Rehab master Evison is inundated with work from owners and trainers across Australia and much further afield as the success of his work has rapidly spread by word of mouth off the back of racetrack results achieved by his rehabilitation programs.
Among his many success stories is the multiple Group 1 winner Gailo Chop (Fr) (Deportivo {GB}), G1 Ascot Gold Cup winner Trip To Paris (Ire) (Champs Elysees {GB}), G1 Caulfield Cup winner Boom Time (Flying Spur), Group 2 winner Haut Brion Her (Zoustar) and champion jumper Bashboy (Perugino {USA}).
The undefeated Kosciuszko winner It’s Me (Shamus Award) is currently in the Evison system.
“One of the most interesting ones came about when I got a phone call at about 11pm on a Sunday night and I was in bed asleep,” he said. “I looked at my phone and I thought who the hell is ringing me from England.
“I thought it was one of my mates stirring me up, but it was Ed Dunlop who said he had a horse that he was going to send over for the G1 Caulfield Cup and G1 Melbourne Cup, but it had done a tendon.
“He said if 'I send it down there can you fix it?' I said I would try and I thought he was joking and didn’t think much more of it.
Ed Dunlop used Evison to help Trip To Paris (Ire) recover from a tendon injury
“Three or four weeks later the transport company called to say we’ve got a horse coming to you, I said 'what’s that' and they said 'it’s from Ed Dunlop’s and called Trip To Paris.'
“We fixed his tendon and he ran fourth in the Caulfield Cup and fourth in the Melbourne Cup. He went off and raced in the Japan Cup and in the Dubai World Cup. Ed texted me six months later and said he had retired him a sound horse.
“We’ve had some very interesting horses through the system for some very good people.”
Worldwide attention
England isn’t the only offshore racing jurisdiction to have come knocking on Evison’s door.
“We’ve had them from all over Australia obviously and New Zealand, America, Germany and Hong Kong. We get them from everywhere,” he said.
“They quarantine them, spend some serious money on getting them fixed and then I send them back. We’re fortunate enough to watch them race on TV, and win, and get just as much thrill out the success of those horses as what I did of training a winner myself.”
Based on a 56-acre property at Longwarry, about 80km south-east of Melbourne’s CBD, Evison and his 11 staff work their magic on all manner of equine injuries with an approach he first developed when involved in the standardbred code.
“When I was in my teens and early-20s I worked for the Purdon family at Clevedon in New Zealand. I was in harness racing for the next 15 years of my life after that and had a really good team of horses,” he said.
“I was quite successful and trained 500-odd winners and loved my time in it. I used to buy cheap horses and keep them sound and win good races with them.”
“I was quite successful and trained 500-odd winners and loved my time in it (harness racing).” – Lee Evison
During that period, Evison treated a number of his string for any injuries and his methods came to the attention of an owner.
“One of my clients owned thoroughbreds and said to me 'if you can do it with a standardbred can you do it with one of my thoroughbreds?' I said 'it’s still a horse so why not',” he said.
“He sent me one and I mucked around with it for ages and did as good a job with it as I could and it was ready to go back and be a racehorse.
“It went to the races and won, which was a real thrill for us. That was over 10 years ago now and that led to another one, and another one, and now we’ve done 1200 horses from around the world.
“Now I don’t have one standardbred on my property, they are all thoroughbreds so I’ve gone completely full circle.”
Recent Kosciuszko winner It's Me is currently at Evison’s Longwarry property | Image courtesy of Ashlea Brennan
Evison estimated that 80 per cent of his work was treating horses with tendon and ligament damage.
“We do cover all injuries, post-operative treatment, feet issues and soft tissue damage. You name an injury a horse can get from racing and they send them to us,” he said. “We fix them and send them back.
“You name an injury a horse can get from racing and they send them to us.” – Lee Evison
“The basic philosophy doesn’t change, it’s graded controlled exercise. We don’t rest them until the lesions are filled in.
“If we get them when they’re active or if they re-modelled injuries, which obviously the international horses are because they have filled in with scar tissue by the time we get them, we have to make them active again and break that tissue down, re-model it and re-align the fibres and then we spell them.
“It’s a bit longer process if we get them a bit later down the track, but if they are fresh lesions the process is reasonably straightforward and simple.
