It’s easy to set the stage, so to speak.
But what the box office really needs is the performance to match. Not just a treading of the boards, but something befitting of such an occasion, if not more so.
Life, like sports, rarely go to a preferred script, but sport like life, can turn many a scene, a story, a twist, a grander finale.
It’s the rawness of it all, the nowhere to hide, the brutality and opportunity and most often the unpredictable outcome of the occasion.
Bradman going to bat in his last test, a career average of 100 required just four runs, a boundary and or a bit of nudging. Then toiling English leg-spinner Eric Hollies bowls him second ball and the number 99.94 still sits unparalleled but in the pantheon. But the farewell wasn’t to script, yet Bradman was and remains Cricket’s Goat.
Usain Bolt won eight Olympic gold medals, unbeatable in the 100m and 200m sprints across and three consecutive Olympiads. He was to bow out in mere formality anchoring the Jamaican sprinters in the 4x100m relay or said the script. Nope, there he lay, stricken on the track in London with a hamstring injury and carted off on a stretcher. Who wrote that in. He was and remains the track’s Goat.
Ok footballers like Shane Crawford said “that’s what I’m talking about” after his final appearance for the Hawks taking a Grand Final or the aptly named Glenn Lazarus led the Melbourne Storm to their first premiership coming back from 14-0 down before retiring.
There are others, but that’s team sport, like iconic Aussie cricketers Warne, McGrath and Langer all giving the crowds the chance to show respect bowing out in a Sydney test.
Racing? Of course, Makybe Diva was retired on the spot after the champion became a legend in her third Cup, but who was prepared for that. Black Caviar went off unconquered but done via a mid-week stable press conference. Winx, well yes, we all knew the 2019 Queen Elizabeth was her farewell, we all went and waved blue flags and sort of knew that 33rd straight win was coming. She was $1.06 after all (Kluger ran 2nd for future trivia quiz players).
And so, too – well they got it right didn’t they Perth Racing – The Pinnacles. An its summit, it had to be the renamed Damien Oliver Gold Rush of course.
You all know the script. Hometown hero to farewell the saddle after 35 years, a mixture of grind, pressure, agony and ecstasy, some 3186 winners, some 129 at Group I for those who merely keep statistics, but The Goat, for those who revere the sum of all those parts.
No winners since Wiggum at Flemington on Cup Day, a “losing streak” of more than 30 and a month.
There is no need for spoiler alerts now, you know how this all ended, bang, bang, bang, Gold, Gold, Gold, Ollie, Ollie Ollie, Oi, Oi Oi.
As he said amidst a champagne shower: “Dreams do come true.”
Understated yes, almost bashful that it happened, but knowing him, having worked for and with him as racing manager for seven years and alongside him in the media throughout our journeys, his greatest asset was always fierce determination – that oft quoted line – “give up never won a race’ was well remembered.
“It was death or glory at the top of the straight,” Oliver was quoted as saying after Munhamek’s win, and wasn’t it glorious.
The platitudes immediately roared and continue; the memories will remain. The script, well who could have written it that way, and believed such an ending would fit the scene?
“He was always ruthless,” said Richard Freedman whose family took on the brash young jockey as a 16-year-old apprentice on his brother Jason’s advice.
“He could always read a race, he was ruthless, cunning, shifty almost, game, never lazy.”
Mind you, Freedman reckons he and wife Sally “drew the short straw.”
“He lived with us, couldn’t do anything, couldn’t wash his clothes, couldn’t cook, absolutely hopeless.”
“Driving to Sandown one day in his first little BMW, he had one of those first mobile car phones, he’s talking to Lee and hangs up, said the call would be too expensive,” Freedman said, and may who know Oliver’s frugality wouldn’t be surprised that has followed him through life.
“Lee asked me what I thought about how as he is going - I said he was finding it hard with the different tracks and styles – but we said we’d give him another week or so.
“Next meeting it’s Moonee Valley, two rides a double and then we never looked back. He just had a gift you can’t coach,” Freedman said.
Oliver would ride 18 group I winners as an apprentice, was already three-time leading rider, but was still expected to be mucking out boxes on a Sunday.
“He hated it, he’d cop some massive sprays, but he copped them and never lost sight of the goal I’d say.”
Of all the great successes, one prize has eluded Oliver throughout his career – The Pineapple Award, inaugurated by Anthony Freedman, and handed out over a long period of time to the jockey who annually produced the worst ride of the season for the Freedman lads.
Richard Freedman continues it in Sydney, Keegan Latham apparently a multiple recent recipient but he joins the like of Ben Melham (also multiple), Mark Pegus and Noel Callows of the trophy, that does exist. It doesn’t sit anywhere in Oliver’s vast array of career memorabilia.
One key player in the Oliver story has never sort a trophy, he’s Mark Van Triet, his racing manager for the last 18 years of his career, he took the job over after me.
If you are looking for a picture association for the term “low key”, it’s Van Triet.
“A lot of people don’t even know what I look like,” he said, as almost a badge of honour, but that’s the way he and Oliver wanted it and worked it.
“It has been one hell of a journey, I’ve been privileged to have had the job and the opportunities it has given me,” he said.
“I like to think we have been good for one another, it’s sad it is coming to an end but one thing I have appreciated is the absolutely loyalty, after all these years, we might have driven each other mad at times, but we have never been tighter.”
It wasn’t that way when they started. Van Triet had been at the Racing Services Bureau and was doing form for the Freedman brothers. Oliver was coming back from a 15-month layoff from a serious spinal injury after a Moonee Valey fall. I was committed to media, and Lee Freedman set up a meeting for Van Triet to meet Oliver about the coveted job.
“I thought it was way above me, and the meeting, well he gave me nothing, very reserved. Very wary, I thought he was an arrogant shit, but I learned on the job very quickly,” he said.
“I like to think I never pissed anyone off, there is never an easy way to say no (to an offer), but it was more about trust.”
Highlights? The first Group I together with El Segundo in the 2007 Orr, Golden Slipper day that same year, four winners, Forensics in the feature, Bluetigeroo in the BMW, and of course Fiorente’s 2013 Cup for Gai.
“So many good highs, of course ups and downs, no days off, go to bed and try and switch off and then only thinking about what’s coming up.”
Well, that will be restricted now to his other clients Beau Mertens and Sam Clipperton. Not only does Oliver’s retirement leave the stable thinner but Jye McNeill recently switched back to Reece Murphy, but that’s another story.
Which is what the weekend was all about. Oliver was clearly the headline act, but even then, he had a link to the remarkable tale of Schillaci and pizza shop man Jihad Talgi winning the $1.6m Phoenix at the dogs. Then on Interdominion night the story went to script, Leap To Fame pacing to further fame and Just Believe proving the trotting believer’s right again.
And so it seems appropriate then that a 10-year-old horse called A Good Yarn won at Colac on Saturday, some 29 starts since it’s previous at Geelong in July 2020.
Racing can deliver those stories, it’s the GOAT sports.
(And a special mention to trainer David Harrison after Devine Belief set the Ollie bash alight at Ascot on Saturday – “thanks mate I’m barred up” he told Sky Racing.
That’s racing for you!
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