You are 65, been in the same job for 50 years, just had a major hip replacement operation, can’t tie your shoelaces up, and it’s six weeks till you can even drive a car again. Let alone ride again…..stay with me on that bit.
So, what are the plans?
Some could picture you, that slightly world-weary bloke leaning against the end of the bar starting sentences with “back in my day.”
Especially if you are a jockey where work life expectancy is, well, let’s say just a tad lower than the official retirement age.
No, not if you are this jockey, Cyril Small.
Cyril might be the only jockey in the southern hemisphere with that Christian name (there are a few around Europe), and plenty still think the only horse he has have ever ridden is called Vo Rogue.
Not that Cyril minds that.
He has a painting about 2m x 1.2m on his Gold Coast hinterland home wall that took noted Queensland artist Rick Sinclair 100 hours to paint to prove that he did actually ride Vo – indeed in 22 of his 26 career wins, (this one the 1988 William Reid Stakes at The Valley - over 1200m!), but in all six of his Group I’s (and note five other races they won have since been elevated to that status?
That’s a statistical aside – Vo, Cyril and their story were always better than mere numbers and results, though it disgracefully took until 2019 for the Australian Racing Hall Of Fame to induct the horse, especially when he had been already elevated to legendary status in the popular one of fans some decades before.
Yet Team Vo would never call him “a champion”.
“Good little horse isn’t he” Vic Rail would say, though Vo was never little (about 16.3hh) and obviously better than good. (Try names like Better Loosen Up, Super Impose, Our Poetic Prince, Stylish Century and the cavalcade of that era legendary heroes that served it up to Vo mostly had their hearts broken.)
So, when he beat home Bonecrusher in the highly billed "Race Of The Century", the 1988 Australian Cup, and when "goodness gracious me" Dandy Andy (125-1), beat them both, there were no excuses.
"We still ran second mate, it's better than a slap in the belly with a wet fish", owner Jeff Perry would say in his typical ribald way. (And he always called Vic - Victor!)
Or when Victorian stewards almost outrageously took the 1990 St George Stakes off them on protest for King's High despite a near length margin, Perry would say: "as you slide down the banister of life, this is just another splinter in the arse."
Revenge came swiftly in the famous Australian Cup, some three weeks later. Not just squaring the King's High leger but listen to the replay for the heroes supposedly to be anointed before Vo was - a second time.
Dan Milecki called it and said, "we've seen a wonder horse", "he's done it when he wasn't expected to. He's the best racehorse in Australia."
He started $4 on the tote, a measure of his public popularity, when bookies had bet $12.
"The horse has said it all, there is nothing I can say," said Perry.
The Vo show had been on the road from Queensland for four years endearing themselves to fans and horse lovers.
Perhaps the Creswick Stakes on the 1987 Australian Cup undercard, when he sauntered home before that famous duel where Bill Collins got the Bonecrusher call right and Bruce McAvaney went At Talaq in that stirring finale, when Vo and Cyril went 4.9s (or figured about 30 lengths quicker.)
A year later and I can still remember Bill Collins calling the Blamey Stakes when it was the lead-up to the Australian Cup (yet that was after the Reid and then the Orr and when Vo trotted up at Flemington) - “Oh, what an exciting horse this is.”
He was, but it was the whole of the story that made that era so exciting Vo, Vic, Cyril and Jeff (and eventually Garry as in professional punter Roberts). Bert Newton was once mentioned as a part owner before "Skull" paid $180,000 for his 20 percent. Some mark-up.
Vo was the $5000 yearling called Erky because they said “Erk, what’s that” when majority owner Jeff Perry first saw him. Jeff was in “the earth moving caper” – he was – had drag lines, worked six days a week, long hours, dragged land near Doomben racecourse that became the latest Brisbane airport runway. And just as famous for letting Vo tow him around streets morning and night. He was a hands-on owner.
Vo, like the story, was not so much bred in the purple, but the beige. He was by a maiden (Ivor Prince) out of a maiden (Vow). He was always going to be Vo Rogue no matter Jeff mucking up his half-brother's name, that being the very useful Rode Rogue, (which should have been Rode Road, the name of a main drag in the Brisbane suburb of Nundah, near the racetracks.)
Vo came obviously from two same letters in both mum and dad's name, and Vow's mother was Rogue River, hence Rogue, though original 10 percent owner, Sunshine Coast car salesman John Murray wanted Axe Attack. But Vo Rogue it was.
