away. So I finished up at 1.30, 2 o'clock, having taken the orders for these musical products from the different houses at Westfield in whatever it was called in South Africa. I go to watch the races. And not to bet, just to see the horses, and I loved it. And I'd go home and see Peter, he'd say, What did you do today? Well, I went to such and such shopping centre to, you know, to take the orders for such and such, and went to so and so to take the orders. Then I went to the races. You did what? And I said, Well, there was nothing to do. So that sort of was spark number two, after my dad having horses when he finished playing competitive sport. So when I finished in when we finished in South Africa, we had about three years there and came to Australia, and I got back into the hotel business that I'd started in England. So we traveled to different places in Australia. I started in Sydney, I went to the Gold Coast for the opening of the casino, and then I went to Sheridan Brisbane, back to Melbourne. And about 30 years ago, a lifetime ago, I realise you're not even close to that age, but a lifetime ago, I was in Melbourne at one of the major hotels, and I thought I'd just start a business of my own to know what I'm going to do. But at the time I knew that there were two or three people doing what I thought would be interesting, which was buying a horse or horses, and putting out what we call the product disclosure statement or a prospectus and offering those horses to prospective owners to own in share ownership. And so uh I got the license fairly quickly, the Star Thoroughbred 30 years ago now, and I thought, well, who am I going to ask to work with me? So I'd known Gay through living, I was living in Melbourne, I'd known Gay through living in Sydney. So I phoned her, she just got her license, and I said, Would you like to work with me? Well, Gay is amazing. She talks first and thinks later in a very positive way.

SPEAKER_01 12:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:53

Oh, this would be amazing for me together.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

Very, very, very um got a great personality, Gay, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:59

Very, very out there vibrant personality. So we worked together for 21 years, and you know, we developed a fairly high profile, the two of us. I was the syndicator, Gay was the trainer, and it was very exciting. It was um it was in the mid-90s. Um, there weren't many people doing what I was doing at the time, one or two, but not many. And because Gay had the profile, she very kindly enabled me to get the profile quickly. And the industry was originally, I guess, for the first four or five years, a little bit reticent, thinking, well, who is this person? She's not from racing, she won't last. But I thought I'm going to work myself to the quite to the ground. But I want to work as hard as I can to be successful and show people that people of all ages, men and women, to be successful if they apply themselves. So it's a very long, I know, an involved commentary I've just given you now of how did you go from there to there? But that's really how it went from Tassie, from a sporting family to England, to South Africa, back to Australia, and continue a hotel career that was about 20 years and then working with Gabe for 20. And now I've been with Chris while I for 40 years. So yeah, it's um it's one of those things. You want to do it, if you want to do it, you can do it. You just have to apply yourself.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

Yeah, and that that that was awesome because you answered a lot of my questions without me having to ask them throughout that. So that was that was unreal. Um I'll transition now. You you started to talk about you know working with Gay Waterhouse, uh very, you know, open, she's very I guess eccentric might be the word. She's very got a lot of personality, Gay Waterhouse, and then you know, re of recent times or over the last sort of 14-15 years, you've been working with Chris Waller, who you know apples and oranges, like a little bit, a little bit different sort of sort of personality to to Gay Waterhouse. What's what's it been like working with with those two? And what's sort of the comparison between the two in terms of you know, not just working with the horses, but in terms of you know working with their personalities as well?

