DAYBREAK LOVER

It is a little deflating to punch in the name Daybreak Lover into the Racing Australia search engine and all that comes up is 42YO horse and its breeding.

No race history, not even its career statistics. Google isn’t much help either.

Quite surprising really, for when they run the Stradbroke Handicap again at Eagle Farm this Saturday, it did have three years at Doomben, but it has been THE fixture of the Brisbane carnival since 1890, they will do well to find a better story than that of Daybreak Lover.

Almost a tale they won’t believe type stuff, yes there have been seven other dual winners of the Group I sprint including the legendary Rough Habit, but none that did it a year apart, and laying claim to be the only horse in Australian turf history to achieve such a feat after serving 59 mares in a stud season in-between.

But that is only the prologue!

It’s that long ago that it was Vince Curry era calling Daybreak Lover’s first in 1984, a then three-year-old under Gary Palmer. Wayne Wilson was in the chair for the remarkable second for Michael Kerr in Australian record time in 1986, his mercurial trainer Danny Duke in hospital with a serious but still mysterious stabbing wound to his stomach (which we will get to).

Yet to me it is still so vivid, a vested interested to be sure, a young journalist at The Courier-Mail, clocking at Deagon where Daybreak Lover was trained amongst a cast of scoundrels’ and scallywags that made it all the more interesting.

Duke is the knit in this yarn. An almost pre-Darren Weir like natural and perfectionist horseman, that Stanthorpe based owner John Dean described simply as “different.”

Dean would call Duke, Daniel, the trainer calling the owner Johnathon. No-one else shared first named terms with either like that. It was John and Danny.

Pictured: John Dean, Michael Kerr, and Danny Duke

There was an earned respect between the two right up until Duke’s death in 2008 of a brain tumour. “He didn’t die well,” Dean said today, “He didn’t look after himself, but we were great friends to the very end, he came from the wrong side of the tracks and you wouldn’t have expected us to become close friends, but he taught me a lot about life, and it all came through this horse.”

“When Daybreak died, Daniel was here on the farm, we gave him a great send off, it was the least we could do, what a story, reckon we had a dozen bottles of red and a carton of beer.”

Let’s work it backwards because that second Stradbroke can now become stuff of folklore, and I can play a little part in it and share some involvement.

Daybreak Lover, after a glistening juvenile season where he turned over Sydney superstar Sir Dapper in Sydney in a Todman Slipper amongst four wins, would win three of his 12 starts at three including the “Straddie” before the trainer retired suddenly.

Dean transferred the horse to Brisbane trainer Daryl Strong then to Tommy Hughes for a southern states campaign, but his only victory as a four-year-old came in the 1985 Lightning for Gavan Duffy in Brisbane before starting that stud career.

“I was never happy with the quality of mares he got, I bought nine mares myself for 11 grand to send to him, I got some black type winners from them but being a stallion resurrected this horse.

“I rang Daniel and said come and look at him, I want to put him back into work and win another Stradbroke, everyone thought we were mad, but we couldn’t believe how much stronger he’d become.”

So, the trainer and the horse were back and now come the first of a few twists.

Dean gifted Duke two shares in the valuable stallion prospect, not bad when the son of Namnan, a half-brother to Melbourne Cup placegetter and John Singleton and Larry Pickering’s top-class performer - Rising Fear, was standing for $5500 and could only enhance his value with another Group 1 win.

“Not to my knowledge at the time, Danny knocked money off to the bookies and they came after him chasing it. In the end I had to buy them back for about twenty-five grand to settle the debt,” Dean said.

But in the meantime, he had called in the former Minister of Defence Sir James Killen – (“I knew Jim when he was a jackaroo at Surat” said Dean) to “arbitrate the matter.”

“Jim liked a drink, and the punt and Daybreak was getting ready for the Lightning first-up and Daniel told him there wasn’t a horse in Australia that could beat him, that is how good he was going, Jim had a grand on him at 16-1, I had a good bet and we all got out of trouble.”

