QUIGLEY AND THE QUILTY
I had been showing and training cutting horses for about fifteen years and was doing a bit of work helping to retrain Thoroughbreds off the track for rehoming when a lady brought me her broodmare, an Arab, with a foal at foot. She wanted me to wean the foal and start training the mare under saddle. Because she was a knowledgeable horse person and reentering the sport after a long break, she was quite nervous about riding a young horse so asked me to ride the mare in an endurance event that was a qualifier for the Tom Quilty, a 160-kilometre race. We did well so in 2006 she encouraged me to take on Quigley, a grey Brumby who had originally been taken out of Limestone in Kosciuszko National Park around 2003, and train him alongside her horse to help her do better. Quigley was too much horse for his former owner—a green rider—so I’d helped them to find an older, more experienced horse and kept Quigley as my everyday work horse.
Quigley had a lot of ‘horse-a-nality’! He was courageous and confident so I used him to teach younger horses to lead because it bred confidence and courage in them. We went everywhere and anywhere because Quigley wasn’t afraid of anything. I could put a foal with Quigley because he wouldn’t shy, and good education like that helps to build character in a horse. We went in residential areas, into a few of the local pubs, everywhere. Even today, people will say, ‘Hey remember when you brought that horse into the pub?’
We decided to enter the Tom Quilty in 2009 at Tonimbuk and had been training for it by competing in all the qualifying races leading up to it. Some people in this or any horse sport get so focused on the breed or the competition. You see them with all this expensive tack and they forget that if you really love horses and animals, you’ll love all breeds. So there’s Quigley, this big grey boofy horse who stood out like a sore thumb. He attracted attention all right because he was a Brumby and not the prettiest horse out there. I also had a Western saddle on him when every other horse and rider was wearing the equivalent of a tux and bowtie!
Image 43: An unlikely endurance hero, Quigley the Brumby together with rider Steve Blackhurst attracted attention after Quigley’s performance in the Tom Quilty.
After finishing a 120-kilometre training run leading up to the Quilty, we were all sitting back around the campfire, having a glass of red. The horses were in their yards. It must have been about midnight when this lady, looking all sad and worried, came up to me, saying, ‘I think your horse has colic. You need to go look at him.’ So I went over there and Quigley was lying flat out in his yard, all four legs stretched out like a dog, with his legs twitching like he was dreaming. It was the funniest thing, him making neighing sounds like he was still running the race, while the lady thought he was ill! It says something about how comfortable and relaxed Quigley was because horses are really vulnerable when they’re lying down.
By the end of 2008 Quigley was a fully qualified endurance horse. To the best of my knowledge he was the only Brumby in the 2009 Tom Quilty. Thirteen countries were represented, and approximately 300 horses were entered. However, 50 were vetted out so only about 250 started. We placed 42nd in the middleweight division. There were several thousand people at the presentation day, all these celebrities like R.M. Williams’ granddaughter who was giving out the buckle to finishers, and once again Quigley stood out as a Brumby among all these Arabs. We even made the papers and magazines. The only other one who stood out was a 79-year-old guy who had placed on his Stockhorse!
Several times Quigley did well in competition and by 2010 he was the High Point distance horse in Victoria and consistently up there with the winners. After our success at the Quilty several expressions of interest were made for him but I declined. By the end of the year I’d stepped up his training and people couldn’t believe what he was doing. In 2011 another offer was made by royalty from the United Arab Emirates and this time I accepted. I thought about it and felt that letting him go would make him an ambassador of sorts, because Quigley wasn’t the norm.
I don’t know what Quigley’s doing now but I miss him. We did things together that really had nothing to do with endurance. He was my mate and we had a real connection.