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Look, you're you're absolutely correct. Um, Ada Z. Uh Gay was a an actress. When she left school, she trained at NIDA, the National Institute of Dramatic Art at Kensington in Australia. And she said to her dad and mother, I want to be an actress. Well, they thought that was an insane idea, but she wanted to try. So she went to England quite young in her twenties, having graduated from NIDA, National Institute of Dramatic Arts, as I said. She went to England and she got some theatre work on stage theatre work. And I think she came back to Australia thinking, look, I'm not going to be, you know, the next um Meryl Streep or the next, whoever, you know, I'm not going to be the new big actress, the new kid on the blog. I better go back to Australia. So when she came back to Australia, she got some television work, uh, a television series at the time, like a series at five or six o'clock at night. Uh, it was called The Young Doctor. She got some work on there, and a few other bits and pieces that were uh in either serial you know, programs or periodic programs. I think she might have been involved in a you know a racing form programme on channel seven, you know, a long time ago. And then she said to her father after a while, I'm not going to make it in television or entertainment at all. I want to work in the stables. So her father said, Well, you can help um Tommy's Tommy Smith's very famous father. She said, Um, Tommy said to Gay, you can help my brother Ernie in the stables, doing the PR public relations. And Gay said, Look, Dad, I can do that, you know, with my eyes closed. I want a proper job. So eventually she said to her father in the early 90s, I'd like to train. And TJ was very against the idea because I think he thought she was going to be a failure. And with his phenomenal success, he didn't want his only child, a female at that, to be unsuccessful. But Gay is extraordinarily determined, and so originally Tommy said to a number of his clients over long time, you should give Gay some horses. A few of them were very dismissive, and oh no, Tom, I'll wait and see if she could train. And she couldn't get horses for a long time. Not for a long time, I mean three or four years. So the first horse that she ever trained to race won a race, and then the next one raced well, and the next one won. And within a few months, she'd had a bit of success. And a small number of owners gave her a few horses and just blossomed from that. But it was very different when I decided to move my business from gay because her whole mantra is speed. The horses are really required to jump in the barriers, take up a forward position, and keep going. Chris Wallace's style is jump out of the barriers in a barrier trial. Just doesn't matter if you're second, last, last or back of the field.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

Just need to relax.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

Just relax and you know, find the line. So when I had 21 years at Tulloch Lodge with Gay and moved to Chris and we had our first trialers, some of the owners were very questioning of you know what I was doing moving there because you know their trial horses at Rambick had just gone like a bullet and shown up and everybody was excited with a trial win. Chris's horses, meaning stars Chris's horses, languished over the line and didn't do anything. So it was very difficult because in the first year that I went to Rose Hill, I had no horses at all because I left all the horses that I had under my banner at the time, which was 70 of them, at Tulaglotch, and they started being trained there without my being there. And I said to Gay when I told her I was moving, that all the horses I had, the star horses, would stay at Brandwick. I contracted for Gay to train them, and it wasn't going to change. When I got to Rose Hill and had no horses, Chris was very welcoming. The people were very kind and you know, very thoughtful, etc. Um, it took a little while to settle in there. Uh well, A, I live in the city, so there was the travel in the morning, you know, about an hour to the office and an hour back, whereas Randwick was from where I lived, close to the city, six or seven minutes. It wasn't dramatic, but it was a change, so nearly two hours a day in the car. And then it was the personalities that were very different. And for a while I found Chris understandably was quite restrained, if you like at a bit of a distance, because I think he wanted to know what we were about. I had said to him that Emma, who works with me and is still with me now, um, Emma and I would not be intrusive. We would not want to try and introduce our style to anybody. We would just buy the horses, sell the horses, and he would train them. After all this time, I think it's you know, it's a very workable relationship. He um, Chris is as as um other people know is absolutely workaholic, and he, you know, his success is because of his great skill, his enormous talent, and his commitment to doing the job. Gay's the same, just different but the same in that sense. So it was very it was really different because of two reasons. One, personality style, A to Z, and B training style, A to Z.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:03

