Joe Pride rarely goes out on Saturday nights. A week of absurdly early rises and the grind of running a fifty horse operation takes its toll. He made a rare exception on Saturday night when he and wife Kylie were special guests at a post TAB Everest celebration hosted by Henry Field, the man who engineered the procurement of Think About It for the joint Newgate Farm/GPI Racing slot as far back as June. Although still trying to process the remarkable events of the day, Joe enjoyed the opportunity to relax with friends after a harrowing week. It was getting on towards 1am when his head finally hit the pillow.
Like many horse trainers Joe is a creature of habit with most Sundays little different to any other day of the week. Sunday October 15th however, was very different. Just thirteen hours earlier he’d saddled up the first and third placegetters in a $20 million dollar horse race - a training performance which instantly took him to another stratosphere. The odd few in global racing who hadn’t heard of Joe Pride before the running of The TAB Everest, sure as hell knew of him immediately after.
Sam Clipperton looked poised and perfectly balanced as he sent Think About It to the line in the TAB Everest - courtesy Steve Hart Photographics.
“I was still floating somewhere in cyberspace when I walked into the stables just before 5am,” said the fifty one year old. “Here they were in adjoining boxes, two awesome thoroughbred athletes who’d just won almost ten million between them. Private Eye’s feeder was all but empty, maybe a few flakes visible. The bottom of Think About It’s feeder had been licked shiny, and I knew he was impatient for breakfast to arrive. He eats more than any other horse in the stable, so much in fact you wonder where he puts it.
“Most horses who are gluttonous eaters seem to hold their condition. Not this bloke. He’s lean and mean all the time. I’ve stopped worrying. I just let nature take its course.”
There was nothing special about Think About it at the time of his birth at Newgate Farm, and the same applied eighteen months later when he appeared at the Inglis Premier Sale in Melbourne. Jamie Walter, founder and CEO of Proven Thoroughbreds hasn’t forgotten the circumstances leading up to his acquisition of the colt. “Joe Pride and I had both inspected him at the sale and didn’t mind him, but he just wasn’t a commanding individual,” recalled Jamie. “He was lean and backward and had a pretty plain head. On the credit side he had a great girth and strong bone. I didn’t know it at the time, but it seems Joe and I were the only people to have a look at him.
“On arriving back at Sydney Airport I noticed there was a message on my phone to ring Newgate Stud Manager Jim Carey who told me the colt hadn’t reached his reserve and was still available. I offered him $70,000, well short of the reserve and left it at that. A short time later Jim rang back to say the vendors had accepted my offer and I had myself another yearling to syndicate. Had Jim Carey been less vigilant, Proven Thoroughbreds wouldn’t have acquired this freak horse. He’s given his huge ownership group an unforgettable ride earning almost 11 million mind boggling dollars. To think our company also supplied the third place getter Private Eye is hard to get the head around. Poor old Private Eye has run two TAB Everest placings. Unbelievable stuff.”
Think About It makes it 11 from 12. Private Eye runs his second Everest placing in 12 months - courtesy Bradley Photographers.
Think About It took a long time to reach any semblance of maturity and it’s likely that some members of his ownership group were beginning to wonder if their horse would ever get to the races. He was a very late three year old when he finally appeared in a Kembla maiden as recently as fifteen months ago. With Rory Hutchings in the saddle and very unsure of himself, Think About It put a maiden field away with authority. He repeated the dose sixteen days later in a Cl 1 at Wyong which saw him progress to a BM72 at Warwick Farm on August 31st last year - his only defeat in twelve starts so far. “I’d like to be able to say he should be undefeated, but that’s not the case,” says Joe. “He got cluttered up in the field and was last of eleven turning for home. He was in the clear from the 300m and made up good ground without looking likely. No excuses really. We put him away immediately.”
Think About It resumed in January and immediately began a winning sequence the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the glory days of Winx. He won three BM races on metropolitan tracks, before opening his stakes account in the Gr 3 Liverpool City Cup beating talented horses Gravina and Bandersnatch. With bigger races now in the offing Joe pride opted for a short break before aiming his promising horse for the Brisbane Winter Carnival. The trainer used the black type Takeover Target Stakes at Gosford as a stepping stone to the stronger races in Brisbane. Although not completely at home on the central coast circuit, Think About It proved too classy for useful performers Bacchanalia and Fox Fighter.
Such was the gelding’s natural improvement that he went to Brisbane to reel off a spectacular Gr 1 double at Eagle Farm. He covered extra ground in the Kingsford Smith Cup before accounting for Converge and Rothfire. Circumstances were similar in the Stradbroke, in which he raced three wide with cover most of the way before being carted even wider on the turn. Rothfire again had to play second fiddle to the Sydneysider with the much improved Hawaii Five Oh in third place.
