On the right road now and winning!

For a good while, it seemed that Mount Gambier harness racing trainer Paul Rousch’s pacer Thelongroadnowhere might just live up to his name.

But the eight-year-old, who began racing only in December, has now notched up his third win in just 15 starts, and is definitely on the road to “somewhere”.

Tonight, it’s Echuca, and often it’s Mildura, where he scored one of his victories – both more than 500 kilometres from Rousch’s base in South Australia.

“Have horse, will travel!” Rousch laughed.

“Yes, I do love a roadie, but it’s not quite as bad as it sounds. I’m based half of the time at Stawell, in Victoria, where I’ve got a property, and the other half of the time in Mount Gambier, for my work. I work four days on, four days off at the powdered milk factory at Penola,” he said.

“When COVID hit and it looked like harness racing was going to be shut down, I moved all of my horses to Stawell thinking I would turn them out, but things kept going and, in the meantime, I lost my stables at the Mount Gambier Showgrounds.

“So the horses are at Stawell at the moment, and I have another trainer Chris Blake who helps me out on the days that I’m not here. If it wasn’t for him I definitely couldn’t do what I do. I’m pretty lucky that it all worked out so well.”

But the path for Thelongroadnowhere (Artesian -Hope Williams (Vintner) has been anything but a smooth one.

“I bred him and he was the runt of the three horses we bred that year,” Rousch said.

“He never really grew, never really filled out. And as a yearling I broke three in, and he was the worst. In fact the most terrible horse I ever dealt with to try to do anything with – as soon as you caught him he would try to kick your head off.

“But he did free-leg pace, and that was the only thing he did easy. We ended up gelding him and he did become a bit of a pet then. We left him in the paddock to grow, but after about 12 months he really hadn’t seemed to do much at all. My ex-wife Raylene was always telling me he’d make it, but I didn’t really think so and I ended up giving him to a guy out the road to try as a hack.

“I got a call from him eight months later to tell me that it wasn’t going to work out – that the horse had got too big for him to handle. And when I got there to pick him up, he had grown a hand or more, and filled out into a really good-looking animal.

“I brought him back and put the gear on him the day I got him home and I couldn’t believe that he didn’t do a thing wrong. I put him in the cart and he just went around. So I worked him up and the more I worked him, the faster he got. And as it turns out he is probably the fastest horse I have ever had!”

Rousch’s family has been in harness racing since the 1920s. His great grandfather Jack Rousch gave the legendary trainer George Gath a job in his Richmond stables early in George’s career.

“There was definitely a strong family involvement, but it was Raylene who got me back into them,” he said.

“She took me to the Stawell trots one day and I thought ‘how long’s this been going on?’ I absolutely loved it. Then I owned a couple of horses with my father-in-law, before I went to the harness racing training school in 2000 to get my licence.

“It was great because I spent time working for Ross Graham and Peter and Kerryn Manning and I’d ask every trainer I came in touch with all the questions in the world. I especially remember (the late) Merv Dillon was just fantastic and learning such a lot from him.”

Rousch said he wasn’t expecting Thelongroadnowhere to reach any great heights, but is enjoying the possibilities – and planning his next road trip!

“I travel 65,000 ks a year for my work – and that’s before the horse trips. I’d probably go as far as Wagga if the right race came up,” he said.

“All my horses have ‘thelongroad’ prefix, but we chose Thelongroadnowhere because when I named him, especially him being as old as he was, that’s really how I felt. It was COVID, nothing was happening and we were going in and out of lockdowns. It definitely seemed like the right name!

“Raylene has certainly had the last say on him – she does remind me often that if it wasn’t for her this bloke wouldn’t even be racing. He’s probably not going to be a high-class horse, but he’ll win one every now and again and it’s great to have him racing.”

Click here to view today’s Echuca fields where Thelongroadnowhere is racing.

By Terry Gange for Harnesslink