It was a warm sunny day at Flemington, but it might as well have been an afternoon at The Curragh or Leopardstown, given the Irish connections that bred, owned, trained and rode the VRC Oaks winner Strictly Business, the heroine of the hour in the 2500 metre classic.
The three year old filly, by the Victorian based stallion Grunt, even carried the navy blue and yellow colours of the Munster flag – the Irish province in the south west of the country where several of the protagonists hail from, including Cork man Johnny Allen, the winning jockey.
Bred by Martin Falvey and trained by Thomas Carberry, a member of Irish jump racing’s most celebrated family, the lightly raced filly exploded down the centre of the track and galloped home to win strongly from The Pearls as the effort of the short priced favourite Getta Good Feeling petered out in the final stages of the stamina sapping contest.
This was an extraordinary training performance by the little known (in Australia) Carberry, who, at the age of 53, still rides work on his small string of a dozen or so horses at Ballarat.
Strictly Business had had one start as a late developing two year old at Flemington in May and had then been put away to grow and mature. Her three year old career had only kicked off a fortnight or so before the Oaks when she won a 1400 metre maiden at her home track on 24th October with Allen, a near neighbour of Carberry’s, in the saddle.
At that stage of the campaign options were clearly running out, so Carberry opted to roll the dice and run his inexperienced filly in the 2000 metre Wakeful Stakes on Derby Day, where she showed huge improvement and ran second in that Group 2 race to Getta Good Feeling.
From that point on it was clear that she had to go to the Oaks, despite this only being her fourth race start. Plenty is said about the luck of the Irish, and Carberry’s boldness was rewarded in magnificent fashion as Allen produced her at just the right time to win going away.
For Carberry this was not only the biggest success of his training career, but it was a victory that he can now put alongside some of the greatest triumphs of his storied family.
His father, Tommy, was the champion Irish apprentice rider on the flat in 1959 before switching to jumps racing as his weight increased.
He then became one of the greatest jump riders of the 1960s and 1970s, winning, amongst other top class races, the Cheltenham Gold Cup and Grand National on L’Escargot for Dan Moore, whose daughter Pamela became his wife and the mother of their children Thomas, trainer of Strictly Business, Paul, Nina, Phillip and Peter John.
Tommy senior won the Irish jump jockeys title on four occasions, the Irish Grand National as well as it’s English equivalent and for good measure reverted to the flat in 1979 to win the Champion Stakes on Fordham for the legendary original master of Ballydoyle Vincent O’Brien.
Thomas’s brother Paul was a leading jump jockey who won the Grand National for his father – by then a top trainer in Ireland – in 1999. Their sister Nina, a multiple champion amateur rider, continued the family tradition by winning the Irish Grand National in 2011, brother Phillip having won it in 2006.
While Ballarat based Thomas cannot match their performances in the saddle he becomes the first member of the family to saddle up a Classic winner as a trainer – a feat he alluded to after the race, saying he now had ”something to try and match the rest of the family with”.
To add to the Irish and jump racing flavour the maestro Willie Mullins, who sprang the surprise of the Breeders Cup last weekend with Ethical Diamond, was in the paddock and was dragged in for photographs and celebrations as the Irish contingent celebrated their success with gusto.
The web of connections also embraced Allen, the Irish jump jockey who came to Australia in search of opportunities and who now has become one of the nation’s leading flat riders after being given a start by Darren Weir.
He mused that when he was starting out in the saddle in Ireland he had ridden against the younger Carberry brothers over obstacles and then met the Oaks winning trainer when he was also working for Weir as a work rider, bringing the story full circle on the other side of the world
The last word should, of course, go to the trainer who showed that a good horseman – and they don’t come with any better pedigree than him – can do the job if given the right material.
”It’s an incredible journey, racing, and I think everybody’s proud of it. You meet people here today and they’re legends and to think you can do it, it’s great,” said Carberry.
“ It takes a really good horse to do what she did, even in her maiden. It just put the Wakeful on the radar. It became possible after she ran so well, she needed a trip to show her best.”
“I think I’m very, very lucky. John Allen and Declan Bates (another Irish rider) have been such a great help to me in my business. They always give me good advice and 2500 metres, who else would you want on other than Johnny Allen, especially at Flemington.”
And, of course, it was another Group 1 win for Ballarat.
“It’s just an incredible spring carnival. There will be a lot of celebrating going on. We were in the miners’ rest tavern after the Wakeful, but I’m not sure whether that holds us tonight but we’ll see.”
Allen was full of praise for the horse and the trainer.
“What a filly to win her maiden only two weeks ago. What a great effort by Tommy. He rides his own work. Tommy is a neighbour of mine, he only lives two doors down from me.”
“It’s hard to imagine, she was raw as you could possibly be. It was obviously a great win at Ballarat, but she was just that raw and inexperienced. She’s pulled up, not a bother on her, and hopefully she’s something to be getting pretty excited about.”
