In today’s second and final instalment, we catch up with Julien Welsh, Lindsay Park’s head breaker Rahis Baig and Geelong breaker Brad Pearson.

Julien Welsh (Booralite Park)

Raised around horses in Victoria’s high country, and later a successful mountain-racing rider and jumps jockey, Julien Welsh has gone on to become one of the most respected figures in his field.

Welsh and his team at Booralite Park have a reputation for nurturing young thoroughbreds with a minimum of stress as they are broken in and put through their early education, and trainers who use Welsh’s expertise include the likes of Team Hawkes, Peter Moody, Mike Moroney, Phillip Stokes, Mick Kent and John Sadler.

Working with an incredible number of yearlings every year – as many as 350 – Welsh has broken in and educated no fewer than 36 individual Group 1 winners, including the likes of Elvstroem (Danehill {USA}), Reward For Effort and Magnus.

“I suppose that when you think about the total number of horses we’ve broken in during that time, the percentages aren’t all that fantastic,” Welsh said. “You don’t get that many top-liners. The good ones are very rare.

“But it’s always enjoyable when you do get one, and we’ve been lucky enough to have worked with some really nice horses over the years.

“My favourite of those is probably Elvstroem. He was a marvellous horse, winning all those Group 1 races including one in Dubai, and he was just an absolutely beautiful animal. He was a real pleasure to work with.”

Welsh’s skills received a ringing endorsement at Caulfield last Saturday from trainer Grahame Begg, whose 2-year-old filly Libiamo (Written Tycoon) produced an impressive finish to win on debut over 1100 metres.

“I think that’s a very nice filly,” Welsh said. “I broke her in originally, then had her again for a couple of trials a bit later on. She had a few issues with the gates in those early stages.

“But one of her trials in particular really impressed me, so I rang Grahame after that and asked him if he happened to have an opinion about this filly. He said he rated her quite highly, and I replied, ‘Well, I’m not surprised. She just trialled very impressively.’

“Now she’s come out and done it on raceday, and I thought she won really well there on Saturday. Having her first start, she probably wasn’t really entitled to come from where she did and win the race like that, but to her credit she did it. It was an impressive performance from a pretty talented filly.”

This year’s crop of yearlings have made a favourable impression on Welsh as he has put them through their early education.

“We’ve had some nice horses again this year, although maybe not a great deal of absolute standouts,” he said. “I am a bit of a hard taskmaster, because I do so many of them every year.

“Mike Moroney hopefully won’t mind me saying that he has a very nice horse by Tavistock that he bought in Sydney earlier in the year. I broke him in, then put him out before he came back for another couple of weeks with me. He’s a beautiful colt. I really like him.

“Johnny Sadler has had some nice ones come through as well, including an All Too Hard that I quite liked.

“We’ve also had some nice progeny of Toronado, Pierro, Pride Of Dubai and Capitalist come through, and obviously I Am Invincible always has beautiful horses to work with.

“I think horses are getting better and better every year in terms of their temperaments. They’re better-handled and they’re easier to do anything with.

“The horses with Northern Hemisphere blood are always good to work with, and I like handling the New Zealand-breds as well.”

Welsh prefers to adopt a wait-and-see approach with the newest batch of first-season sires.

“I like to see horses get to the trial stage before making a real assessment, so I don’t have a clear impression yet about the first-season sires,” Welsh said.

“But a young sire that I do quite like is Swear. I’ve got a really nice Swear gelding of my own (named Morecoruba), and I’ve had a bit to do with the sire all the way through – I actually broke him in when he was a young horse.

“I do a lot of work for Team Hawkes, and it was through them that I was able to get the service to Swear. This horse won his second start really well, and I quite like him. Hopefully he can go on with it.

“For a cheap sire, I think Swear has quite a lot going for him. He’s had two winners from hardly any starters (seven runners to date), and Mathew Ellerton and Simon Zahra also had one the other day (Swear Shes Perfect) that didn’t get much luck in the running and probably should have won on debut, so he could have been up at three winners already from just a handful of runners. I think he could be a sire worth following.”

Rahis Baig (Lindsay Park)

The head breaker at Lindsay Park, Rahis Baig has been a key component of the Hayes family’s operation for the best part of two decades. He has provided an early education to a long line of quality racetrack performers, all the way up to the elite level.

“I’m in my 17th year at Lindsay Park now,” he said. “There have been many, many good horses that have come through our system during that time.

“Some of the horses that have made the biggest impression on me personally are Churchill Downs and Nadeem, and in more recent times Catchy was a very special filly who won the Blue Diamond for us.

“There have been a few hard-luck stories along the way too. Horses like Zamzam and Reemah placed in the Blue Diamond and could have done a lot more if things had gone their way. But that’s the way it goes in racing sometimes.”

Baig oversees the breaking-in of a large number of horses every year, and he believes the 2021 crop of rising 2-year-olds are right up to Lindsay Park’s usual high standard.

