Racing rarely runs to the preferred script.
The Caulfield members would have been on free drinks if it did on Saturday, shouted by the club via Ollie landing a winner on his final day riding on Melbourne tracks.
Saturday’s new “Thousand” day might have been underpinned by its revamped Group I features, but it was all meant to about Damien Oliver, The GOAT, hero posters in The Herald-Sun, front page pointers and scan for two free tickets to farewell him at the track.
Sure there was a touching well managed presentation before the last, but you could tell Ollie was over it before it was well over.
But ever so politely he had acknowledged every well wish, shook every sincere handshake and accommodated every requested selfie across the day, though I’m not sure whether he was in more -or that retired jockey Greg Hall took more – The G brashly lining up in the face of any participant that came across his path on the day for a snap (including Ollie).
After it was all done, a gassed Oliver sat alone at secluded Locker #6 in the Caulfield jockey’s room – only Craig Newitt and Mark Zahra were in his zone - sipping a deserved champagne, contemplating an appearance on The Front Bar this week and looking forward to going “home” to Perth and finally ending his remarkable career next month.
He leaves racing in good hands and without peer, and perhaps fitting it was James McDonald taking the Group I Thousand Guineas, his 86th, still 43 shy of The Goat, but obviously the one most likely to eventually take the Crown.
Grahame Begg’s frustrating to say the least spring, turned for the better when Magic Time won the other GI Sir Rupert Clarke, as jockey Mick Dee made it his day that others had wanted for Ollie.
I am standing with Froggie Newitt after the last, he won that too on Rose Quartz for Begg, when he queries “is that three or four for the Dee today”. Thankfully Dee’s girlfriend Mikeala Lawrence is within earshot and promptly says “that’s four” then reveals they are off to Crown Casino for the night but hopefully they upgraded on the Food Court where “they do a good pizza” she said that was part of the original plan.
If Caulfield didn’t get the story they wanted on Saturday, racing, as it so often does, wrote another one for it.
So, let’s catch up on Gemma Rieley and her only horse in current work, Claidheamh Mòr, let’s just go with Gibson or “Claymore” for ease as we tell it, taking the inaugural $500,000 Country Cup Final, you probably saw the scenes post-race, strapper Brooke Mitchell, assorted pandemonium, and not surprisingly there were plenty more to come.
A speechless Riley, which is saying something, then the raw joyous emotion of sharing it with 109 other part-owners, but mostly with her grandmother, Nan Jude, terminally ill with cancer, who’d been driven to Caulfield by Rielly’s twin brother Thomas, from Ulladulla on the New South Wales South coast, about nine hours or so on the Friday night before.
Jude lent her name to Gemma’s first horse and winner as a trainer – La Bella Jude back in 2016, after an aspirational riding career – there were eight winners, Whisky Jack on debut at Northam for Simon Miller a decade ago, but a raft injuries, broken neck, pelvis and weight saw her pivot to stable life.
Jude, invited by the MRC to the committee room on Saturday, is Rielly’s inspiration. “Nan watches all my horse’s race, she’d love to be here more often, but when she is at home, she has teddies on the lounge and she puts a jockey’s hat on them,” says Reilly.
You can’t make that up, can you? We are talking Sunday, “I’m still in bed, it’s an Uber Eats day,” she says and without revealing the time, the sun has gone over the yardarm, as you’d expect after a night celebrating at her local, the famous Espy in St Kilda.
“I was home by midnight, just a good night, a bit of a dance” she offers as if in defence that is not required.
There had been dancing all afternoon, rollicking tales told in the Thomas North Room, the winner’s bar a Caulfield, Gemma about Nan’s ability to read a race even though she knows little about horses like telling her: “the only way that jockey could have ridden that horse worse was turn it round and go back the other way.”
Even walking out of Caulfield you couldn’t escape Rielly and The Cup and partners, doing Facetime interviews and sharing love and raw racing passion waiting in the Uber queue.
The Country Cup was sponsored by Metcap Finance, of which committeeman John Kanga and his wife Stephanie are principals and promised soon to be new owners in the Rielly stable, such is the fun that they were swept up in on the day.
But Kanga, who is mentor and financial advisor to many a young racing participant, try Jye McNiell and Liam Riordan et al may need to address a former share owner in Claidheamh Mor, who sold his five percent online just in June, suggesting to Rielly, the horse may have reached its limit after five wins and there wasn’t much more to hope for.
So, the $380 entry fee is paid for the Inglis Digital entry fee and Mark Blum pays $1750 to win the auction. It gets worse for the former owner and if there is a better quick turnaround for Blum, I’m unaware of it.
Just 10 minutes after the sale concluded Claidheamh Mor won at Sandown and won $30,250 in prizemoney or just over $1500 to Blum.
Since then, he’s won $420,900, victories at The Valley, a Coleraine Cup, third in a Moe Cup and Saturday’s massive pay Day, Blum’s share $21,045.
But a load of other syndicates have been along for the ride since Rielly got him as a failed pinhook, on the advice of respected bloodstock agent Lenny Russo after it didn’t meet it’s $70,000 reserve at the Adelaide Magic Millions.
“I think we got him for $55,000, maybe $60,000 and he sold out in two weeks, it was phenomenal, a Dundeel out of a Redoute’s Choice mare and no groups with names like OffthebutRacing, the Mad Max Syndicate, Quick Fiddy, Ervbefel Racing, the Halloween Syndicate.The Next Gen syndicate has five percent, brought in oodles of first timers to fill it.
It wasn’t love at first sight for Rielly and the horse she called Gibson (he is out of Mel’s Pocket). The seemingly odd Scottish Gaelic spelt race name came from an owner’s vote, the Claidheamh Mor, the two handed sword Mel Gibson carried in his role in the movie Braveheart.
The colors, perhaps equally as mysterious, “gunmetal grey with teal seems and checked sash” – well they date back to Rielly’s apprentice days in Western Australia, she first started with Lindsay Smith learning to ride on old Group I star Plastered, when under the WA system, apprentices trialled in regular colors, back then she had some “Aquanita” blue, but thought prudent to change that and turned to teal.
Days like Saturday are what keeps Rielly’s much tested faith in racing alive. Enjoying city life, it’s 56 minutes from St Kilda to her Pakenham training base at a normal 2.30am transit but left it to track-rider Trent to do morning duties on Saturday.
“It’s a bit cliched, but I just love the horses, I don’t know how many times I’ve nearly quit, but I’ve learned to restructure the business to make it enjoyable and practical.
“I don’t have a big syndicator or a big client, I don’t want a stable of box fillers, but I’m proud of my results and my strike rate, I might be less on the tools now but more on the business, and it has preserved my career,” she said.
Morphing into television presentation on the industry owned racing.com, has been another door opened and insight into a future for the 36-year-old but today she is off to New Zealand for the Ready To Run sales, armed with a rejuvenated enthusiasm and even better buying bank.
As for Gibson, three weeks off, the 2024 campaign already more than pencilled in, The Valley 1600m end of January then chase the Colac Cup, Launceston Cup, Adelaide Cup, Warrnambool Cup and tying up the Victorian Country Horse Of The Year title.
Probably got that done already. In the meantime, we might need to talk to Gemma about horse names, recent runners apart from “Gibson”: Labhuku, Temujin, Ricco D’oro, Consensio.
Might have to go back to “Jude”, no doubt she’d love to put a cap on a teddy on the couch for Gemma’s Jude!
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