Enjoying success while the sun shines

They say rain is an omen of good luck, so when one of the wettest winters on record pushed South Australian harness racing horseman Andrew Clarke off his property three months ago it turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

Clarke is enjoying his best season in recent years from his temporary base in Mildura, 500 kilometres from his home at Mount Gambier.

“My country is up to a foot underwater; my track was flooded, and I have about 100 kilometres of roads through the pine plantations that I pay a licence fee to use, that are all too wet as well,” he said.

“I’ve had one other winter since I have been there that came close to this year, but I didn’t have to relocate that time – and so I thought the best things was to bring my team up here to campaign until things dry out at home.”

The net result has been half a dozen winners since Clarke based himself and his team of 10 at the stables of Red Cliffs trainer Kate Attard in early July.

“The options were to shift up to Adelaide or come up to Mildura, and with the better stakemoney in Victoria I was lucky enough that I had a friend Sharon Pettit, who had horses with me with her late husband, and she talked to Kate about letting me set up here for a while,” he said.

“I’ve retired and I’m basically trying to live off a few horses, so I’ve got to keep them fit and I’ve got to keep them racing.”

But as well as the financial reasons, Clarke said working his horses was equally about his own wellbeing.

“I had a stroke almost two years ago – it was the horses that got me back up and about.  It would have been easy to give up at that point, but I had a full team in work.  There was a couple who fed them while I was down and out, but I just decided that I had to get moving and get back at it,” he said.

“I didn’t tell the Occupational Therapist or anything, but I was back out with the horses a week or so later.  I was one of the lucky ones with the stroke, and I really only lost control of my speech but everything else slowed down.  My cardiologist calls me a ‘pigheaded prick’, and I think he’s probably right!

“Getting out with the horses, especially back home working in the pine plantations, is good for their head and it’s good for mine.”

There’s no doubt the Clarke team is enjoying the change of scenery though.  So far, he’s had winners during his northern foray with Luv Me Or Hate Me (Life Sign); Aintsobad (Metropolitan); Abstractor (Julius Caesar) and I Runformum (Metropolitan).

“I’ve always had a handy horse or two, but just at the moment I am very happy with the ordinary team I have got and how well they are performing,” Clarke said.

“Aintsobad has won two of his past three and I bred him, broke him, everything, so it’s satisfying when they put it all together.

“I raced his mother, Dulcie’s Dilemma (Jet Laag) and they gave me the mare when she finished racing. She’s produced a Southern Cross winner, Urbadboy (Restrepo) and this bloke, and I have a two-year-old from her as well that I think is pretty smart.”

And while Clarke is enjoying the good times in Mildura this winter, it’s definitely not his first, or possibly even his most memorable campaign in the Sunraysia.

“The best horse I ever had was a horse called Already and I brought him up to the Mildura Cup in 1976.  He was a cripple, but he was a bloody good racehorse, and he was 66/1 to win the heat and final of the Cup,” Clarke recalled.

“Well, he did – and I won $38,000 and that was a lot of money back then for a young bloke in the game with two young kids and no money!  There were other big punters in town that won a lot more, though – it was an unforgettable experience.”

by Terry Gange, for Harnesslink