So I had it took me a little while to get used to Chris's training style and the whole mantra and the horses fit and ready and an extended career. And if they did have an extended career and can still race at five and six, if they had any talent, then they're doing prize money because it's um you know, it's it's uh uh it's just uh, you know, a a difference of different style. But you know, I'm really comfortable with Chris now to me while I'll talk him out. But I'm not now and with Gay, I I had a different relationship with Gay because we were together a lot of the time. We got the right together, and she didn't have any sisters and brothers, so we got very close. I'm not that close to Chris, but I've got to know him much better over the years. So different, but equally talented, and you know, both skills are enormous. Gay's won seven golden slippers, you know, it seems like a thousand on casters, and you know, etc. etc. And Chris is, you know, hurting along and and you know, even emulating what gay has in numbers. He's he's you know, I think he's achieved even greater success. So very different people, phenomenal horse trainers. And I've been I've been really privileged over the years to have, you know, now 33 years, Gay for 21 years, and Chris for nearly 14, and to work with such talented people who've given me a chance to work with them and support them, and in turn, they've supported stars. So never forget that sort of commitment to wanting to help you and help your business. And I've enjoyed it. There have been their moments, it's just like moments, both at Lamick and at Rose Hill, but you move on and you try and do the best that you can for your your customers, your owners, and the business. So it's been amazing.

SPEAKER_01 21:49

Yeah. I'll I'll move on to sort of talking about some of the horses that you've owned over you've had some highly successful horses over the time. And some of my earliest memories within the sport of racing. Obviously, you know, mum and dad have both worked in racing for you know as long as I could remember. Some of my earliest memories were, you know, some of those um George R uh Chipping Nordens and and all that and Doncasters where you had you know the likes of Tessio, um Dan Lee, Rangy Rang Doo, and and Tesio was one of your horses.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 22:17

And I I I wanted to ask you about Tessio and Sebring and and that late 2000 success and early 2010 success that you had with those two horses and and what they meant to you and and what sort of journey they took you on.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

Well, they meant everything. And the bizarre well, talking of Cezio first, he's just about my favourite ever horse because as anyone who follows racing can see, he won five group ones, he got to group uh, he got to weight for age level, and he raced against Chris's, you know, superstars at the time. Shootouts, Rangy Rangdo, as you said, Dan Lee. And Cezio was an interesting horse because he was sold at Magic Minions in the night session of the Saturday night, which Magic Minions had then, they don't have very recently, they stopped the Saturday night session, but he was sold early on the Saturday night session of Magic Minions. And when Gay said to me, I've just found a horse here, I think you should buy, and I said, Oh, he's my Danewin. Oh, but but people want a Danewin. So I bought him, and I quite remember saying to some of the owners who it cost me 120,000 and he earned three and a half million in now money. Look, he'd be Mr. Brightside, or who knows what he'd be, and he'd be a$10 million owner now, you know. Yeah. But but he won five group ones, and he was just he's just, I think, my favourite because a bit like Eliana, he gained so much of himself, and he just tried all the time, and everybody adored him and just thought he was a big he was a good-looking horse, big chestnut horse. Nash rode him, and you know, the horse was a big exaggerated action galloping horse with Nash's exaggerated riding style. It was a bit funny at first. Look at them, they're a bit like that names, you know. But he they just got him like a house sometime. He was wonderful. So I bought him, and as I said, he earned over three million millions. Sleeping was a different story because he was sold in 2007 at Magic Minions, and he was a parsian. And although it sounds ridiculous now for people who follow racing, being by More than Ready, um, he wasn't popular because more than ready was a dirt horse from Northern America, he was brought to Australia, and people were still very guarded on whether he would make the grade here. His mother, Seabing's mother, was a 17-start maiden. So I had More Than Ready out of pure speed. And so the first time I put him on the market in that year 2007, January, February, March, early April, nobody wanted him. Nobody wanted him because neither sign or down were appealing. I took him off the market and I put him on the market again late in October, and their client influenza hit, and there was no racing in Sydney, people couldn't go to farms, the horses. I remember at Public Lodge, you could hear from 50 metres away horses coughing. It was a very overwhelmingly difficult time. People couldn't go to there were no races in New South Wales, New South Wales horses couldn't go to Victoria for the spring, and nobody knew what the end game was going to be. Nobody knew when this was going to finish. I still had Seabring as a yearling, or two-year-old by then, two-year-old in in August, two off, but with nobody wanting him. And he was at a farm in pre-training out, and the team at the farm said, This horse goes really well. So we got a whole group of people to come to our offices at Round League and said, Look, you must trust us, this horse goes really well. Well, he had his first start. Racing started again after being closed in September, October, November of 2007. It started again in on the 1st of December 2007. So the first two-year-old in that season was actually in January. Funnily enough, it was on the first January, first Saturday in January, I beg your pardon, which would normally be Magic Minions Day. And C bring one the two-year-old race. And Gay said to me at the time, you've just got a golden sipper horse here. Well, I didn't know what that meant. I'd never had a ready to go to a golden sipper. What do you mean? Anyway, he became legendary. He won five of his six starts, and he he ran second in the last of his starts called the the um uh uh what's it called? The super undersized produce and the champagne.

