I know a couple of blokes who just found winner after winner over the weekend, from Friday night at The Valley, Caulfield’s Zipping Classic day and even down at the iconic Jericho Cup meeting at The Bool.
Nothing new there though, they’ve never had a loser! True. And this has been going for years.
No, they don’t run a u-beaut tipping service, tweeting out their “told you so’s”, or babbling on about how many “units” etc. And no, they don’t even have a podcast.
Yet they are arguably racing’s happiest people, with what both describe as “the best job in the game.”
Meet John Trinchera (Twitter handle – 1000 Giggles- yes it suits), always bow-tied and incessantly smiling, and Warren Moore, always well hatted and handling any race day occasion, like a five-star New York Hotel concierge.
If you have been a winning owner at The Valley or Caulfield, Sandown or Mornington (plus a few big day country venues) you’d already know them. If you haven’t, you are a loser, but not in the detrimental sense of the word.
They are well worth knowing, a winner is the easy way to find that out, if not, let me introduce you a little.
John and Warren are part of racing’s broad ecosystem, unsung is a cliched way of saying they are well in tune in their passionate and endlessly enthusiastic roles they play, but it makes them more than cogs in a massive wheel, they are the real fabric of the game.
Owner’s Liaison, Customer Experience Officers, just descriptions on a job sheet.
And not just “those blokes” who organise those winning photos that will cherish a moment and end up on the pool room wall, pin a memento badge on the lapel and sign up winning owners into honorary club members, chaperone those sponsors to ensure they get bang for buck, make sure committee members are in the right place at the right time for presentations.
That’s sort of it. But not all of it.
“I suppose the main role is to recognise the role of owners in the industry and make them feel important on the day, share and celebrate their achievements,” Moore says.
“Make them feel important on the day, you could have owners in a horse meeting for the first time, it’s bringing people together, making new friends, I always shut up and listen to their stories.”
Trinchera defers to Moore as his mentor but shutting him up is a touch harder for the gregarious former chef. He talks quicker than Imperatriz can reel off the last furlong at his treasured Valley, but it’s never about him.
“It’s always about the people, no day is the same, yes I’ve met so many great people at the track but I’m always looking forward to the next one, everyone has a story to tell and share, I know I keep saying it, but it’s the best job in the game,” he says.
Both have been doing this a while – “graduates” of Racing Victoria’s former Owner’s Liaison program that disbanded in 2008, leaving them chasing and making their current roles their own, and now the envy of others, like bellhops at a Beverly Hills Hilton passing down tenure in wills.
But any would struggle to match JT and Moore. And it won’t be happening any time soon.
“It’s amazing how many people say, “I’d love your job’,” says Trinchera.
“But we love our jobs too. I look to Warren as my mentor, we’d never cut each other’s grass so to speak, we do things a little differently but it’s the same in the end and we are both so passionate about it.
A monthly catch-up for a lasagne and coffee at Melbourne’s famous Pellegrini’s is a note sharing and mate sharing experience.
No doubt similar roles are rolled out around the country, race clubs realising owners are not just the celebration of the day, but the backbone of the past as much as bigger investors of the future.
Trinchera gets a stipend as a “wage” (I’ve got a mortgage”), but you’d be embarrassed.
Moore puts it down as well “passion.” But they do get good tickets!
Their value – Priceless! (Think of a Raceday without them.)
“Whether it was the Winx four years and getting to know those wonderful people, but seeing kids come in with their parents and putting a winning owner’s pin on them and telling them to take it to school and share what it’s about it all the same to me, you’ve just to love it,” Trinchera says.
For Moore he can rattle off the Black Caviar years in the same way Trinchera talks Winx, but “there was a lady from the country who had a family broodmare who she foaled down a horse herself and then saw it win a race at Caulfield, what a journey, they are the sort of stories we come across every day. It’s quite emotional,” he says.
So how did they get here.
As mentioned, John was a chef, apprenticed at The Walnut Tree in North Melbourne, an institution as much as the Florentino’s, France-Sour’s and Flower Drums that live on. He’d make more than 50 souffles a night, in rare spare time today, in between time these days at the Darebin Council, a hot chocolate souffle is his home speciality escape.
There has been time at Ansett, which led to his foray into racing via the R M Ansett Classic at Mornington, sliding doors, when Michael Browell was there before The Valley. Time at Mirvac Hotels, managing data and customer information.
Warren is in finance and accounting manages a boutique property investment business, plays golf in the Fairways Club on a Monday and has stepped up his role in charity with the Equine Pathways – that relationship leading to Damien Oliver (a Fairways Club member) donated his first winning saddle for auction and EPA getting $35,000 for it at auction at The Call of The Card to a bid from Sydney based R M Williams.
Oh, and there was seven years working with trainer Rick Hore-Lacy, brilliant horseman and stallion maker, let’s not just say in finance if you know what I mean - (Rick did have a horse called “Bec Said No Credit”) - it was the Redoutes Choice era and Rick needed Warren.
Mind you talk of sliding doors. Warren got current MRC chairman Matt Cain into Hore-Lacy’s Dash For Cash and it was a later discussion with him and incoming CEO Alistair Robertson that landed him the role he still plays today.
And there on Sunday, Moore is at Equine Pathways headquarters at Narre Warren after running a trophy to part-owners Ray and Susie Montague after Military Mission’s Zipping Classic win - “just part of the job.”
Sunday had Trinchera at The Bool, alongside Bill Gibbins celebrating another Jericho Cup, sporting one of the six bow ties he bought for the spring carnival “Josh Rodder (MRC racing and media executive for a fancy title but more than that) got me into them.”
“Just being on a racecourse is the best part of the job,” he says and you know he means it.
“I hosted the McKenna’s (Col and Janice) last night, I’m always looking to do more at the country tracks, I think it is so important to share the successes,” he says.
Which is why, as proud Richmond fan, he runs the 3121 Club at Richmond home games – and his first horse was Redance in the Rob Slade yellow and black colors, won four of her first five (two at The Valley).
Warren’s first foray into ownership personally and out of the finance office office was to a then just a daughter of T J Smith.
“I introduced myself to Gai and said I’d never owned a horse, she invited us to her Pat and Pay Day on the Sunday and we bought a a Persian heights horse (Persian Flyer), it won a few races, a Prime TV at Tamworth with Shane Dye up, ran fourth in a Canterbury Guineas.”
At a time racing festers through charges of allegedly those bringing racing into disrepute, can I offer JT Giggles and Warren Moore as defendants as those endlessly bringing it into repute.
And long may they be found guilty of doing so.
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