Sam Kavanagh bought a couple of yearlings Sunday. Spent $195,000 for them. Oh, and he was underbidder on the top lot that day at Inglis Classic went $350,000, Hong Kong had a bit more. Yes, there always plenty of underbidder tales, right?
No headlines for Sam. So, no big deal?
Well, it was - it is. For the last few months, all Sam Kavanagh has only seemingly been buying is time.
You do that when the team treating that oesophagus cancer tells you that you are now stage 4, it’s out of your stomach, into your liver and now hunting your back.
“Have you got you affairs in order?” they asked.
So, what does Sam do?
He’s the father of Sienna (11 in a couple of weeks), who has never met her grandparents, Sam’s father, the Melbourne Cup, Cox Plate winning trainer Mark (another story we will get too), and partner of Kelly Fawcett, who had stood by him as he endured a nine-year cobalt penalty (where he part-worked in a butcher shop.)
Reality staring him in the face, practically though vehemently he looked back into that mirror.
“I was buying time in my own mind for starters, I didn’t want to go public or milk it, sure it was an interesting story, but you know me, I will always be open and honest,” he said.
So, to that extent, the facts: There was only a 10 percent chance Sam would last longer than a year, no chance of making five years. He started having conversations. Like this.
“I sat down with Kelly, I was 38, and I wanted her to be ok to remarry, I didn’t want her to be lonely forever. We need ed to make a plan if something happens to me and I started to put things in place, I was just trying to be realistic and mature about it,” he said.
“She burst into tears, I didn’t want the confusion, I only wanted to be putting things in place and give her my blessing to live, but I wanted her to know I wasn’t giving up,” Kavanagh said.
Kavanagh remembers those who said basically “pull your head in” – “we won't let anything bad happen.”
“It was a fantastic response, great clients rallied and said they’d make sure Kelly and the family wouldn’t have to worry, mentally, of course it still did at the time.”
“I knew I was sick, sleeping 16 hours a day, but I’d make the effort to listen to an audio book with Sienna. I’d get to the stables, wander about, but Kelly was magnificent.”
Kelly made photo books of Sienna and the family for Sam. She posted a large hanging picture of Sienna at the end of their bed, “when I was dark, that’s what I woke up to see.”
You sense the picture, right? Tugs for sure just contemplating it.
Quick background – diagnosed with the cancer in mid-2023. Traditional chemotherapy treatment and it stills spreads. He’s in St Vincents in good hands, but with an awful prognosis. Hence “affairs in order.”
A unique opportunity to mix groundbreaking treatments, only 40 people in the world, use Kelly’s equine immune therapy machine, and bank on Dr Rasha Cosman to keep him on track (in more ways than one).
“Don’t get me wrong, Christmas was a very scary time, in many ways,” says Kavanagh.
“I was in a bad way for sure, it was touch and go, spreading so quickly but I got onto this wonder drug, it was always chemo first and see what happens after that.”
“The family knew I was sick, we all cried a bit, but I had kids to live for, I looked bad, but never wanted to give up, what else was I going to do.”
"You go through the times like thinking you won't be there for the 21st or walk my daughter down the aisle at her wedding or see the grand-children.
"Remember the chemo is basically killing your body with poison, and yes you do get in some dark places."
“But I wanted to get better and then work out what we were going to do next.”
Next? With a diagnosis like that. The treatment saw the cancer tumours markers down from 80,000 to 28000, the immune system kicked in with same also using Kelly’s equine machines to stimulate growth.
“I still do it now, four hours a day all over the body. I couldn’t eat but I didn’t want to stop treating myself.”
" I cane remember the dates, the testing the re-blooding, the difference in 40 days from my tests was chalk and cheese, they brougt forward my blood results and my tumour had shrink from 36mm to 20mm, I was on the improve, feeling better, definitely feeling better."
But in the background and alongside you just need to mention the names Ken and Sharon Wells, you don’t just get surrogate parents, but life changers to the young Kavanaghs in the most challenging of times. Of which of course there were many present.
“They became the parents that deserted me,” says Kavanagh,” not holding back on the very public falling out with his famous father Mark and mother Isobel.
"Ken and Sharon were just clients we'd met along the way, but we lived with them when I got rubbed out. Sharon was a psychologist, and she would always be there for Sienna to have a talk, sure there were plenty of tears at times, but I can't say enough about them," he said.
“My real family is the reason why I am here,” he says.
“The problem is with them, not me, I’ve cut a very serious poison out of my life, and I’ve injected plenty of serious poison into my body to beat this cancer,” Kavanagh said.
“What I have found is the benefits of people who are great people in your life and Ken and Sharon are just that. I have offered my parents opportunities to speak with or engage with my daughter, their grandchild, without my involvement if that helps them, Sienna is their Switzerland on Messenger kids, nothing, I’ve moved on, no energy for that,” he said.
That energy is now the future. Banned for nine years, for involvement in the cobalt saga that claimed part of his father Mark’s high-profile career.
“Once I got on the improve, I said to Kelly, what are we going to do, I know nothing else.
“She has been fantastic, pushed out to all or clients and we focussed on this sale. We out it out to our clients, she did the hard work on the grounds and Sienna came as my support looking at the yearlings, it’s been a fantastic experience,” he said.
He has only 15 in work but as always, Sam Kavanagh has a youthful exuberance for the future and success. Hence attacking Classic and his illness with such a hectic and positive enthusiasm. And with Kelly doing the hard yards on the sales ground and Sienna adding the family eye.
But he thinks there may be a headline maker already in the stable in Wrathful, could be a Caulfield Cup horse he says. He is a current 72 rater so some way to travel, but he is used to that. He has always been the eternal optimist and salesman.
A phone call since that first winner as a solo trainer - Meshmaker at Morphettville back in 2012, would mostly begin with something like “I know it is 66-1 but I reckon it’s got a chance at (insert country SA track) and we should have a bet,” and then it would run as the market suggested but there was never a step backwards.
That’s always been Sam Kavanagh, plenty of dry gullies, most self-dug and admitted, and now plenty of mountains to cross, mostly off the track, but approached with that eternal optimism that he retains.
“I’ve been through a long journey, haven’t’ I? I wouldn’t have it any other way. This is all I’ve wanted to do and after what I’ve been through it’s what I am going to do.”
“Cancer is a scary thing, don’t get me wrong, but life has taught me who are true and solid friends - a lot or people don’t have that, and the lessons I have earned are invaluable.”
“It hasn’t been easy, but I can’t be prouder of the people who have stuck through the shit times and believe me there have been plenty of them, now I am only looking forward.”
PS: Sam Kavanagh and Kelly and partners secured four Classic yearlings - for a total spend of $485,000.
"I feel like I'm not trying to get any sympathy or anything, but I also want people who are going to join the stable to be aware, I don't need the stress in my life, if you aren't going to pay your bills or our going to ring me 14 times a day about the horse you own a five percent share in asking why it's not running from barrier 18, I don't need that.
"Kelly and I am just out to give you a good total service."
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