‘Old firm’ back together and winning

Harness racing partnerships didn’t come any bigger in the high-flying 1980s than that of Alan Hunter and Jim O’Sullivan.

Big-spending owner Hunter and his trainer O’Sullivan won an Inter Dominion, a New Zealand Cup and countless other Group One features in Australasia headed by stars like My Lightning Blue, Quite Famous and Its Motor Power.

They always did have the golden touch, and with the ink barely dry on their first partnership in two decades, success was probably inevitable with five-year-old bay mare Christmas Babe.

“It was great to have Alan back in a horse again. He was just beside himself with excitement when Christmas Babe won at her first start for him,” O’Sullivan, now based at Heathcote, said.

And there was more than a touch of serendipity with the revival of the old partnership.

“Shannon (O’Sullivan’s daughter) drove her, and Alan’s been a great supporter of both of our kids, and the horse is a trotter, which is really how Alan and I got started in the first place,” O’Sullivan said.

Christmas Babe (The Pres – Galleons Conspiracy (Malabar Maple) won the Sandhurst Stockfeeds Trotters Handicap from Whos Countn (Anthony Butt) at Bendigo last week.

O’Sullivan and Hunter first met when the trainer began planning to shift his base from Queensland to Melbourne in around 1980.

“I’d been training for owners including Noel Simpson and we’d done well, but I’d decided to move with a team of horses to Victoria,” O’Sullivan said.

“Alan had a horse up in Brisbane that Noel Simpson had bred, but all it wanted to do was trot, which wasn’t much good up there at the time. Alan got in touch with me and asked me if I would bring the horse back with me and train it.

“The horse was Postscript, and it went on and won six as a trotter and our relationship just went on from there.

“Being from Queensland, I’d never really paid a lot of money for horses and Alan said to me he wouldn’t mind me buying him one. I asked him how much he was looking at and he told me 50 thousand. To me, that was a huge amount of money.

“It took me about three months, and Alan was hurrying me up, but I eventually came up with Hubert Campbell, who was a New Zealand horse and Alan just loved him. The horse went on and won us 16 races from his 49 starts.”

New Zealand was only emerging as a mainstream source of horses for Australian owners, but, in the wake of their Hubert Campell success, Hunter and O’Sullivan did their bit to blaze the trail.

My Lightning Blue (raced in New Zealand as Lightning Blue) was a revelation. He arrived in 1985 and after being placed at his first three starts at Moonee Valley, went on and won eight of his next 10 – then 33 out of 85 in his career.

His greatest victories were in the Inter Dominion and the New Zealand Cup. In one unforgettable week, Hunter and O’Sullivan won the Inter Dominion in New Zealand, and (Australian-bred) Quite Famous the consolation. Quite Famous won 48 races, including 22 cups, and the other stable headline, Its Motor Power, won 44.

“They were tremendous times – times you really only dream about,” O’Sullivan said.

“The Inter Dominion, the New Zealand Cup, they’re the pinnacle of it. You never think it will end, but of course, unfortunately it does. Times change and circumstances change, you get older and that’s how it was,” O’Sullivan said

“I often joke that training’s a great game. You can train for everyone from Prime Ministers to gangsters and I did! I trained a horse for Billy Snedden; the Queensland ‘Minister for Everything’ Russ Hinze had horses with me, and it turned out that (Melbourne underworld figure) Alphonse Gangitano was a silent partner in one of the horses I was training – although I didn’t know that at the time!” he laughed.

But a lot of water’s gone under the bridge since those days and you sense there’s a different vibe driving the old firm this time around.

“Back then, Alan would pay 40, 50, 60 thousand dollars for horses, and that was big money. This time around he said he’d really like to buy a good one, but the ones that we used to pay 50 thousand for, they’re paying $200 thousand for now! So I just said to Alan, let’s start small!

“Then the owner of a horse we were racing, Christmas Babe, said he wanted to sell, which I was a bit surprised about because it had won a couple and was going well. When I mentioned to Alan that Terresa and I would probably buy him, he said he wouldn’t mind a share, so that’s how it happened.

“He’s retired, he’s 87 with not a lot to do, and Terresa and I just train our few horses and love helping the kids (Shannon and Shaun) where we can. We’ve got to taste-test them a bit, because the kids won’t drive them if they’re not any good!”

Sean and Shannon are both beginning to make their own mark in the industry. Shannon is in her fourth season of driving, with 87 wins to her credit (including a personal best of 40 last season); Sean recorded his fourth win yesterday at Wedderburn and is also a race commentator at trials at Maryborough and Bendigo – a sideline Jim says has helped Sean’s driving.

“Alan’s keen to have more horses. He used to love going to Moonee Valley and going to Melton isn’t quite the same – he was a very social owner who was never happier than when he was up there at Moonee Valley with his friends and enjoying that side of it,” O’Sullivan said.

“But he’s loving being back in it now, and we’re loving having him back in a horse. I told him, when we can, we might put a tow bar on his Bentley and head to Sydney. I half think he might be thinking about it!”

By Terry Gange for Harnesslink