Chapter 20

Black honeycomb

Forty-eight hours later, on 1 March, exactly a year to the day we started this journey, Robbie Griffiths is back at Oaklands for this year’s Premier Yearling Sale.

Alarmingly, when I ring to wish him well and check on Rosie, he is not at all confident about her future. He thinks her knee has become more inflamed in the past couple of weeks and wants to have it X-rayed again.

‘I think it looks worse, I really do, but maybe I’m just being paranoid,’ he says as he drives into the sales complex.

‘Maybe I’ve been looking at it so much I’m seeing something that’s not there, maybe I’m worrying too much about it, because no one else seems to be. It’s certainly not bothering the filly at all, and the jockeys keep saying there’s nothing wrong with her action, which means she’s not feeling it, and maybe it’s just going to be like this for the rest of her life. But I just want to be sure it hasn’t degenerated since when we last had it scanned.

‘If she had been sold here last year as a yearling, the vet would have advised me not to buy her, the knee would have been seen as too high risk. And I think it’s come to a point now where we need to know.

‘She’s out in the paddock again and that will be good for her. But if the knee has got worse, I think we need to discuss what it means, because if it’s not going to hold up through another preparation, which will cost you guys another $10,000 or so, then we might have to make a decision before that.’

For a second or two, the only thing rattling round in my head is that crazy robot in the old TV series Lost In Space, who would say ‘Danger, Will Robinson, danger!’ at precisely this kind of moment. I force myself to ask my trainer the obvious question. Should I have had Rosie’s legs X-rayed when she was a yearling, even though she wasn’t heading to the sales?

‘Well, in retrospect, it would have been good to have done that. But to be honest, you had no reason to suspect there was a problem, and home-breds like Rosie usually go straight to the trainers to be broken in and start work, just like Rosie has done. I didn’t think of it either,’ Robbie admits. ‘Until the knee started to change.’

I ask again if Danny Adam had felt anything wrong with that leg in particular when he rode her in work a few days earlier.

‘No, he didn’t and to tell you the truth, I was surprised he didn’t push her out that last furlong, because I didn’t think there was anything wrong with her action at all. And this is what I mean, maybe I’m just paranoid, maybe the knee hasn’t got any worse and it’s just something we have to live with. But I just want to have another look at it to be sure.’

As Robbie heads into the sales auditorium, he says he has his eye on a couple of yearlings going through the ring today. He actually buys five that first day—including another Elvstroem and yes, another God’s Own—and at the end of the four-day auction, has spent more than $700,000 for the second year in a row. This time, he is the third biggest buyer and sounds tired yet buoyant off the back of the final session, no doubt already starting to plan selling the horses he has just signed for.

This, it seems, is just part of a thoroughbred trainer’s lot in 2010. Being able to condition horses well enough to compete at racing’s top level is one thing, choosing potential young athletes another. But perhaps a trainer’s greatest skill of all is convincing others, usually people with very little to do with horses, to have enough faith in the youngsters he has chosen to cover the cost of their initial outlay.

As usual, Robbie is also circumspect about the one he thinks might have got away, this time a Bel Esprit colt who failed the vet’s inspection.

Which brings us back to Rosie.

By the time we actually discuss our King of Roses filly again, a week has passed, the X-ray result is in and Robbie, true to form, doesn’t sugar-coat the prognosis.

‘I’ve spoken to the vets and they are absolutely adamant it’s a no go,’ he tells me gently, early one morning in the second week of March. Never a loud speaker, I notice he is talking even more quietly than usual. Or maybe I’m just having trouble hearing him this morning.

‘The bone itself has degenerated since we last X-rayed it. It is very dark in colour on the scan, with black channels running through it like honeycomb. They’re really surprised she’s not lame, and are adamant that if I push her, it could lead to terrible damage. It’s weird because I’ve never seen anything like this before and the vets say they’ve only seen it in foals born prematurely.

