The “Chief” is smoking his pipe

The recent winning form of harness racing evergreen pacer Chief Safari hasn’t surprised his part-owner and trainer Noel Hill in the slightest.

“He’s really a part of the family. I can read him like a book and when he’s feeling good like he is at the moment, he’s got a motor that goes alright,” Hill, of Ross Creek, near Ballarat, said.

Nine-year-old Chief Safari (Safari-Podium Princess (Art Major) celebrated his 50th home track race start (he’s had 133 all up) on May 20 with an all-the-way victory. It was his 17th career victory—five being at Ballarat.

Eleven days later, the pacer repeated the dose down the highway at Maryborough. Chief Safari, again handled by talented Terang reinsman Jason Lee, cracked the $100,000 stakes barrier with the win.

“Jason has only driven him in four races, so they are proving to be a pretty good combination. We plan to go to Geelong next Friday. I’m trying to get him in races where he draws favorably off the front row,” Hill said.

“The horse has been so unlucky over the years—I was starting to think that either he would run out of time to show what he can do, or I might because I’m 73 now!” he laughed.

“We bred and raised him, but there’s been hiccups here and there with him jumping fences, or bolting off down the road.

“He’s certainly an unusual animal. One example is that he only rolls halfway, while most of them go all the way over. He then sort of sits up and pushes over onto the other side before leaping up and carrying on like a rodeo horse, bucking and pig rooting.”

Hill said despite having an interest in horses going back over 60 years ago, he has only held a trainer’s licence for five years.

“My family had always been in harness racing, and I bred a few, but had a lot of bad luck. We grew up in Kensington which was on the way to the old Melbourne Showgrounds track. A cousin had a horse stabled at a nearby place owned by a trainer and that got us all interested,” Hill said.

“I used to sell newspapers at the Showgrounds, such as the Sporting Globe, which used to cost four pence! But selling the papers at the Showgrounds also meant I saw some of the best horses such as Halwes, Minuteman, Truant Armagh, Gramel, Maoris Idol and others.

“There’d be 50,000 people there and bookmakers right around the track.”

Hill said he dropped out of horses for many years due to working in the meat industry which involved travelling around Australia.  But he said he was enjoying being back and over the years had received great advice and help from Mick Munro, Peter Wallace and a lot of others in the background.

Hill said he’d “had a few health hiccups along the way”, with an aneurism about 20 years ago and having heart surgery six years ago, but was now enjoying being back with the horses.

“I always wanted to buy an Art Major mare and take it to Safari. When I heard about Podium Princess being for sale, I quickly got into action,” he said

“It was a good decision because Chief Safari has been enormous – we’ve actually also got another Safari-sired horse, who is being prepared by a friend.

“But I actually look forward to taking Chief Safari eight kilometres into the Ballarat track each day to work him. It’s a good chance to catch up with some of the other older guys!

By Terry Gange for Harnesslink