Noah was an early scratching from day one of The Championships last Saturday. Thankfully.
Michael Wood and his Randwick track staff then made a quick grab for play of the day before some usual suspects stepped up on it.
You know the score and results; the oldest trainer and one of the youngest and most fearless jockeys won the Doncaster. Cool story. Legends.
Chris Waller won a Group I – that’s not news (he’s got 160 of those) but never had an Australian Derby before Riff Rocket. Debbie Kepitis bred this one, she gave her “business” a cute name “Woppitt” (think Nemo movie, hence those race colours), the family gave the horse a funky race name and their raw enthusiasm was as matched as when they kept their “granddaughter” - that’s Winx’s yearling, for $10m. Gorgeous stuff.
Peter Moody had walked the track, well the new naturally installed infield pool in the morning and shared his colloquial thoughts via social media, but thankfully was able to return to win a fourth T J Smith not that he wished he’d win it because it was named after his first boss, but because his first client Stu Ramsey was part of it. Mateship.
And of course, a Freedman won a Group I, this one Michael, the youngest of the FBI brothers, and in tandem with someone you start by calling, “His Highness” which works well at “Royal” Randwick. As you do.
All good stories to be sure, but none like the one of Doug Gorrel, from Wagga Wagga could write, if he was still doing that instead of training horses for some weird career change for a passion and a whim and a reason to give his accountant apoplexy in the process.
He may have been able to swerve a little of that angst by buying him dinner Sunday night, but the journey to that booking is a story the former journalist and sports editor who covered rugby league and local sports from Wagga to Townsville to Canberra and back couldn’t write himself. Even if he’d wished.
It includes publican Lance Gilbert and his mates at his Yenda Hotel out of Griffith alongside local Kooringal Stud at Wagga Wagga who race Asgarda, (there is a Ukrainian naming aspect we will get to soon) and Kayla Nisbet, from a rich racing family, well-travelled herself, but with the most ebullient of natural smiles and one of only three females to share time on Asgarda’s back.
“I drove the float home by myself with her in the back on Saturday night and woke up this morning thinking did that really happen,” said Gorrel.
Sure, this was a $650,000 first prizemoney payday but strangely this meant a lot more without that being in dollars.
Gorrel had never won a race in the city before, but had something over the bigger name city folks, he’d won at the home of Kelpie, that’s Ardlethan, Lockhart, Tomingley, Tullibigeal, where Shannon Noll went to school, Boorowa, where the merino wool reigns, Crookwell and of course Bong Bong where if you want picnic recognition, you need Bong Bong on the list.
“Reckon I’ve got something over Chris Waller there,” he said.
But how does the son of the Wagga Advertiser editor:” Dad only gave me a job because he knew I couldn’t get one anywhere else and I’d be better off covering sport because I was no good at playing it” - end up training big winners alongside Waller and co at Royal Randwick?
Sure, there were boys’ trips to Epsom weekends in Sydney that were invariably linked to the Rugby League grand finals back then, The Villiers trips to Sydney were annual, Takeover Target winning a Class 1 at Wagga more than a tease. There were long stints as sports editor of the Townsville Bulletin and a couple of decades at the Canberra Times, footy and racing, before tumbling into public service.
“I’d mainly covered rugby league, local sports as such but after I got out of that in Canberra when I just had a boring desk job, I thought geez I’d love to play with these horses,” Gorrel said.
“I’d always had a horse or two in work as an owner with my mum and dad, but wanted to learn how to train and that’s what I did before I bit the bullet. I was sink or swim, yesterday (Saturday) was swimming."
So, he badgered, Keith Dryden, Garry Kirkup, Ken Callaughan, Libby Snowden, Nick Oliver, Luke Pepper, some unpaid work, hanging around observing and some hard grunt as he called it. Picking brains, going to the races.
“I don’t know, I suppose it was an itch I had to scratch," Gorrel said.
“I just loved being around the horses. Even this morning (Sunday), I never thought I’d take it off, I just wanted to be down amongst the horses.
“Sure, there have been plenty of times you wonder why the hell am I doing this, it sure isn’t financial, there’s been plenty of times eating dates off the calendar but then there are days like Saturday.”
So having wife Fiona, and daughter Kia, 27, who now cares for Gorrel’s first ever winner, at Cowra, (that's Liabailityadjuster – “she was well named”) and son Owen, a mechanic at Randwick along with the 30 odd syndicate members that race Asgarda was that something special.
“My son (Owen), he’s more into car race, but he had 25 each-way, I don’t reckon he’s have had a thousand cash in his pocket.”
“I’d driven up the night before, we stayed at Craig Carmody’s at Randwick, got up early to feed her and thought well this is no good, we won’t be racing, but what a massive thrill and to have everybody there was obviously the highlight of my career.
Wagga’s most commercial stud, Kooringal, whose colours Asgarda races in kept an interest in the mare, before Gilbert put together some mates from his pub together to race her with Gorrel.
The name, well that’s Gilbert’s doing, looking for a Ukrainian link as the mother was Minsk. And Asgarda reads as Ukraine’s descendants of the Amazon warrior women, not bad for a publican from Yenda, a small farming town in the Riverina not far from Griffith.
“She always showed us something, but was very quirky, not entirely bombproof, maybe you could say pig headed-, but she has always reacted well to the girls riding her, well she’s only ever had three riders and it’s why Kayla stayed on her,” Gorrel said.
Those riders were Gorrel’s track rider and picnic racing partner Anaelle Gangotena, his apprentice Molly Burke and Nisbet.
It was virtually 12 months to the day that Asgarda won her maiden at the Gundagai Cup meeting, not long after a devastating truck accident left him questioning his faith in racing when he lost the Kooringal owned Dantain’s Magic.
“That’s what also made Saturday; win so special, they’d given me the horse to train, we’d won two of three with her (after Chris Heywood retired) and we were trying to qualify it for the Country Championships at Albury when the accident happened.
“I still recall it. It was tragic, the woman in the Landcruiser car that got rear-ended and pushed her in front of my truck, should be dead, it was horrific, amazing that we only lost one horse (there were four in the truck,)” he said.
“You know I still keep in touch with the lady, we text each other now and then, she wished me luck on Friday.”
Would make a good story Doug.
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