It’s not often “The Trots” make the outside news. And if so, not normally for a feely good reason at that.
So, have you heard about the bloke who is about to drive his 8000th winner? That's pretty good right?
Even his Twitter handle can’t keep up.
It’s registered as @ChrisAlford5000, ok it was set up (by mate Craig) in 2015 as he was about to represent Australia in the world driver’s championship and had just knocked off 5000, but back then Chris Alford knew more about driving winners than driving social media.
And still does - which is why he is on the verge of marching into rare air with 8000 career winners, the fuss matters little too him, he’s as much a household name at his Bolinda property, as he is out of out, but this is some deal.
Think of it, 8000 winners! Robert Thompson gets the nod for jockeys in Australia, and some can roughly agree he got around 4441 in 49 years in the saddle. Ok there is an American driver still punching around, Dave Palone, and he’s way alone with over 20,660 wins and adding.
But put Alford in perspective, Gavin Lang is his nearest Aussie “rival” with 6303.
It should have been win 7993 for Alford driving Park Lane at Maryborough on Monday when in front and the sulky broke.
"That was a bit weird. Nothing like that has even happened to me before," he told Racenet. "I was going to win (today), too. It's just another way to get beaten, I guess.
The chase continues at Melton tonight, but Ladbrokes have him $2 to get it done by the end of the month, so his Groundhog days continue, and endless miles listening to David Balducci crime novels, Bunnings stops (loves a microfibre cloth), and he the only not wanting much of the fanfare that will accompany a truly historic moment in his sport.
“There’s no pressure, it will be nice to get it done, it’s just a number to be honest, but I wouldn’t swap it for another big race win,” says 55-year-old Alford.
“I drive lots of horses. Lots of good ones, if I didn’t get results, it would be a bit disappointing really,” he muses as we sit at The Valley pondering more grandiose days for the trots like when Mont Denver Gold brought the only tear to his eyes in a career at the track that started with a winner at his third drive, Spring Vance, at Wangaratta back on October 2, 1984. He was just 16.
There was a double that first day too when 8000 (even the next one) was a long way off, it was the year Michael Jackson’s Triller dominated the Grammy’s and Carl Lewis the LA Olympics but also the year the eternal nickname Puppet was born.
“Yeah, that was when I won the Gunbower Cup, I was 16, I was with Andrew Peace, Bulldog Nicholson and Gavin Lang I reckon. After the Cup they got me drinking the beers, they had drives for the rest of the day and when they found me, I was passed out in the grass. The picked me up by the arms and reckon I looked like a puppet, and it stuck.”
That Puppet has driven the equivalent of what works out at around a winner every 1.6 days since for those mundanely statistically burdened, but it includes a year best 456 victories (1.25 a day) in the 2017/18 season.
And of course, he can tick off every major race Australasia wide (“except I’ve never won the WA Cup”), truckloads of premierships, gongs, recognition and now setting a mark that may be etched in stone.
But he could have been a jockey first, gave it a go. But not for long. Did ride a winner though.
His father Barry had been a jockey, around 35 winners from 100 rides so a good strike rate, his best Zinga Lee for Bill McNabb, a horse who would win a Sydney Cup (1964), but weight cruelled that ambition and a chance meeting with Gerard Lalor at the local butcher at Romsey when harness legend Graham Lang walked in and offered him a job.
Young Alford remembers that crack at riding, before he rightly chose to be behind them in a sulky, then being on them as a jock.
“I did ride trackwork for dad, had two races at the old Woodend track, no barriers, hillbilly races, had a first and a second, but thought this is not for me, they were crazy.”
“I left school and worked in the stables, Dad would go to the races, I’d be home there was no TV coverage, I’d listen radio, tie a sulky to barn wall, put a cushion on the shaft, sit there with reins and a whip pick a horse I was going to drive in that race and pretend I was driving it,” Alford said.
A strict father and coach taught him times, and with a stop-watch and reins in hand, young Alford could reel of laps as required, 64 seconds, 62 seconds and sprint up. It’s what he relies on today as his best asset.
“I know I can’t make bad horses win races, but I know I can make an average horse feel better than what it is. I drive them to feel, something I learned off my dad, teach them to travel. A lot of young drivers today, can’t rate them, put them to the sword, I can sense it in a race.”