‘But this filly wasn’t a premmie, so it’s hard to be sure how it’s come about. The vet is more confident she was born with it, because there’s no sign at all of her injuring it in a paddock accident. I just wish I’d known about this before, because we would never have gone ahead with this second preparation. But this has been a learning curve for me too—and to the eye, Rosie’s never had a bad action.

‘In all that time we’ve been working with her, only one jockey has said “maybe she was a little bit scratchy”, and that was right at the end and I think we were putting words in his mouth.

‘But the vets say if I take her below 12 (seconds) in her work, if she gets into top race speed, that will do some damage. The bone might actually snap.’

Robbie pauses for breath, no doubt wondering how I am taking this terrible news. I can only listen.

‘Obviously, I don’t want to waste your and her other owners’ money and I don’t want to put Rosie under any pressure, the risk is too high for her.

‘The real shame of it is we still don’t know what sort of motor she’s got. She only went to 12.3 (seconds) in her work and she did it all on the bit, with her ears pricked. But if she’d gone to a high speed, she could have snapped her knee, or really fractured it.

‘She’s such a nice filly, a real little professional,’ the trainer reflects. ‘I’ve got to give her 10 out of 10 for attitude, and she’s always so positive in her work, good as gold. It was just the knee started to swell and the extra fluid was building up again …’

As Robbie runs through Rosie’s symptoms once more, as if to convince himself of what’s just happened to the little home-bred he agreed to take under his wing 12 months ago, the full weight of his words finally hits me.

Rosie, also known as Quiet Storm—the little bay filly I had all the hope in the world for—has just been officially retired. This particular tale of the turf has ended. I want to cry, but disbelief holds back my tears.

I try to think of a way back for her, plot a route for her miraculous recovery. Surely Rosie’s racing career can’t end this way, before we’ve ever had a chance to see her run, to test her speed and take a measure of her mettle?

How can such a dream be over, before it really began?

Chillingly, as I sit at my desk trying to grapple with this news, I realise that—368 days after I met Robbie Griffiths—Rosie probably owes him her life.

But what will our lovely filly do, now she’s no longer a racehorse? She can come home to the farm, there’s no doubt about that. But life in a paddock with a bunch of older mares is hardly enough to keep her occupied for the next 20 years, maybe more. Somehow that doesn’t seem like life enough for such an energetic, intelligent soul.

I focus on the ramifications of one bad knee, the ripple effect it will have on so many lives, and wonder how this news will affect my co-owners—Rosie’s extended family, the group that was going to be her cheer squad. They are all aware her knee has been worrying Robbie, but the end of this story is so sudden, so final.

Robbie assures me that he will send out an audio message by email, to give them a chance to consider what has happened before I ring them. Days later, he still hasn’t done so, and I’m not surprised. Finding the right words in a situation like this is hard, even for a professional horseman well versed in racing drama. Losing a young horse with some potential from his team must be upsetting.

As I try to fashion exactly what I will say to my friends who bought into this adventure nearly a year ago, trusting in me as much as in Rosie and Robbie, I realise how much I have learned, with their support.

Much of it has to do with a different sense of time and space, perhaps a new patience I’ve developed, a belated acceptance that not everything in life can be made to go according to a plan or deadline, no matter how much wishing and hoping and praying we do.

Horses, I have come to understand, are a dream unto themselves. Like life itself.

The most obvious practical lesson I have learned raising Rosie is also deceptively simple: the biggest potential problem is often one you simply can’t see, no matter how hard you look, and have no reason to imagine is there. So whatever can be done to rule out problems, big and small, should be done, and with young horses, this might mean full X-rays. Head to toe.

‘Body imaging,’ Deane Lester tells me, looking to the future. ‘It’s what I do now with mine, even though it’s quite expensive. But at least it tells you what is and isn’t right with your horse.’