Carlyon simplified Vo (and the story) - "he was by Runyon out of Cinderella."
Of course Vic Rail, (Victory Robert Rail actually because he was born on V-Day 1945, when World War II ended), and that was just the start of a litany of stories, Golden Gloves Boxing Champion North Queensland, apprentice, a Tommy Woodcock tutor, spray painter and panel beater, a cabbage diet comeback, trackwork in thongs, shoeless horses, a book full of yarns and tales that sadly ended when they named a horrific disease after what killed him and horses an Hendra in 1994.
And that's only a tease of one of racing's most natural of characters. It couldn't write itself.
Les Carlyon loved The Vo Show - of Vic he'd observe: "His face looks like an aerial shot of the channel country in flood." As always nails it.
"He has a mop of curly hair, crow's feet around the eyes like a middle-aged jackaroo, and a bulging midriff that he refers to as "a dropped chest" and blames entirely on the decision to give up cigarettes."
When success came: "Vic is now a confidant or premiers, knights of the realm, Toorak hostesses, as well as the hero of every battler who each morning slips a bridle over the ears f a cheap horse and tells the feed man the cheque is in the mail."
And then Cyril, born in Casino (1959) but never the riches of one. The fifth of six children to Bob and Eunice, Bob an amateur jockey (as Cyril’s wife Dr Lynlea would later write in her excellent book The Vo Rogue Show), a "horse trainer, breeder and punter”.
I recall once writing of Cyril as "an unfashionable jockey" - and without much affront, he asked if I was talking of his clothing.
Les: "And Cyril Small, the Rogue's jockey, still appears and disappears like some quiet hitman from interstate. You see him in a suit about an hour before the race; he is back in it half an hour after the race. he takes no other rides and is disinclined to rave about the Rogue or himself."
Long BV (before Vo), Cyril was riding competitively at bridle meetings in the Northern Rivers, got an apprenticeship with Stan Rayner in Casino, mixed school at Marist Brothers College, before making his racetrack debut on May 4, 1974 - that's the 50 years ago.
The horse Santow Mac, ran fifth, Cyril earned $15 in his apprentice account of which the boss in those days took 25 percent. But he’d win at his next ride, three weeks later, Wunderbar at Casino before setting records in the Northern Rivers like 55 wins in the 1975/76 season that took 25 years to break. And only by a young up and comer called Zac Purton in 2000/01.
Cyril was meant to celebrate that 50th anniversary at Beaudesert on May 4 riding for wife Dr Lynlea, (earned as - An examination of how relationships between workplace supervisors and business student interns enhance graduate employability: Participation in university internship programs), which may have been a toucher harder to get than a late in life trainer’s licence and a horse called Weekend Artist that she had bought off owner Bert Viera and a plan until that hip gave in.
“It was cactus,” said Cyril, in rehab on the Coast last week. “I never injured it, it just stopped me in my tracks, I tried to manage the pain, but it became unbearable.”
But Cyril and cactus. Nope.
“Weekend Artist and I are having a spell, but it might be back before me, but that’s the plan, I’ll be back,” he says, waiting for the doctor with the rehab plan.
“I’m not a good student, I need to get the right muscles working properly and doing the right things, so there is no point sending me home with a piece of paper.
“I’m better under supervision, that’s why am staying in (hospital) for now. But I’m walking without a crutch now,” Small says.
“I reckon I’ll be back by the end of year. When I broke my back and my neck that was about 11 months (2002), so I’ll give myself six months for a hip, what else am I going to do,” he said.
“I can’t be a truck driver and I’ve still got the passion and the drive, I love the horses, I love the people and I love the industry, I’m not saying I've got another 10 to 15 years in me, but I want to go out on my own terms, I’ve always been a jockey, always wanted to be a jockey, it’s a great lifestyle and it’s what I love.”
He won’t say he is chasing Australia’s oldest jockey, Keith Ballard, 70, who went around placeless from five rides at Mount Isa on Saturday, but he says he’s an inspiration. (Cyril serves with Keith's son Dan on the Queensland Jockey’s Association, something he has done for over 40 years, include strikes back in the late 80’s).
(Advised that Shane McGovern, aged 66, won four races at Hughenden two weeks ago.)
Keith has won a Corfield Cup (that’s in Queensland, not the suburb Caulfield, that one on the Winton to Hughenden Highway), Danny Miller rode until he was 70 in the West, Tony Erhart, mostly with his teeth out, rode into the Queensland Hall Of Fame at the same age. (Geoff Brunsdon is still riding and training at the Victorian picnics, aged 73).