“The number that we have through each year depends on how many horses the bosses are buying, but it’s usually somewhere between 120 to 150 every year,” he said.

“I think this year’s group compares favourably with the last few seasons. There are some really nice horses coming through.

“The way these horses are bred these days, they’re all really refined, and they’re all blue-bloods. They’re just really good-quality horses and they’re a pleasure to work with.

“The competition is certainly very strong from other stables in Australia at the moment, but I think that’s a good thing. It keeps our job really interesting, and it keeps us very motivated to try to do the absolute best we can with all of the horses in our program every year.”

Baig has seen good signs from the progeny of a number of up-and-coming freshman sires.

“We have the progeny of a few first-season sires that are looking pretty good, like Impending, Caravaggio and Pariah – I’ve liked the progeny of all of those. We also have some very nice horses by other young sires, like Shalaa.

“But I personally always lean a bit more towards the older stuff. I like the proven sires that I know well. We’ve got some very nice Written Tycoon and Toronado horses coming through for us this year.

“There’s a really good mixture of sires, and it’s a very nice group of horses that I’m quite excited about.”

Brad Pearson

After a grounding around pony club, Brad Pearson learned his thoroughbred craft under the tutelage of New Zealand trainer Bruce Wallace and, once he crossed the Tasman as a teenager, John Hawkes and Peter and Paul Snowden. He schooled a number of high-class gallopers in the early stages of his career, including Caulfield Guineas winner Helmet.

After establishing his own breaking business in Geelong in 2013, Pearson has quickly built up relationships with a range of clients, and his graduates include Group 1 winners Mr Quickie (Shamus Award) and Krone (Eurozone).

“We’ve had a couple of pretty good ones come through our hands over the few years we’ve been doing this, and hopefully there’ll be a fair few more to come in the next few seasons as well,” Pearson said.

“Mr Quickie’s the obvious one, and also Krone – a very tough filly. I have to admit to being a little bit surprised that she got as far as she did, but she really put her hand up on the track and became a Group 1 winner, which was great to see.

“We have about 50 or 70 horses at a time, so it all adds up. I couldn’t even tell you how many we’ve worked with in total this year.

“We look after horses for a wide range of clients, including some of the more prominent and larger stables, which is great. We’ve been doing a fair bit for Peter Moody lately, as well as some for Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott, and Chris Waller too. There are a few Warrnambool trainers as well, like Symon Wilde and Matthew Williams.”

Pearson has been impressed with his latest class of rising 2-year-olds.

“There have been some really nice ones that we’ve had this year – it’s been a good bunch,” he said. “In terms of the first-season sires, we’ve had a few by Russian Revolution. I really liked them from very early on.

“Some of them may not have quite shown the improvement that I would have liked from their first preparations into their second, but one or two have come back in over the last couple of weeks and they’ve really come on quite impressively. They’re looking pretty good now and I wouldn’t be surprised to see them go well.

“Another young sire whose progeny I’ve got a bit of time for is Divine Prophet. A fair few of them have really impressed me this year.”

Cover image, the late Vain and Pat Hyland depicted by artist Michael Jeffery courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

In the early parts of Black Caviar’s career, around the time she won her first G1 Lightning S., there were rumblings around the turf that she was hardly better than Vain. But as she clattered onwards through her flawless, 25-straight career, that opinion seemed to fizzle out, and Vain was left in her wake, demoted as Australia’s greatest sprinter.

But the picture is a little bit more complicated.

Vain, the coppery-coloured son of the French stallion Wilkes (Fr), a Golden Slipper-winning star of the 1960/70s in Australia and a horse devoted to peppermint, was a weight-carrying wonder. He lugged huge loads over dazzling speeds, defying the weight-for-age and handicap scales time and again.

Trained by Jim Moloney, he treated the stopwatch with derision, won 12 of 14 starts, was second twice and toppled Tulloch (NZ) as the greatest money-spinner of the era.

“He could be the fastest horse I’ve ever seen,” said Tommy Smith, and Bart Cummings wasn’t short of a word either.

“I don’t think I have ever known or seen a 3-year-old that could make top-class horses look as mediocre as he does,” Cummings said.

Either way, the horse was the greatest sprinter of his generation, arguably ever in the eyes of a few, and it’s hard to imagine it was just the beginning of him. In the middle of the Bletchingly and Sir Tristram (Ire) era, when these two horses bossed the stallion table, Vain was Australia’s Champion Sire in the season 1983/84.

Earning that name

Around that time, fresh-faced accountant Derek Field began working at Widden Stud, and he’s still there.

“I got to Widden in 1982 with a background in accounting,” he said. “At that time, Vain was a serious stallion. If you look at the years that Sir Dapper and Inspired won their Golden Slippers, and they won in consecutive years, they were both by Vain.”

Sir Dapper won the Slipper in 1983, and Inspired in 1984. By then, Vain had been at stud for more than a decade.