Body imaging? Is he kidding? It’s something I have never heard anyone even mention before, let alone recommend. Many horsemen and women still argue about the validity of having their yearlings’ legs X-rayed for inspection before sales. Even if Rosie’s suspect knee had shown up when she was a baby, I know my most trusted advisers would still have encouraged me to press on, because it could have gone the other way, the positive way. It might have repaired itself, knitted back, grown stronger.

Like children, young horses can and often do overcome alarming infirmities. But I vow that X-rays will be ordered and looked at long and hard, next time around. Happy as I am to be persuaded to hope, I will appreciate knowing exactly what to hope for. If need be.

For the time being, we need to be certain that Rosie can’t pass on this peculiar degenerative bone condition to any foals she might have in the future. The vets seem to be saying the condition is just an unkind flaw of nature, more spectacular bad luck than anything we need to—or can—guard against. But if there is any chance at all the condition will be passed on, Rosie can’t become a broodmare.

‘It’s just one of those things,’ Leigh, the vet, tells me a couple of weeks after Rosie’s retirement. ‘It’s not behaving like any genetic deformity I’ve seen before, and it has degenerated so quickly under pressure, I suspect it’s more like an injury than a genetic condition.’

As hard as this is to hear, it is oddly reassuring, because I know of no history of anything like this in Rosie’s immediate family. One half-sister, who I sold as a yearling two years ago, has just made her racing debut on the Sunshine Coast and there is certainly nothing wrong with her older half-sister Swirl’s legs.

Hopefully, then, the knee of black honeycomb is something only Rosie has to deal with as she gets older and grows into a new role—perhaps as a broodmare, perhaps as an equestrian mount.

Her owners are dismayed it has come to this, but willing to let me decide the course her future will take.

The hardest thing for us all to bear is that she will never be what she was bred to be: a racehorse. And she can never be the dux of Robbie’s Class of 2009.

Meanwhile, her classmates push on towards graduation. Although Marvellous Miss was the first to have made it through school and a couple of races, the highly touted Elvstroem filly—now known as Miss Elvee—has just made her race debut in Melbourne, rearing right at the start of the race and probably costing herself victory, one Saturday afternoon. Outside the Class of 2009, the more demure filly that I bought for one of Robbie’s private clients last year, bidding all the way up to $150,000, has also graduated, coming second at her debut in early April. Her name is Wildcat Strike, fitting enough for a daughter of Hold That Tiger!

On the wider stage, this year’s Golden Slipper was won by a brilliant, tough filly from Melbourne called Crystal Lily, while the two unbeaten belles of the turf—Military Rose and Chance Bye—were unplaced in the race known as the ‘dash for cash’.

At the time of writing, the colt nicknamed Rock Star—first son of Melbourne Cup queen Makybe Diva, the youngster who cost $1.5 million at auction a year ago—is still being brought along slowly, carefully. Now officially named Rockstardom, whispers have him working well at Flemington, impressing even those outside the stable with the times he is running in his track work and, yes, his good looks. He is still a good sort, spies assure us, bigger and more handsome now.

He needs to be, because he is no longer his famous mother’s only child in the spotlight. Makybe Diva’s second yearling, a lovely chestnut filly, has also been sold under the old fig tree at Sydney’s Easter Yearling sale for $1.2 million. A little less expensive than her half-brother, she was nonetheless the more impressive individual, the good judges say. Only time will tell how this young family fares on the track.

The next few months will be intriguing too, for Australia’s thoroughbred breeders generally. With yearling sale prices down 30 per cent, stallion fees are expected to drop dramatically, an issue that’s even being noted in the broader racing media.

As respected racing commentator Ken Callender stated in the Daily Telegraph on 12 April 2010, ‘You have to wonder about the yearling sales merry-go-round when 365 yearlings were sold in Sydney last week for a total of $80 million at an average price of $220,000—and a $15,000 yearling (called) Shoot Out wins the AJC Australian Derby … There have been plenty of $1 million-plus yearlings sold in Australia in recent years, but you know how many have won an AJC Derby or a Golden Slipper? None … The last seven-figure yearling to win a classic was Don Eduardo, who was sold at Karaka in New Zealand ten years ago and then won the 2002 AJC Derby.’