SPEAKER_01 26:22

The champagne, yes.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

And in those days, the T-world races were every week, every second week, every week. So the Golden Sepper was on Saturday, the Silas was the following Saturday, the champagne the following week. These days they're separated by you know by week. So you've got you've got the Golden Sepper, a fortnight later, Silas Golden and Champagne. So Bring won the first five races, then he raced in the champagne with Blake Shin riding him, and he got caught on the line by a very famous Lees called, or I think Max Lees at the time might have been crucial, Max, I'm not sure, called uh Samanthemus. He became a champion filling. So he won five of six. He was uh second in the champagne by short half. He'd I must say on the line I thought he'd won it, and then he was stud for 28 million. So the owners earned uh two hundred, I think two and a half million or close to it in prize money, and the horse was sold to stud for 28 million. Well, it was just at the time a record price republically syndicated horse, and it was a whole new venture for for me, you know, to have a horse that was so good as a juvenile, and when these races, and so when the Golden Sipper that year was held late here in March, early April, late because of the uh period, you know, in the previous year with AI, and I remember standing at Rose Hill just near near the undercover area in um in the mountain yard and being a cold, miserable sort of day, um, when Clenn Bosch shot to the lead at about the 40-metre mark, gay said, Dean, you've just won the Golden Stipper. And I looked at her and said, How can that possibly happen to a school teacher from Tasmania? It was just amazing. So those two horses were equally special for different reasons. Sebring, because he was an amazing two-year-old, sold for a huge price, and Therseau because he was a magnificent war horse. So, yes, it's just you never know. You just don't know where the next horse great horse is going to come from.

SPEAKER_01 28:27

Yeah, it's an awesome story, and you know, just listen to your talk and how much passion you've got for the game, it is clear to see why there's been so much success there with Star Thoroughbreds. I wanted to ask about, you know, probably the current flag bearer of Star Thoroughbreds, Aliana. This is a horse that I I think is, you know, got a lot more high quality racing to come. Um, you know, just won two group ones, back-to-back weeks and the Ranvit and the Tankrid. Now backing up into the Queen Elizabeth, you had a horse uh uh a few years ago called Foxplay that nearly knocked off the darling of the turf in Wink one day. Do you think Ariana could do something similar to Autumn Glow this weekend?

