Robbie Laing with owners of Tasuma after winning at Moe on Sunday.
“I must be a lunatic, but I reckon I am on the tip of an iceberg ready to explode."
Robbie Laing trained a winner at Moe on Sunday.
That should hardly be making news, plenty of other trainers had winners on the weekend, and there were group races everywhere, Robbie's was only a Benchmark 58 for jumps jockeys after all.
It was with a horse called Tasuma, a $20,000 online bargain buy via Bjorn Baker's stable, but it is Laing's only winner this season and was his only winner last season (and that was in May, 2022.)
Tasuma in Robbie Laing's life long colours winning at Moe
A long way removed from the 1153 career winners, $33m in prizemoney won ("where did that go"), five group 1 winners, an uncanny knack for the uncanny training performance, an encyclopedic "Rain Man" like memory for bloodlines and racing trivia, and now slowly bouncing back from a harrowing tale of bankruptcy and hefty personal loss.
And it all comes without a hint of "what about me" but more an almost juvenile enthusiasm for today and dreams of what comes tomorrow.
There may remain countless fairweather friends and Laing has long kicked into a decent breeze these past few years (remember there are two sides to any a story), but he remains one of racing's most engaging and interesting self-made and always unique characters.
Robbie Laing (left) is back in the winners circle following a harrowing period of his life.
And he is not as a cliche would say – back – because he's just never gone away or wanted to, despite an industry enforced ban.
"I've got four in work and live in a side room at mum and dad's place," said the notoriously hard to track down Laing, now 64.
The difference is the former number 1 trainer is now working off the lowest licence restricted to trainers with nine horses or less and it bothers him not one toss.
"I must be a lunatic, but I reckon I am on the tip of an iceberg ready to explode," said Laing, still rising at 2.30am to train out of Cranbourne paddocks, maintaining his old school regimes and natural horse instincts that saw his headline grabbing wins in an Australian Cup with Roman Arch and almost defying history efforts of jumpers like Sir Pentire and Mazzacano."
"There is no point being resilient or a survivor, there is no money in that and don't I know it," said Laing.
Of course, the "hiatus" has been well publicised. Much dirty laundry with it.
Bankrupted and left sidelined without the ability to have runners from late 2019 to early 2022 because of those financial – well let's just call them, discrepancies – and there may be some caveats.
The enforced lay-off allowed a lifetime overdue hip replacement, and plans to borrow a Winnebago off Gerry Ryan and travel Australia, but Covid hit and Laing was stuck at home base Carrum, "so I leased a place on the beach and spent time with daughter Evie acting as her taxi driver and chef getting her to and from Haileybury College."
Happier times: Robbie Laing after steering a horse to victory at Flemington.
Gone was not just his wife Rachel and other children, but his properties and all chattels, hence moving back in with fighting fit father Eddie, 93, still topping up water buckets, helping in the stables and tendering a veggie garden, and mother Sylvia, 89, the pair married 69 years.
"I had nowhere else to go," Laing said.
But never gone was the desire and passion for the only job he knows.
"I remember my old English teacher at school saying can't you write stories about something else other than horses, I said ‘why, that's all I am going to be with," he reflected.
"I've been at it since I was 14 but I suppose being around dad, I've always been at it. I wouldn't want to be doing anything else, never have."
Laing's drive is without a rear vision mirror. He thinks of Bart Cummings.
"When Bart was in trouble and owed plenty, he was 64, he won three Melbourne Cups after that. I feel young and raring to have another go."
It is funny, I reckon I know a lot more about horses and training them than when I was flying 20 years ago," he said.
This from the trainer who pulled off the fable like tale of Sir Pentire winning Australia's most gruelling race, the 33 fence, Warrnambool Grand Annual in 2009 off a two year break.
"You know the forgotten one is Mazzacano. He did three tendons. After he won the Crisp (2007), they wanted to put him down, the vet saying he hardly had any fibre worth talking about. I said: ‘leave it to me, he'll be right'," Laing said.
Robbie Lang's former pin-up horse Roman Arch
Two years later, off eight trials, Mazzacano won the Australian Steeple again, first-up.
That was the season Laing held three of six nomination tickets for the Fred Hoysted Award, primarily due to the jumpers (and four winners on a summer's day at Geelong), only to be pipped by Bart's 12th Melbourne Cup with Viewed.
"Mazzacano was leased by the Perrin brothers (Matthew and Scott) off Greg Mance," Laing said.
"They had plenty of horses in bigger stables but I had more winners for them, bought a horse called Sermon off the Freedman's for $20,000, set him up to win first up at Echuca over 1600m and they got their money back in a day. He won a Pakenham Cup and a Cranbourne Cup then one day Matthew came up to me and said ‘you'll read about me in the papers tomorrow", he owed me $30,000 in training fees at the time and I never saw the money."
For the record, Matthew Perrin, former CEO of surf wear giant Billabong, was convicted of fraud and forgery and sentenced to eight years jail.
Now Laing is hardly claiming to rival Scott Pape as a barefoot investment genius, hence the swirling problems that forced RV to remove his licence then require stringent financial conditions around him being relicensed under the backing of businessmen Peter Sidwell, Rick Smith and Andrew Harrison who each stumped up $33,000 to sit in trust for Laing to be trusted again. He now trains under contract with Winning Ways Racing.
"I won a race with a horse called Lake Tanganyika at Moe – I bought it for $500 from the Echuca markets before the shit hit the fan," Laing said.
"One of the of the owners set up a GoFundMe page and raised about $8500 and then did a runner with the money. The police got involved but couldn't do anything."
He will point to issues with the Bank of Queensland and his properties, prizemoney going to his ex-wife that should have been his just to air the other side of the story, but the focus is on today.
"I'm like a diabetic at a Daryl Lea shop," says Laing, focused on yearling sales where he doesn't have the chocolates to buy the horses that can get him the chocolates.
"I reckon I've always had a good eye and when I look at the horses I like and see great judges like John Foote and Paul Moroney buying them, I know they were the right ones.
Trainer Robbie Laing taking Roman Arch swimming at Carrum Beach, Port Phillip Bay
"I've gone to sales and bought one horse out of a catalogue, like Polanski for just $4000. So Si Bon was another, the only horse I bought at that sale, I've bought tried horses like Vowtinsk, he was a half brother to Vo Rogue, and (trainer) Bruce McLachlan asked me why I wanted him after three bad runs. He ended up winning a Grand National Steeple (and a maiden at Balnarring which has a punting tale in itself)."
His ability to rattle off any bloodlines, the number a horse carried, the racebook cover of the day had Richard Freedman so bamboozled one day when he pulled the name of a stallion his father stood privately under the real name of Al Jolson (it was Asa) at Epsom that he called Laing an "idiot savant".
"I've still got my goals, would love to win a Melbourne Cup and a secret ambition to win the major three year old fillies' races," Laing said.
His Derby runner-up Stars Of Carrum is on an Adelaide Cup path, Tasuma will head to a benchmark 64 somewhere, and Robbie Laing will get up at 2.30 every morning, check the rugs at 8pm each night and dream of weaving some more Laing magic to add to an already enriched tale.
Take that to the bank.
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