Cold hard facts aside, there will always be people keen to buy into this world of hope and heartache. Robbie Griffiths’ annual yearling parade at his Cranbourne stables has also come and gone, apparently more successful than last year; Deane Lester has a theory that the popularity of Robbie’s Class of 2010 could have something to do with the fact that there are more colts in the mix, at least two who look as tough as teak.

And with winter not far away again, News Just In has come back into work at the stable. Harry is our main hope now, at least on the track, and I’ve invited Rosie’s owners to join his ownership circle, if they want to keep their racing adventure alive. David and Fran have taken up the offer, excited by the idea of actually having a horse up and running one day soon.

So the circle is complete.

Almost.

Several hundred miles away at Picayune Farm, the poplars have turned gold once more when my little band of old mares welcome Rosie home.

She looks good, young and strong, as she canters across the front paddock—head tucked onto her chest like the racehorse she was training to become.

Her whole life is ahead of her still, I think, as she lengthens stride under the trees—my fine, proud filly bred to catch the wind.

Yet, she must pass this gift on now, to her own daughter or son. And already, there are new players heading to racing’s great theatre.

Another generation has arrived, even on this small farm, in the form of three gangly weanlings, eager to take on the world.

One represents my two thoroughbred families coming together—the son of One Love, Express’s daughter, and King of Roses, Rosie’s father.

In breeding terms, it’s a long bow.

In our small world, it’s a defining bridge, a genuine connection.

When he first arrives, sharing Diane’s float with her two fillies, all on their first trip away from home just days after being weaned from their mothers, he is really nothing much to look at. Not too big, not too small, not much to write home about at all, though his hindquarters are rather impressive and he’s always been inquisitive and cheeky and hungry, ever since he came into this world.

A couple of weeks later, he’s bigger and no longer willing to be bossed around by the fillies sharing the lush, clover-filled paddock, despite the fact that they are four weeks older and still that bit taller. As impudent as ever, Bono is also confident and calm.

After all that’s happened with Rosie, my two co-owners and I are very clear about the path his future should follow and so move him down to a farm in Victoria that specialises in rearing weanlings and yearlings as they head towards the sales or the racetrack. Having lived with horses for nearly a decade, having endured all that’s happened with Rosie, I now know a few things—and one of the most important is that young horses have to be educated from the time they are born.

They must be fed well and handled with care, they have to frolic in safe paddocks, cantering and galloping together, literally kicking up their heels, and they have to be supervised, checked on a couple of times a day at least. They also have to keep pace with their peers, going to kindergarten before they go to school. This colt, now a handsome burnished bay with one black sock, is on the right road.

Another thing: he’s now much closer to Robbie, running in a 20-acre paddock with two other lads for company, and being fed twice a day by a horseman who has been doing this for his whole life.

‘I’ve never seen a young horse eat as much as these two do,’ Brian tells Deane Lester and me when we visit, pointing to the colt and one of his mates.

‘That’s a pretty good sign.’

In the autumn of 2010, we have driven two hours to get to the farm near Mansfield. I step into the paddock to talk to my weanling and for the first time in his life, he is taller than me. Another good sign. He looks over my head when he comes up to the gate, eager for a chat and a pat.

‘Nothing much bothers him, either,’ the horseman adds. ‘He has a lovely nature and takes everything in stride, and that will hold him in good stead all his life.’

The way things are going, we might sell this colt, especially if (his uncle) Harry steps up to the mark in this preparation and makes the family line look a little more appealing to astute yearling buyers. Financially, we might have to move him on.

Then again, we might just keep him, and race him ourselves.

After all, the colt we call Bono could be the one.