Small stable tasting big success

Tasmanian harness racing trainer driver Mark Yole chooses his stable team carefully – and it paid off in the best way recently when he recorded his first Group One success in Hobart.

Piloting stable star Gotta Good Reason to victory in the Ladbrokes Tasmanian Cup was Yole’s 35th win since taking out a trainer’s licence five years ago, but it was his first Group One success as either a trainer or driver and unequivocally the highlight of his career.

“I’ve always been thought of more as a driver than a trainer, but when I left Ben’s (brother Ben Yole) five years ago I went and did my own thing, and I had some success with training,” he said.

“I only have four or five at any one time, and I really focus on finding the better horse and trying to target the better races with them.

“Last year we bought just two horses, with the aim of targeting Country Cups. Our approach is always to try to work with a bit of quality, but that’s not always as easy as it sounds, as everyone knows!”

Yole, who has driven 620 winners in his career admits he gets more satisfaction from the training side.

“Being a driver is really good, but in a sense, you turn up, drive and do your job to the best of your ability and you go away again,” he said.

“With training, you put everything into the horse, you know the amount effort it takes just to get to that point of racing. It’s so challenging but so much more rewarding if you get the win.

“I absolutely love what I am doing. Ever since Ben started pony trots when we were about 10 or 11 and I followed him into the sport, I haven’t ever wanted to do anything else.”

Yole has tasted regular success with his select team in the State’s bigger races. Prior to last Saturday week, he had trained winners in the Bernie Cup, Scotsdale Cup and Devonport Cup, as well as the Yearling Sale Classic event, but none carried the Group One prestige.

Yole said he’d purchased Gotta Good Reason (For A Reason – My Janes Cullen (Christian Cullen) about two years ago from Belinda and Luke McCarthy, but it had been a long journey to the Group One success.

“I had him for the first six months or so, then he broke down after he got an infection in a hock. He had six months off, then I got him going again and sent him to a friend of mine, Mark Reggett, to try and he deserves a lot of credit for this,” he said.

“Mark trains his horses a lot harder than I do, and he found that the horse was better as a stayer, rather than a sit-sprinter, and that’s how I’d been driving him.

“Mark had some good success with him and won the Danbury Park Cup and the Golden Apple (formerly the Launceston Cup) but felt he was going to get stuck on the handicaps, so I brought him back home in January.

“It was about that time that the race programs came out for the next three months and I saw that the Tasmanian Cup was a conditioned event where he was guaranteed to draw the front row, so I decided then to set him for the race.”

But the best laid plans aren’t always straightforward – and just before the heats, Yole tested positive to COVID.

“So, while I was in lockdown, a friend (reinsman) Adrian Collins took him down for us to race at Hobart, and Mark again took him back to his place and trained him up until the heat when he ran second,” Yole said.

“Then once I was out of lockdown, I took him back for the two weeks leading up to the final. It was definitely a bit of a journey to get there, but it was just fantastic when it all worked out.”

Yole said Gotta Good Reason is in the ownership of his wife Danica, but everyone at the stables had an emotional investment in the horse.

“Murray Johnson and Michael Keating have had quite a few horses with us, and have been very loyal owners, and this fellow means a lot to all of us – we were all just rapt with his win,” Yole said.

When he’s not training or driving, Yole is an assistant starter and barrier attendant at local gallops meetings, and he said an outside income was a must for most Tasmanian industry participants.

“Especially during the winter months when our race meetings go back to one a week – I am absolutely amazed that with Tasmanian racing going so well overall, there was a proposal put to BOTRA recently to run two meetings a week throughout the year, but they didn’t support it.

“I can’t understand as the representative of owners, trainers and drivers, how year-round meetings can mean anything but a more sustainable industry. It’s pretty disappointing.”

Yole and his wife Danica have three young children, Lucas, 7, Amelia, 2, and Oliver, 1, and he said a next generation of Yoles in the sport appeared inevitable in trots.

“Lucas has a pony and is begging me to let him race in pony trots, but we’ve told him if he is still keen in a year, he can do it – but six months in and he’s still very keen!”