Life As I Know It (17 page)

Sometimes you might feel your own fitness is not up to scratch, so you'll squeeze in a workout, a few interval sprints up to the local oval. Lately I've been doing that in conjunction with a tabata session, a Japanese workout I picked up working with trainer Wes Clarke from the Melbourne Victory soccer team, who I met through my friend Grant Brebner when I came back from holidays before the 2015 Spring Carnival. He's put me on a regime and a different fitness program. I don't have too many more Spring Carnival years left in me and so I don't want to leave any stone unturned. It has helped me become the fittest and lightest I have ever been.

If you look at how professional sports clubs control their players' diets, you'd have to say jockeys have looked after themselves by comparison. Some have worked with dieticians, but when I was starting life as a jockey I just felt my own way through it, doing
what my brothers and sisters did without even thinking about it. That led to a vicious cycle of starving, sweating, eating. Andrew and I joke about it now, as I was a bit of a guts when I was younger. But I blame Andrew for that because he always told me before I started riding to eat as much as I could while I had the chance because that would come to a halt pretty quickly.

At one stage I considered being hypnotised to help me control my eating habits but I decided I had to use the power of the mind to change for the better. I had to want it. I found strength and motivation from Steven Arnold, one of Australia's finest jockeys and best mates with Patrick. Steven has to lead the most disciplined life to maintain his weight, which is still high by a jockey's standards. He can sit at dinner and sip on half a glass of water and watch others eat and not let it affect his mood. Patrick was also incredibly disciplined but always referred to Steven's discipline as extraordinary. My new ability to maintain close to a contestant weight definitely helps, but I still treat myself from time to time and gain weight on holidays. It's always hard coming back.

I was twenty-four when I rode Allez Wonder in the Melbourne Cup of 2009 and, having seen what it was about, I really hoped I would get another opportunity. But the reality is, with the international horses and their fly-in riders, there are fewer places for an Australian jockey. I still wanted to find horses that I could follow through on, and ride throughout their careers, even if that did not take them into the Cup. You just never know when one is going to bob up and involve you. Sometimes they come out of nowhere.

For me, it was in the new year of 2010, when young horses make their debuts and try to qualify for some of the rich two-year-old
races, like the Blue Diamond at Caulfield and the Golden Slipper at Rosehill. Owners and trainers are eyeing off the big Autumn prize money and jockeys are hoping they land a few good rides in the hope of getting a start themselves.

I'd driven up the Hume Highway to Benalla, east of Shepparton in the north of the state, to ride La Spiel. If he won, his trainer, Henry Dwyer, was going to give me the ride in the big Moonee Valley race that was looming. He ran second.

As luck would have it, Stuey Webb asked me on the day if I'd ride his unraced two-year-old filly, Yosei. I'd never seen her before. She was tiny. As he legged me up, Stuey said she'd run well, and was a pretty good chance of winning. Cantering to the barriers I was surprised at how impressive her actions were for such a small horse. She had a really relaxed, flowing action with quite a big stride.

I had a nice run and was in the box seat, going well, when she got severely checked. But just as I was feeling disappointed, Yosei picked herself up. I spotted a little gap on the fence, aimed her for it and she burst through and won by four lengths.

‘Wow! This one's got some motor,' I thought to myself. ‘I like her.'

Henry took me off La Spiel, which was disappointing, especially when he went on to win the Moonee Valley race. But at least I'd met little Yosei. It's funny how things can work out.

I also met John Pittard, a farrier and good mate of Stuey. He had bought Yosei for around $15,000 and later sold a half share to Rob and Barbara McClure, who have a stud farm at Red Hill on the Mornington Peninsula. Yosei was a cheapie and, like Dad, I love a cheapie.

Given she had ability, Yosei and I went across to Adelaide for a $100,000 two-year-old race. She ran a gallant second but when I gave her one with the whip she swished her tail. I took
note. I reckon she'd have won that day if I hadn't used the whip as much.

By then Stuey and I knew she was a real quality filly. She was accepted for the Sires Produce, a Group 2 race at Flemington. She ran third behind Shamrocker, who went on to run second in The Oaks in the Spring, so she was up to mixing it with the best of them. Every time she went out to race she improved, and she learned a bit more. It was clear she was a trier. She just needed encouragement and then she would give you her best. There was no need to stand over her and create fear. That was the wrong thing to do.

The two-year-old season was underway in Sydney.

‘Should we go up there?' Stuey asked.

‘Why not?' I said.

She ran fourth in another Group 2 event, the Reisling Stakes in Sydney, racing greenly in what was only her fourth start. But I was learning about her as well and I think we were starting to understand each other. We were aiming at the Champagne Stakes but also to enter her in the Sires Produce the week before against the male horses. Coming down the Randwick straight in the Sires I gave her a couple on the left with the whip, which balanced her up—she had a tendency to want to run to the left under pressure—and she hit top pace so athletically. She didn't have a long sprint but a sharp burst that was very effective, so you had to be patient and not push the button too soon.

I tried to stay as balanced as I could on the little filly, encouraging her by my voice and a wave of the whip. She gave everything she had and we just got home by a nose. She was a sixteen to one shot but she'd held off the favoured runners and had a Group 1 race to her name.

When I spoke to Andrew and Patrick they were all questions.