Daybreak Lover, first up as a five-year-old after serving those 59 mares, demolished them in the Lightning just as Duke knew he would but let me take you back to Deagon in those days, not the centre of Queensland racing it is today.

Almost a scrapheap of a racetrack past used by one horse trainers like Sam Strazzieri, a carpet layer by trade and still plying both today. Or “Fearless” Fred Adams, who would try and pull the wool over a wet behind the ears clockers eyes by calling every horse Gully Ghost.

Or Steptoe lookalike Jack Pollock who upset Myocard and Dandy Andy in a Derby with a filly Princess Gracious with his pants held up by a piece of rope. Money men like Geoff Burns who’d run second in a Melbourne Cup with El Laurena. Wily old-timer like Gordon Williams, who trained the likes of Mode, he’d cycle over on a wonky Malvern Star to what we called the clocking tower (an open cement box) with the reek of a man who’d inhaled some Bacardi from breakfast, most likely because he had.

Or then aspiring youngsters and horsemen like John Size and Danny Duke. You’d get a robust education and a tip at Deagon back then. Duke would eventually take over Size’s backstreet Deagon stables as his great rival headed to Sydney, stardom and Hong Kong.

Duke wasn’t much of a people person, horse’s first, media a definite distance second but clocking and spending time of a morning with him allowed a personal professional rapport and friendship.

But it had to be code calling, I’d have to ring twice hang up and ring back, to get an answer and chat in a no mobile phone era.

I could see Daybreak Lover was flying, it’s strapper Maria Pennisi, a vital part of the story could also. Duke was adamant he’d win the Lightning and the Stradbroke. Not even a second thought or hint of doubt.

We all cashed up in the Lightning, but as we all have a favorite punting yarn, here is mine and it’s all Daybreak Lover. Sharing a Paddington house in the shadows of Lang Park (no Suncorp Stadium even dreamt of back then), with then bookie’s clerk Michael Sullivan, soon to become boss of Sportingbet and Bluebet (we had run the SP Book at Brisbane Boy’s Grammar School by the way), I suggested we pool our resources, bet on the Lightning and take the pre-post odds for the Stradbroke.

Well, you know the result, it got better when we took the field and the field in the Straddie trifecta and I can still recall the numbers: 8-20-24 for another five-figure result, of course that naturally evaporated quickly against a wall of you know what but voraciously so.

Duke was such a meticulous trainer that he’d had Daybreak Lover reshod on the morning of the race, concerned his action wasn’t as fluent as it could have been after a final early week gallop.

But Duke wasn’t there to claim his greatest training performance, not that he was one to rush or guffaw at a microphone or be showered by backslappers, fair-weather friends or otherwise.

“I still remember his mate “Prawn” ringing me up that week to say he’d stabbed himself in the guts, but there was more to it than that,” Dean not surprisingly said.

I think the running line was he slipped on a butter knife in the kitchen, but with no Sky Channel or even free-to-air coverage, Duke was forced to listen to the race on radio, one I bought from a Tandy shop (remember them) and took to his hospital with a Sunday Mail photographer for a staged pic that was front page the next day and a scoop for a young racing journo.

Daybreak Lover would run twice again, his career ending with a brave and unlucky second to lightweight Between Ourselves chasing the then elusive Stradbroke-Doomben 10,000 double.

He’d sire a Magic Millions winner in Sunblazer, get black type performers like Morning Lover, Fast Talker and Tis’ Love, but was perhaps as well remembered as a stallion for providing racehorses names as Foreplay was. Two horses named Morning Glory were not by him.

“But he was the most intelligent and independent horse. I remember one day he was serving a mare and (wife) Jan was holding the mare when I slipped over on the ground, Daybreak tiptoed over me, did his job and tiptoed back over me again to look after me, not many stallions would do that,” Dean said.

Dean would continue to stand stallions like Tsarbaby, Excites, Freeze and most recently Benfica, before selling out the Allora property and retiring last year to Highfields on the Downs.

But never retiring thoughts and memories of the remarkable Daybreak Lover, and Daniel Duke.