“I don’t want to sound cocky, but I know I am still very competitive, I have confidence in what I am doing, if I started going out making stupid mistakes, then I’d think about giving it up, I doubt there is 9000 coming, but I’d want to go out on my terms, something like Damien (Oliver) maybe, that was like a movie.”
But being Australia’s, all-time leading driver is hardly the basis for a screenplay suggests Alford, as soberingly has concerns for the financial viability future of harness racing – “it’s probably going to end up more like a hobby in the next 10 years,” he suggests.
“Don’t get me wrong, the sport has been good to me, and I wouldn’t want to have done anything else. I might have missed on time with kids like Tim’s (16) cricket and Katie’s (14), pony club, but I love being with the horses, they can’t look after themselves. (Wife Alison at home, with her training licence, keeps them both busy when he’s not race driving.)
“It’s relentless, we don’t work them Sunday, but I sometime have to ask what day is this?”
“But I went through the good years in the sport, leaving Moonee Valley was a bad decision, the sport just lost its glamour (“we used to go up Puckle Street for a pizza and off to Baby Grand after the trots”), it’s just so hard to make a living out of it now.”
So, it’s just $65 a drive “(it hasn’t gone up in years while petrol has tripled”) - jockeys are near on $200 a ride and while both get five percent of the prizemoney, the perspective is his latest winner Nakedtruth at Geelong on Sunday earned $3990, his shared then $199.50 (before tax).
“You can’t make any money out of training, we charge a set fee, around $1400a month while jogging or $1800 including travel when racing, luck to cover feed and wages. It costs the same to feed them as the gallopers and longer to work them, but we can only charge a quarter of what those trainers can,” Alford said.
“The only way to make any money is to have a decent horse,” citing Sleepee, who they leased, the winner of $300,000 in Stakes.
Then there is the endless hours of driving and a lifestyle a touch unbalanced let’s say.
“Depending on a day or night meeting, we start at either 6am or 7am, work the horses until lunchtime, there is always maintenance, but a night meeting, you might not get home until 1am and then it’s hard to get to sleep,” he said.
“The other night at Bendigo I had time between races, ducked down to Bunnings to get salt for the pool, drive the last winner, got home, dragged the track for the next day’s work, put the salt in the pool, had dinner and got to bed after one.”
And now it’s a new Toyota HiLux doing the heavy carting. He wanted the last one to get to one million km’s but at 780,000km an inadvertent mishap where he mixed unleaded and hi-octane instead of diesel saw it come to an embarrassing and smoky end.
But that truck and his passion for audio books has been the constant across the chase to 8000.
Alford can’t say he’s much of a reader, but he’s heard hundreds of books over those long journeys, and he’s a big David Baldacci fan.
“Crime novels are my favorite. I can't stand the phone ringing when I'm listening. And I can get engrossed in a chapter and if I’m getting home and it’s getting interesting, I will sit in the car until its finished.”
Might be a decent book in Chris Alford 8000 one day.
THE BEST OF THE BEST
In a recent discussion with Adam Hamilton, Chris outlines the best horses he has driven and couldn’t split Golden Reign and Lennytheshark.
Golden Reign was his first Inter Dominion winner in 1995 when he was just 26, the field likened to the thoroughbred versions of the 1992 superstar Cox Plate edition.
"He was just so good, I think there were six horses in the race who had won a million dollars and that was back then, shows hood good it was and how good he was to win like he did."
Lennytheshark came two decades later to dominate his Inter Dominion at Gloucester Park.
"For all the big wins we shared, to win an Inter Dominion together was the ultimate," Alford told Hamilton.
The best he has seen. – “have to be Popular Alm, he had it all, star quality, could accelerate of a step, was just exciting to watch.”
“If he time trialled today, he’d go 1.47. I looked up my first winner, we were going 2.9 back then, the improvement in tracks and carts have seen the times come down. I had one the other night who went 1.58, Noopykiosk was a superstar, won the Derby, won 28 of his first 30 or so, ran 2.5s for the mile, if I worked them together now Noopy would lap him by 200m.
But when it comes to a favorite horse and favorite moment, there isn’t a moment wasted but a little bit of a quiver when he mentions Mont Denver Gold, and the 2003 Hunter Cup.
Trained by his father Barry, ailing with diabetes, but there to “almost” witness it.
“That was family, the only time I’ve shed a tear on the track, still remember dad trying to make his speech, that was very special, still now.”
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