‘What were you doing?' Andrew asked.

‘What?' I said.

‘Why didn't you hit her, it was such a tight finish.'

‘Because I didn't need to,' I explained. ‘She was giving me everything. She couldn't go any faster.'

I was going on instinct, having only ridden her a few times, but that's what she'd shown me and so that's how I treated her. I only used the whip to straighten her up. All I wanted to do was keep her balanced because she was so small.

My style might not have been as flash as others but it was effective and at least I was having a go. Some jockeys can't use the whip in both hands and they won't even try. It was something I'd worked on and practised my whole life, as it can be the difference between winning and losing. I was so proud to have been confident enough to do it in a Group 1. To be made fun of by my brothers over that really got to me, and it has been a running joke between trainer Robert Smerdon, an old family friend, and me to this day—that I would choose a Group 1 race to practise using the whip in my left hand.

She ran fifth in the Champagne Stakes and it was discovered she had a virus, so her performance to be beaten by a length was gallant. She was sent out for a well-earned spell but would be back in the Spring. She'd had an excellent campaign. I was so keen on her.

On the day Yosei won the Sires Produce in April in Sydney, I was sitting in the jockeys' room with Kathy O'Hara, one of Sydney's top jockeys. She was best friends with Gabby Engelbrecht, a very young trainer—as young as us—from Warwick Farm. We got chatting. We had a lot in common. Her father Steve is also a trainer at Warwick Farm in Sydney, and Gabby grew up with horses and
wanted to be with them. All she wanted was to win the Melbourne Cup as a trainer. She also wanted to make a contribution in other areas as well, as she has a strong sense of social responsibility.

She planned to travel to Rwanda to spend time helping in an orphanage. I was really interested in what she was telling me and, as I was looking to go away for the winter, I asked her if I could join her. Most of my friends had volunteered to work with kids in Tanzania and Ethiopia and other African countries. They felt they'd done something worthwhile by doing this, and they'd loved the experience. So I was looking forward to doing the same.

A few weeks later, Gabby and I finalised our arrangements and headed off to Kigali. I was on another one of those long trips: Melbourne, Sydney, Johannesburg, Nairobi, Kigali—it took thirty hours, including the delays. Where we stayed was a ninety-minute walk to the orphanage, which was run by the Faith Victory Association, or FVA. We would walk halfway and either bus or moto the rest. It was fairly hectic, to say the least. It was set up in 2002 by Dr Immaculate Mukatete and some of her colleagues, in response to the shocking suffering of the children whose parents were slaughtered in the Rwandan Genocide in 1995.

The first time I saw the orphanage I was overwhelmed. The children, aged from two to nineteen, had no one. Some were the victims of circumstance—the horrible realities of politics and ethnic hatred. Some were unwanted. One child had been found in the mouth of a dog, having been abandoned in a nearby forest. I contemplated the fate and chance in that. Was that an example of fortune? Or misfortune? To be born into that situation, then found by a dog. And then to be retrieved from the dog.

Many of the older children we helped out were orphaned by the conflict in 1995, while the parents of most of the younger children had died of HIV/Aids. If you don't think chance plays a part in life, if you don't think hope and possibility and opportunity
are at the heart of well-being, go and visit an orphanage in Rwanda. I so admire the people who are determined not to give up on the kids. They are giving the children in their care the means to work towards building a life for themselves.

I thought of the hope my little mare Yosei had given me, how she kept me going. But that was inconsequential compared with the hope those who work so hard to keep these orphanages going have created. Apart from caring for the children and looking after their basic needs, of food and shelter, and medical care, FVA provides scholarships to orphans, job training for women, counselling for genocide survivors, domestic violence education and a range of therapies.

It made me realise that my life was not that hard. I had all the love in the world as a child but these kids hadn't, and they then had to find the strength and a reason to believe in life, to have the faith that things would work out. Some were terribly afraid—of everything. Some ran away when they saw our white skin. But together we built genuine trust. Working to attend to their needs helped build that. Showing them that people cared for each other helped build that. I think they could tell we wanted to help them, out of simple human compassion. To see them was to feel for them.

Many newly arrived orphans were malnourished. Others, while grateful for the food they were given, were stuck in a routine of milk porridge in the morning and a rice and bean dish in the evening. We put together a small collection that we called The Fruit and Vegetable Fund. Each day we would walk to the busy market, which was just a series of stalls along the dirt roads, to buy fruit and vegetables to add variety to their diet.

We read the kids stories and played games with them. We'd have dancing competitions with some of the older ones. Those times were fun. All in all, it gave me such a sense of perspective.
On the long walk home along the dirt roads after a lively day I'd feel pretty buggered. And we'd be hoping the running water was on at the place we were staying—quite often it wasn't and we'd have to wash with water from a jerry can. It was the first time I had ever had to pray for running water. Rwanda taught me not to worry about the little things. To focus on the things that really matter.

The oldest boy at the orphanage, Elias, was quite a character. He lived with the memory of atrocities and the ever-present sense of loss. His stories made me grimace and it was hard to imagine the scenes of violent hatred he had witnessed. But I could relate to his sadness. We talked a lot. I admired his spirit. His determination to build a future for himself, and for others around him. He had nothing, and he knew it.