SPEAKER_00 29:09

Oh gosh. Uh do I think not sure. Do I wish yes. When we had Foxplay, it was a girls-only group. And Winx was, you know, really right in the middle of her stellar, you know, win period. And our little grey filly in the first season of Stanyan Foxwidge was quite amazing because uh Karen McAvoy wrote her, Huey, of course, Hugh Bowman wrote Winx. And like when there are superstars, e.g., via Sustina, but very especially Winx and Black Cabrier, I'm sure, the fields are generally not huge because you know owners just realise that it's you know, it's just you you know, you're twisting fate to think it might happen. Well, when I was walking through uh the Randwick Tunnel on the day that that uh Winx and Foxplay were running in what is now the Winxtakes. It wasn't then, it was called the Warwick Stakes then, but now it's Winxtakes. And Greg Radley from Sky Channel said to me, What will you do if you beat her? And I said, Well, don't you scream? Ha ha ha. I've given it not one ounce of thought, it's not going to happen. He said, Oh, you never know. Well, truly, Emma, who's been with me, as I've said before, for a long time, was with me. And when Fox Play kicked away at about the 150, 200 metre mark, I looked at Winx and I grabbed Emma's arm and said, Well, she's going to run out of time, meaning Winx. She's going to run out of time. And I became increasingly anxious. And I thought, what am I going to do? I'll be the hated person in World Racing. What are you going to say? It wasn't my fault. Don't hate me. You know. So when she just got, when Winx got Fox play on the line, it was it was sort of a relief. Oh, thank goodness we're on Saturday, you know. And on the Monday, I phoned Hugh by me, because over the years, you know, having been in the business a long time, you get to know the riders and they're very good. They don't intrude on you, and we don't intrude on their private time. But I've known them well. So I phoned Huey on the Monday and said, Oh my goodness, did you think it was going to happen? Meaning, did you think you'd you'd be able to, you know, just catch her on the line? And he said, Well, two things happen. He said, Gay had a big horse called Ecuador, I think it was, big horse. And and Fox Fay was on his inside, and he said, I didn't really see her until I straightened. And because she was grey and at that time getting a little bit lighter, she wasn't white as she is now, but she was getting a lighter grey. And he said, She had sort of blended into the fence and didn't see her. So it was only when Fox when Winx started to pick up, Huey realized that you know Fox Play had put a little bit of a margin on. And he said to me something interesting, and I've always sat with me. Hugh said, I realized at that time I was on the most intelligent horse I'll probably ever ride, because she knew, meaning Winx, how much she had to lift to make it happen. And I thought extraordinary things for you to feel that you knew she knew how much she had to accelerate and lift in performance to actually get there. And I thought, extraordinary. So she was fantastic, and then Aliana was a different story altogether because she sort of came when I say from nowhere. Um, Chris was in New Zealand at the sales, and I wasn't, and he phoned and said, There's a relative here to one of your very good horses called Invincibella. Would you be interested in buying her? And I said, Oh, what's she buy, Castlebeck? Oh, Castle. Well, if I don't, you're going to buy her. And probably the Invincibella people would want her. I said, I'll buy her. And she only cost$190. When she came over here, she went to the farm, and the man at the farm at um out at Camden said to me, Very good farm manager, did you buy this horse from New Zealand? When they say that, you know already, you should apologize. Uh, yes. Um, have you seen her? Uh no. Oh, right. Why? She doesn't look like a star horse, meaning robust and strong. Oh, okay. Well, she's from New Zealand, I said to him, we'll give her the time. Then a couple of months later, she went to the breaker saying, Commentary. Did you buy this horse from New Zealand? By now, I was very practiced at saying sorry. And I said, uh yes. And he said, She's not very impressive, you know, so I've been told, you know. And that was when she was still a yearling. Well, it's amazing. Horses are just like people, they change, they evolve, and now, as a four-year-old, she's become one of the talked-about horses in all of Australia because she's a great stamina horse. So she's running on Saturday against the remarkable uh Autumn Glow. Do I think we can beat she can beat Autumn Glow? Probably not, but the prize money is so extreme, you need to be there number one. I think our horse would have been advantaged by a wet track, and that's not going to happen. But when you get to these Wait for Age Group One races and you're competing against the best there is, it's like the Olympics, it's like Usain Bolt or Kathy Freeman. You elevate yourself or you try and elevate yourself to the next level to increase your performance level to the point where you're able to compete at gold medal level as opposed to on a series of lead-up races, you know, in Olympics and with us as well, group races. But when you get group on weight for age, it's very exciting. So after Saturday, she'll have a break, and so will the owners, thank heavens, she'll go to Melbourne and uh re remarkably, you know, wonderfully but very remarkably, she is spoken of in terms of maybe a competitor, you know, in terms of performance level at the end of her racing life, to a very elegant, you know. I wouldn't have this in my wildest dreams, but with the billions of the trainer and with you know, the billions of Chris and his healing selection team who found her in New Zealand, and the horse herself, she's just evolved into a as they say, a beauty.

