Julie Walsh
There are some special places for each and every one of us. Landor is one of those for me, for my family, and for a group of longterm friends who all camp together.
I’m often asked “What is special about Landor?”
This is not a question you can put in to words – but it has to do with lifelong friends, that red dirt that gets in to your veins, the smell of dust and horses, the camaraderie that is the racing at Landor, the positioning of the camps along the creek, the history of the Gascoyne, and the incredible stories of the people who have been involved with Landor.
My Dad has raced horses at Landor since the late 50’s, and won his first Landor Cup with a horse called Malang in 1964, with John Williams, the first aboriginal jockey allowed to ride in general races.
Growing up, Malang and Squirrel were two special old retirees, always given the best paddocks, and harassed to within a hair by a small child with a huge love for horses.
Dad then had a long, 21 year drought, before he again won the Cup two years in a row – and I missed both! The only two years of my life that I missed Landor, and he won the Cup.
A few friends decided we needed to train horses together, so just over 30 years ago, we started with a few old, broken down horses, all with the one criteria – they had to be nice horses, as I was then their jockey! One in particular, Hawaiian Joy, was such a lovely horse that she came third with me sitting precariously almost on her rump, with the broken breastplate allowing the saddle to slip right back down the length of the horse.
As a group of friends, Lucy Brownlie took on the training up on the Leinster stations, and not only won two Leading Trainers, but also won her very own Cup in 2014, with the horse being ridden by daughter Jessamy. This was an exceptional story on it’s own, as Lucy was originally from England, and had taken to station life as if that’s what she’d been born to do.
10 years ago, it was decided that the horses would come down to Moora to be trained. As an aside, the little horse that won the Landor Cup for Lucy back then was called About Turn. I didn’t do any good with him at Landor, but I did take him in the Blackwood Marathon one year, and that little horse has the second fastest time ever recorded in the 16 km Blackwood!
I was given this year’s big horse, Exalted Rockstar, by a wonderful horseman from Three Springs, Greg Criddle. We love getting horses from Greg, as they’re always well behaved, and he always tells you exactly what they’re like. Greg said he’s a big, kind, one paced horse. He was right.
Initially, Rockstar had huge problems with his stifles, and could barely trot. I did loads of straight line work with him, led him off another horse as often as I could, and basically thought we were just babying him along to fill in race numbers. He had about 8 to 9 weeks of work before suddenly one day – he could trot! It was a miracle! And oh – so much more comfortable.
During September, we try and get as many gallops in as we can to harden the horses up for the two days of racing, and this is where we began to suspect that the big Rockstar had more to him than his nickname – Rickety Rockstar.
There’s two days of racing at Landor, and on the Saturday, we put the big horse into the Topp Dogg race to give him a run. Much to our surprise, he ran a very strong second to an Open horse, who’d been racing hard all season. The jockey’s report was that she didn’t think he’d run the 1800 m of the Cup, but we put him in anyway to make numbers.
The jockey was Bree Nash – her Dad Matt Nash has won the Cup 6 times as a jockey, and had ridden a number of horses for my Dad Alan Blood back in the days of his youth. Much planning went into the race, but I was pretty lackadaisical, still thinking we had not chance at all of being close to a win.
As planned, Bree and Rockstar jumped well, and took an early lead – Rockstar has a lovely great long stride, and he lolloped along happily in the lead until about the 1000 m mark. At this stage, the race closed up, and three other horses all took Rockstar’s lead on – there were four racing abreast at one stage. One horse sneaked through on the inside run, and took a good lead of about 2 lengths.
We were pretty philosophical, thinking oh well, we led and second isn’t so bad.
At about the 400 m, Rockstar got his second wind, and really started to peg the leading horse back – stride by heart-stopping stride. At the 200 m there was no way he was going to win (except Bree said she knew she had him, as every time she asked, Rockstar just gave her more), but he was putting in a good run – and then he simply lengthened his stride, went to the front in the last 50 m and took the win in the most exciting race I’ve seen for a long time.
To have had a completely underrated horse put in such a tremendously strong run, against the best Cup field we’ve had for years, was so overwhelming that I left my voice on the track at Landor.
To have won my very first Landor Cup, on a horse that I’d ridden all year, that we’d got back from injury, and that the daughter of one of Dad’s favourite jockeys rode, and for a group of owners and friends that have been together for so long, and at the Landor of my childhood, was beyond words to put on paper. It was a visceral joy to be a part of.