“Had there been no such race as The TAB Everest I would have probably trained him for longer races in the spring, but the massive prize money and an early offer from a slot holder prompted a change of thinking,” said Joe. “He had a good break after Brisbane and then we hatched our plan. Happily everything went smoothly - two barrier trials, followed by a run in the Premiere Stakes and then a fortnight to The Everest. I wasn’t concerned when Hawaii Five Oh got so close to him in the Premiere. It’s the first time he’s taken a rails run, and he’s not used to getting to the lead so early. He’s a better chaser.”
Hawaii Five Oh got very close to Think About It in the Premiere Stakes but finished in arrears in The Everest - courtesy Bradley Photographers.
Sam Clipperton’s association with Think About It now borders on legendary - nine rides for nine wins including two Gr 1’s and a TAB Everest. The pressure will build from now on, but Clipperton is a young rider of composure largely attributable to the grounding he received from former master Ron Quinton. In post race interviews he expressed surprise that things had gone so smoothly in the race. “I couldn’t believe it had worked out so perfectly,” he said. “We just slipped into a trailing position one horse off the fence, behind Overpass and Alcohol Free. When I pressed the button he slipped into racehorse mode, and I knew it would take a freakish performance to beat him. That’s taking nothing away from I Wish I Win whose run was spectacular.”
The euphoria generated by Saturday’s triumph was far removed from the sudden void into which Sam plummeted four years ago. He wasn’t long home from a demanding three year stint in Hong Kong, and was working hard to regenerate his standing among Sydney’s elite jockeys. “Looking back now it was all quite strange,” Sam recalled. “I copped a one month careless riding suspension which completely ruled me out of the entire Sydney spring carnival. You could say I dropped the bundle. I was suddenly very tired, very disillusioned and very sour on racing. Encouraged by my wife Morgan, I decided to take a complete break from the only existence I’d known since going into the stables ten years earlier. I spent almost four months pursuing my second passion of surfing. By the time I was ready to ride again, the old spark was back.”
Sam and Morgan share a special moment after the TAB Everest - courtesy Steve Hart Photographics.
For Joe Pride, Saturday’s stellar success heralds the dawn of an exciting new chapter in his training career. It’s been a remarkable journey for a man who came from a non racing background and was actually in the middle of a psychology degree at Sydney University when he suddenly decided to follow his heart. It should be said that he enjoyed a casual flutter on the horses during those University years and could be found most lunchtimes in the nearest TAB agency. With every race he watched on television, his passion for the sport intensified.
Joe made sure both horses were unscathed as they returned to scale - courtesy Steve Hart Photographics.
Joe’s the first to tell you that he was nothing short of blessed to acquire as his very first stable appointment, a position with that most gifted of trainers John Size who’s still competing with great distinction in Hong Kong. He says he was greatly influenced by some of the methods employed by Size and continues to observe similar techniques. Joe isn’t prepared to say he won’t consider expanding the size of his team in the future, but for now he’s content to put up the “house full” sign at 50 horses. Several decades ago a team of 50 was looked upon as a bigger than average stable. Tommy Smith trained no more than 100 at any one time, and Brian Mayfield-Smith rarely exceeded that number during the glory days of Nebo Lodge. Joe Pride’s team currently represent only a fraction of the equine armies housed in some of Australia’s bigger training operations.
At just 51 years of age, the unique horseman has posted over 1100 winners, more than 100 stakes races and 18 at Gr 1 level. In his heart he probably regards a win in The TAB Everest as the equivalent of ten Gr 1s. Sharing Joe’s euphoria on Saturday was his seventeen year old son Brave, who had to return to Earth briefly on Monday to sit for his HSC mathematics examination. Already an obsessive student of racing and its many vagaries, Brave is a “trainer in waiting” if ever you’ve seen one. He and his father are ably assisted behind the scenes by Kylie Pride and long time racing manager Orla Pearl.
Jamie is a familiar figure on Sydney tracks wearing his trademark pith helmet - courtesy Bradley Photographers.
And for the ever genial syndicator Jamie Walter, it’s a case of back to the drawing board to canvas interest in his current crop of recently turned two year olds. Think About It and Private Eye between them have been magnificent ambassadors for Australian racehorse syndication. They were purchased by Jamie’s Proven Thoroughbreds for a total of $132,500 and have now collectively banked just south of $20 million dollars. Other than these unique racehorses, Jamie’s trademark race day headwear is perhaps the company’s best known promotional lever. The respected syndicator took to wearing a safari style pith helmet a few years ago - a fashion trend inherited from his late father Tony. Some observers at Randwick would have noticed that Jamie’s son Tom was actually wearing his father’s beloved pith helmet in the afterglow of TAB Everest triumph. “In the overwhelming euphoria of our win, Tom saw fit to seize my hat and place it firmly on his own head,” said Jamie. “Not only did he fail to give it the same appeal that I do, he risked a very severe reprimand. Any other race and I would have snatched it straight back. Hats off to The TAB Everest.”
(Banner image - Steve Hart's "under the rail" shot as they near the line in the TAB Everest. Think About It holds off I Wish I Win (white nose roll) with stablemate Private Eye a gallant third - courtesy Steve Hart Photographics.)