SPEAKER_01 35:06

Yeah, she's a very, very good horse in from everything that I've seen. I I actually found her pretty early in terms of like that the three-year-old campaign and um you know that Randwick 1400 and the Carbine Club. And I actually said it at the start of the campaign, I started that very elegant comparison. I I think she's a horse that I I I'm looking at for a cup campaign in the spring. Can you give me any information on on if there's a plan to go to a Melbourne Cup with her?

SPEAKER_00 35:35

I I look, I would say I've spoken to the the owners of Eliana all week and I've said Chris's style as people who know him is very practiced. He's called a pattern trainer because he programs horses in accordance with what has been successful in the past. And I said to him when Eliana won the derby on the Monday at at Rose Hill, would you take Eliana to a Caulfield Cup? And his response was to me was interesting. And I thought, well, that's interesting. He said, I still regard four-year-old mayors uh in the in the spring as four-year-old fillies. And the Caulfield Cup is a very taxing race for young horses. Historically, the four-year-old fillies and colts uh gildings that have gone from the Derby and or the Oaks to the to the Corfield race, the Corfield Cup, haven't traditionally, in the main, gone on to race at 567. It's been too much. So he said to me, she won't go to the Corfield Cup, Eliander, she won't go to the Corfield Cup last year in October, but next year. So when she came out this time and she started racing in February, mid-February, then the end of February, the thing that I noticed immediately was that the skinny, little bit sort of coat hanger-ish, not a very impressive-looking horse, has just burnished into a not a big horse, but just a strong horse. And whilst I'm not remotely making any comparisons in skill set performance to uh to Winx versus Eliana, their style of build is not dissimilar. She hasn't got, you know, a very strong front half, meaning, you know, she's quite narrow down the shoulder and between the legs, but behind she's really strong with really good push. So I would say, and I've said to the owners, there are three races for Eliana in the spring. I don't think remotely she'd run in all three. She'll probably run in two, and they are the obvious the Corphield Cup, the Coxplate, and the Melbourne Cup. And because the Coxplate this year and next year is at Flemington, it's really a good time for her because you get that long straight at Flemington, which gives her time to build. I would say, quite likely, likely as opposed to probably, and more so than possibly, I would think this year. And if you go back to Barry Elligan's um programme and go through her form again with Chris the pattern trainer, the first year Barry Elegant was in Melbourne. She ran in the Caulfield Cup and the Melbourne Cup and didn't win the Melbourne Cup. The second year she ran in the Coxplate and the Melbourne Cup, and it was the year that she won the Melbourne Cup by a big space. So this year, if Ellie Arna were to run in the Caulfield Cup and the Melbourne Cup, I think she'd be a great chance in the Mel in the Caulfield Cup, and then I think she'd be competitive in the Melbourne Cup. Hopefully next year, you know, then she could win the Melbourne Cup as well. But Chris might feel at the end of the year that, you know, she warrants running in uh, you know, the Caulfield Cup and the Melbourne Cup this year. I just don't know. But she's certainly going to Melbourne, and two of those three races I would think would definitely be on the radar. Hope I'm around to see it. It's too exciting. I wanted Saint on a race course and be taken away. Did you watch it? No, I wasn't. I painted. I couldn't, I got so excited, I couldn't concentrate.

SPEAKER_01 38:58

Yeah, it it must be super exciting to have horses of this quality and you know, being able to target the majors and and all that sort of thing. And and you've built a very uh successful business with Star Thoroughbreds and um uh wishing you all the best and and the best success with all these horses that you've got now at the moment and really appreciative of your time today. Um thank you for for joining and and um you you've given a lot of detail. So it's uh thanks for your time today. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 39:26

You're so welcome. I enjoy chatting very much and appreciate your support of staring our horses, and I wish you will. Just keep yelling for them, please.

SPEAKER_01 39:36

We'll do. I'll certainly be supporting Ariana over the uh springtime, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_00 39:40

We will. Thanks very much for thinking for call me. I appreciate it greatly.