He’s back! Buslin goes ‘bang’ at 40/1

It’s been a tough 12 months for Victorian trainer Tony Xiriha and his capable trotter Buslin Brody (Red Samurai) – but thankfully both are back up and about and relishing a return to the harness racing winner’s circle.

Xiriha is still recovering after a shocking fall at the Bendigo trials in August last year that left him hospitalized for two months, while Buslin Brody has taken more than a year to return to full health after travel sickness during a trip to Menangle in December 2023.

In a terrific training performance, Buslin Brody scored by six metres at Shepparton at his first run in nearly six months (Jan 28), prompting a mighty salute by Tony’s son, reinsman Ben.

“The horse had won five in a row before we decided to take him to Sydney to try to win his MO, and Ben’s had a lot of people giving him a fair bit of stick, saying that we should never have taken him to up there,” Xiriha said.

“It was a bit of a relief – and to see him get that win at odds of $41 was a pretty exciting,” he said.

Xiriha said Buslin Brody had showed signs all was not well on the trip to Sydney.

“We always stay at Tarcutta on the way up and that night he didn’t eat or drink, which was a bit of a worry.  Then when we got to Menangle I put him in a paddock and there was nothing obviously wrong, but I still felt something wasn’t quite right,” he said.

“He performed poorly, then by the time we got home he was really sick. Usually with travel sickness they pull up again fairly quickly with a few days in the paddock, but that wasn’t the case with him, we had to treat him with antibiotics and we were pretty worried.

“We just go him over that and he got tetanus, so he had to have a whole lot more antibiotics, and it took ages to clear up.

“He’s had a bit to get through – the whole of last season we were managing a big foot abscess which eventually burst out, but left him with a really bad hole in the side of his hoof that we were patching up each time.”

Xiriha himself still has some health challenges ahead, with surgery booked later this month on his shoulder and heart surgery likely down the track.

“I’m getting better all the time, but there’s still a bit to go,” he said.

“In the fall I broke my collarbone and they did surgery on that, but while I was in recovery I had a pulmonary embolism from a blood clot in my leg and it damaged the aorta valve – and that was the reason I was so long in hospital.”

(A pulmonary embolism is caused by a clot from a blood vessel elsewhere in the body that travels to an artery in the lung).

With a fit and healthy Xiriha and Buslin Brody, the trainer is hoping his 10yo trotter might this time in be able to show just what he is capable of.

“He seems really good. He went two minutes at the trials a couple of weeks before his first run and I never let him go, so I thought he would go pretty close at Shepparton,” he said.

“But it’s frustrating that there just aren’t a lot of races for him at the moment – really the next suitable one is a couple of weeks away, so we’ll take him to the trials again and see how he goes from the standing starts.

“We gave him one stand trial and he got away safe, but he walked out, so we’ll give him another try and see if some of the country cups might be an option.”

by Terry Gange, for Harnesslink