Loathe to start with a cliché, but sometimes you can get blown away at the racetrack.
Imperatriz twice at The Valley already this spring, waiting to see that she can do it big time, that’s Amelia’s Jewel at Caulfield this Saturday. And of course, Gold Trip hacking up en route to The Cups at Flemington on Saturday.
If you are going to do it, Flemington is a pretty good place to shine. While it reeks of ghosts past and those well remembered, Carbine’s stall, statues of Phar Lap to greet you, Makybe Diva for a photo-op, Bart’s been on the move but is rightly still there, it’s sheer size and vista is a stage befitting new heroes.
But such horses can go as quickly as they come.
So let me take you back to Flemington on the Friday before Turnbull Day, the weather, well let’s just suggest it was a little subzero. Befittingly grey, a wind powerful enough to blow froth in your latte without assistance, but with a sense of rightful, if overdue reverence.
It is the unveiling, finally by the Victoria Racing Club, which has a habit of stoic true custodians of what matters in the game, of the (Graham) Salisbury Subzero Memorial Rose Garden.
It’s been three years since Salisbury, a Clerk Of The Course at Flemington for almost 50 years, passed away, just some two months before his mate, the universally loved 1992 Melbourne Cup winner Subzero. COVID had denied them a more defining send-off.
Until Friday. And perhaps there was no-one more relieved than Graham’s widow, Anita, who had kept the ashes of both in their family bedroom at Heathcote, until they were interned “together forever” in their rightful home, the Flemington turf.
A special Subzero Rose has been commissioned and now joins the 16,500 rose bushes that Mick Ryan looks after at Flemington, somehow teasing them to bloom before Derby week, as he has been doing for 30 years.
But this rose, bred, yes, they breed them, by Kim Cyrus - he’s done an Ian Thorpe, A Sir Cliff Richard, a Sir Donald Bradman, a Michaelangelo, but Ryan who knows a thing about flowers obviously, reckons the Subbie brilliant white with fragrant scent, will be not just much loved, like his namesake, but a top seller.
So why is this important, well there has never been a duo who have done more for racing in the community over such a period than Salisbury and Subbie.
Everyone has got a Subbie story, but there would never be one without the other. Yes, we all know he won The Cup in 92 (they had to let the internationals in a year later to upstage him), even though he was bought to win a Magic Millions (for $100,000).
Salisbury bought him for $1, vowed to make him “the people’s horse”, and leading in 17 Cup winners after him was only an entrée to the “work” he did from schools to aged care homes, from corporate events to pubs and hospices.
So not even the offer of six figures plus in cash and a brash new Mercedes from an Arab Sheikh on an invited trip to appear at a function on a stage in Dubai, yes Dubai, could you think of any other horse that popular, could shake their lifelong bond.
There have been countless of better thoroughbreds on the track, but as Richard Freedman, one time trainer of Subbie, and nominated him, the horse, for Australian Of The Year, called him our greatest thoroughbred, for the longevity of his presence in public alongside Graham.
Even today, Subbie’s Facebook page has global fans buy merchandise of all opportunities, it was only a few years back, a fan in Scotland requested and got dome hair from his tail.
There have been songs written about him, children’s books penned, numberplates, tattoos, countless pieces of artwork commissioned or just impressioned, a statue in Adelaide (but not Melbourne, and why not despite petitions), his name on races at Flemington and the Gold Coast, a strappers award, and even a Riding For The Disabled Arena, courtesy of the VRC.
He was box office Subbie, Hugh Jackman and Kylie Minogue were fans, he opened Olivia Newton John’s Cancer Clinic in Melbourne, with ONJ, supermodels, Kylie Bax has ridden him, Jennifer Hawkins with him.
He ate Melbourne socialite Lillian Franks hat and got away with it, met with then Prime Minister John Howard, who was impressed with a little trick Graham taught him and ran via Governor General of the Day (Sir William Deane) at that’s year’s Cup, basically suggesting the PM should meet this talking horse.
Many have seen it, when a host or Graham asks Subbie a question, a few banal ones with no response, until “have you got a girlfriend Subbie?” is proposed and it never got boring and always a roaring laugh or giggle when Subbie vigorously nodded yes to Salisbury’s tricked and tickling urging.
When Subbie was sick, seriously ill and needed a special product from America that was on the banned importation list, it was straight to then PM Kevin Rudd for assistance with such baffling red tape and Patty “Rice Patty” McPeak’s “Super Flex” was flown into Australia to cure some crippling arthritis with Rice Patty herself tagging along for the brilliant PR ride.
But it was the countless trips to visit kids and the elderly that was so natural for Graham and Subbie but that so endeared the pair to all who couldn’t have cared less he won a Cup or any race, but that the horse was such a gentle giant with an innate ability to read the room, any room.
At schools, kids dressed as racegoers from years gone by and made scrapbooks as part of school projects, in the care homes, eyes lit up as the mundane of days ticking slowly away were brightened by a horse, they might have remembered via a betting ticket or television, or just a friendly pet they could touch for a few minutes in some awe.
Every trip was meticulously planned in advance by Graham with the horse’s welfare coming first. The float played country and western music, his soft fluffy toy, a sheep, always in his eyeline.
There were those visits to The Emerald Hotel and numerous other pubs around the country, Crown Casino, he wasn’t a high roller, but a regular in the Palladium, not so that Mahogany room.
But if there was one place that my memory of Grahan and Subbie eternally remains is the Very Special Kids hospice in Hawthorn, a place we visited on numerous occasions as part of our charity work with Pinchapoo, and to raise funds for the centre, that does incredible work with end-of-life care for kids.
Graham was an old school man, tough as bird poo on the car roof if you like (to paraphrase H G Nelson) - but that hospice got him, yet Subbie would seemingly know exactly what to do without a hint as he walked in the doors and found those kids in beds and somehow a nuzzle here and a pat there, made a harrowing day seem so special.
Like Freya, a young girl. Graham tells the story of how Subbie – “he just knew” – went to her.
The next day she was gone, her parents wrote a letter a week later thanking Graham for the last and lasting memory that Subbie gave their daughter. He never forgot it or forgave himself for not knowing he could have taken Subbie to her funeral.
Now Graham and Subbie have gone but thankfully remain eternally together at Flemington. When you go Cup week, make a little pilgrimage down to the rose garden and say hello or thanks or – as is the modern world, scan the QR code on the plaque to remember their work.
As Graham once said – “there will be a lot of horses who do things just like him in the future, but there will never be one who does things as good as him.”
There was only one Subbie, one Graham. Racing, and the VRC, at Flemington, now has given them a fitting forever home.
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