And at 65 – there are still clear Cyril goals. “I wouldn’t mind going to Darwin one year, I’ve been almost everywhere else but not there.”
Small last rode at Tabulum (population 470) without place success last September. His last winner was over a year ago on the Gold Coast synthetic. That last winner - Better Than Booze - on the Coast synthetic for Maryanne Brosnan last March.
“Tabulam, been there a few times, it was a very unique track, I remember that growing up, my father won the Cup, Peter Schumacher was the jockey, he was killed in a race fall,” Small said.
“There isn’t many track I haven’t been at, but you have to hunt the rides, I’ve always travelled, Esk and Kilcoy on the old Friday circuit. I never took a ride I couldn’t take but getting them is the hard part, you’d ride work and hope to get the ride,” he said.
The Small boys Braiden (with all his serious health issues) and Daniel (with all the weight issues Cyril has that has rarely faced), have made their parents closer and engaged. Riding on the same day together at The Bool in 2002 is almost as an achievement as anything with Vo.
Which draws us together on the eternal commentary on “the next Vo”.
“Pride Of Jenni is as close as I’ve ever seen to Vo,” he said.
And enter Pride Of Jenni’s owner Tony Ottobre, Jenni being the daughter he lost through the same brain tumour as Braidon was and is facing.
“Braidon has the same tumour that killed Jenni had,” Tony said.
“It gives Lynn and I great pleasure in supporting those who get these brain tumours at times of devastation nice to know others care enough to help by putting their hands in their pockets to help out.”
As Cyril says in response: “We are so lucky to have found out almost by a race fall what we were dealing with but then this has brought us all so much closer together.”
Thats how good racing and its relationships can be.
So don’t expect the name C Small to disappear from the rider’s list. A hiatus yes, well you expect that with a hip operation. Hè's got Weekend Artist waiting one weekend later.
And no matter the tracks, wherever whenever it is for Cyril.
Of course there is Randwick (thankfully). That was Vo - George Main 1989. Naturally Flemington, Caulfield, Sandown, The Valley, but at home at Birdsville as any of them.
Cyril doesn’t expect there is the next Vo to carry him through, why would there be when there is only one Vo, but he’s always the jockey who kept Vo in his Raceview Avenue Hendra back yard when he was racing then rode him most race days.
But that's Cyril, just chasing another ride anywhere for the thrill that Vo gave him, and that is enough to know what racing is really about.
Some may be gone. Cyril will never forget or be forgotten.
PS: Vic - you couldn't fill a page with Vic's stories, only slightly hinted at here, but for his demise to be met in such tragic circumstances, September 27, 1994, he in hospital, Victory Lodge at Hendra in lockdown that would make Covid look amateur. It was scary stuff, horses and people and the industry on the brink.
Eventually Flying Fox (bats droppings) were identified as the cause of a previously unidentified virus (eventually an acute equine respiratory syndrome).
It was found that 14 horses at Vic's stables were killed as a direct consequence of the Hendra virus and as Dr Lynlea Small says in her book - "sic other horses were humanely euthanised because they carried the antibodies of the virus."
As Les rote: "Poor Vic - dead in the end of heart failure - sic).
"Poverty, Sneers, bad horses, authority, none of these could grind him down, or sull his wit. He didn't whine, when he was part of racing's army of losers. He didn't boast when Vo Rogue made him famous and Toorak hostess wanted to by him drinks."
Vic's last winner was a horse called Shampan, a Maiden Handicap at Toowoomba. It was ridden by his son Troy.
Jeff Perry and Cyril are still very close, and why wouldn't they be after a journey of a lifetime.
Cyril's continue, Jeff, has lost a leg along the way.
It was 2015 and some complications, and typical in Perry direct notifications: "Yeah that's right" when asked if they's "cut his leg off?"
"You can't look back, you can only look forward once my stub heals, I'll be fitted with a prosthetic leg. I'll be right then." Perry is quoted in Lynlea's book.
So popular was Vo that his traditional Brown, white armbands and cap were 'sold" to sponsors.
When he won the Winfield Stakes in Perth, Cyril wore the Winfield colours.
When he won the Qantas Stakes in Brisbane, Cyril wore the red and white Qantas colours.
When he won the 1989 Australian Cup Cyril wore yellow with brown braces colours.
But he as always owned by Jeff Perry, ridden by Cyril Small. And endlessly a people's champion.