“We do get a lot of horses that have a tendon or suspensory issue and sometimes they’ve got that from a by-product injury from somewhere else that hasn’t healed properly, and transferred that weight and done a tendon.
“We try and look at every aspect of the horse from the foot up and they go back when everything is fixed.”
Simple philosophy
Evison said the time invested in each horse was dependant on the nature of the injury.
“It is all the same, simple philosophy and they start off at the lowest level of walk, being walking and swimming and as they heal and scan well we keep increasing the work.
“It constantly increases with the quality of the heal and if it’s not healing as we would like the work load stays as is.
“When they get to the end of their time here they will be doing over 100km a week on my track, a heavy, sand-based one, and gallop work every second day.
“It seems to work for them and we’ve had a stack of horses win first-up when they leave here. We don’t do any speed work with them, the quickest we do is up to evens.”
The recently retired Group 1 winner Gailo Chop (Fr) also spent time with Evison
Evison’s facilities include three barns, a track, a swimming pool with another piece of apparatus integral to the success of the program is a salt-based treatment facility, which Evison believes to be invaluable.
“It is an amazing asset to have. It’s effectively like a water walker, but the temperature is controlled by salt and ice,” he said.
“It is an amazing asset to have. It’s effectively like a water walker, but the temperature is controlled by salt and ice.” – Lee Evison
“We can work it down to zero degrees and use a special salt. The only place in the world it is manufactured is in South Australia. It’s a brown crystal and when it hits water it turns pink and has a freezing point of minus eight degrees.
“It’s really terrific for their feet and legs and we wade them through it. The thoroughbred trainers love water walkers and we get a lot of injuries because of them.
“The horses become very muscle strong and their bones are weak and get chips, fractures and cracks. The trainers are wondering why, but they’ve made it that way as the horses are that strong and powerful and their bones don’t marry up with that muscle.
“We don’t have our water any deeper than 700ml and that way they have to physically lift their feet out of the water. We find it's really important to what we do.”
Ongoing demand
Evison admitted there was a seemingly never-ending line of clients that can’t all be serviced.
“We’re always overflowing with horses and the facilities I have, as good as they are, just can’t cater for any more. We can turn over about 200 horses a year with the system we have,” he said.
“It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while, whether to take the next step and get bigger or be satisfied with what we’re currently doing. It’s a lot of work and a lot of hours and twice a day treatment.
“It’s not like training when you’re effectively working them once a day or a swim in the afternoon. The rehab is morning and night, and very time consuming, and I like to do a lot myself.
“If we’re doing any more than 40 or 50 horses at a time it is very difficult to get around to every individual horse so we limit the numbers. We always have a waiting list.
“We have thought about expanding and there was a little bit of talk a year or two ago about relocating to a place overseas, but I squashed that as I’ve got a young family.”
Boom Time
Success stories
While the recovery of every horse through the system is satisfying, some stick more in the mind than others.
“Probably the most famous story, probably not the best horse though, was Boom Time who came to me with a full length lesion in his tendon,” Evison said.
“He came over from Perth and was an unknown horse at that stage and we rehabbed him and in that same preparation he won a G1 Caulfield Cup.
“Gailo Chop came from France to me as a good horse already and had won just on $1 million. We fixed his tendon twice and during that time he went on to win another $3.5 million.
“Every week there’s something winning that’s come through the system.
“Every week there’s something winning that’s come through the system.” – Lee Evison
“I had Haut Brion Her and they said she would never race again. The owners knew me and said let’s have one more throw at the stumps. She had a fractured sesamoid and a really severe lesion in the suspensory where it was close to rupturing.
“We treated her and first-up she won the G2 Sheraco S. and a couple of starts later ran in The Everest. She looked the winner halfway up the straight, but got swallowed up late but was very brave.
“It’s Me is here and she’s had four starts for four wins and won the Kosciuszko and unfortunately sustained an injury in the run. She’ll race again though.
“We had Gold Medals, who won a $1 million over the jumps and we did Bashboy and was probably Australia’s greatest jumps horse. The only reason he retired at 13 was because you can’t race any older than that.
“He won over $1 million over the jumps as well and came to me with a double tendon. At the time I don’t think he’d won a race and he retired as one of the best jumpers we’ve ever seen.”