He covered his first book of mares in 1970 at a never-before-seen debut fee of $2500, and his book stood at 45. From that crop came 31 foals that won 19 races, and they included the stakes winners Kenmark, who won the Caulfield Guineas and The Goodwood H., Vain Prince and Honoured.

In that first season, Vain was pipped by Kaoru Star for the overall Sires’ title, but he won the First Season Sires’ Premiership by winners (10) and wins (19), and these figures aren’t too different from today. This season, Capitalist is likely to win the title with 18 winners and 23 individual wins.

“He was a Champion racehorse of his year by a long way, and he was very popular when he went to stud,” Field said. “In those days, a stallion book of 50 was a large number, and a busy stallion was doing two covers a day.”

Vain was one of those busy stallions, and the stark facts of his numbers are extraordinary.

From books of under 50 and, later in his career, under 40, the horse produced 45 stakes winners for 101 stakes races.

“You’ve got to remember there were no walk-ons in those days,” Field said. “All the mares resided at the farm, and they’d be covered and then sent home to their owners. That was the case even if the owner’s farm was nearby, and walk-ons didn’t really come into play until the late 80s or early 90s.”

The famous Valley

Anyone that has been to Widden Stud will appreciate its spectacular geography.

The valley dips and rises below the surrounding escarpments and, back in the day, the long road to the front gates was an adventure in itself. In 1912, turf journalist ‘Milroy’ wrote about it.

“Widden is not a very terrible place to reach when you are used to it,” he said. “A gentleman connected with the bloodstock business could not understand, or believe, that owners would send valuable mares to such a place for a stallion’s services.”

But they did. Milroy wrote of the remote hills and 45-mile track from Rylstone, leaping out of a sulky to prevent death and disaster along the old road. He said men would stand up for days after riding it.

However, he also spoke of the jewels contained in this rich pocket of country and, since 1867, when the first Thompson moved in, it’s been priceless horse country.

“I can remember in the Vain years, we had plenty of breeders from Victoria sending mares to him,” Field said. “Vain was owned by the Johnson family, the three brothers that raced the horse, and when I first started at Widden, one of the brothers, Fred, was still alive and he was the fellow I was dealing with on behalf of the family.”

The Johnsons sent plenty of their own mares to Vain, which wasn’t a small trip by road.

“People would send mares from a long distance to go to the stallion of their choice, and transport conditions were very different then, roads too,” Field said.

In the office, the paperwork was vastly different too. Field recalls a one-page service agreement that was posted to breeders setting out the terms of the service fee.

“This was pre fax machines and pre email,” he said. “But you didn’t have the volume that you do today with stallions covering 160 or 200 mares. We were covering 40 mares to a leading stallion, and Vain was one of those, along with Bletchingly and Marscay.”

Field said that era, when these horses were joined by the likes of Lunchtime (GB) and Salieri (USA), was one of the greatest in Widden history. He wonders if it was bettered only by the 1920s, when Champion sires Valais (GB) and his son Heroic stood on the property.

The brothers three

The brothers George, Fred and Walter Johnson were the owners of Vain throughout his life.

The horse was foaled at Stockwell Stud in Victoria in 1966, and was a son of the glamorous French import Wilkes, who was brought to Australia for £5000 in 1956. He stood at Newhaven Park.

Wilkes was a long, rich chestnut and, from two seasons in the mid-1960s, he poached Champion Sire honours from the mighty Star Kingdom (Ire).

Vain’s dam was Elated (Orgoglio {GB}), who won 10 races in a stakes-placed career in Victoria for the Johnson brothers. Vain was her second foal, and it’s remarkable that he survived at all. Elated was a tricky breeder. Only one other of her foals made it to the track, a full brother to Vain called Laudate, and thereafter she had two sets of twins that didn’t survive, and nearly a decade of missed and slipped covers.

Vain, however, ranks her as a significant broodmare, because his racing career was as good as it gets.

The horse won six of seven starts as a 2-year-old, including the Principal races the Champagne S., Maribyrnong Plate and Golden Slipper. With the latter victory, he became the second-highest juvenile stakes winner in Australian history to that date (only Storm Queen, by Coronation Boy {Ire} was ahead of him, but that record later toppled with his victory in the AJC Sires’ Produce S.).

Watch: Vain win the 1969 Golden Slipper

Vain’s Golden Slipper left 40,000 Rosehill racegoers speechless in 1969. Carrying Pat Hyland, he put away the first 600 metres in 33.9s, and was 2l clear of the field with only 50 yards travelled.

“It is difficult to find sufficient superlatives to describe the way this beautifully proportioned Wilkes colt ran some of Australia’s best youngsters off their feet,” wrote John Hourigan, a turf journalist for the morning papers.

As a 3-year-old, the caravan rolled on.

Vain won six of seven races again, including the Caulfield Guineas against the later Cox Plate winner, Daryl’s Joy (NZ), while his ‘remorseless, rocket-like’ acceleration earned him a 12l victory against older horses in the Craven ‘A’ S. at Flemington.

Lumping 5lbs (2.2kgs) over weight-for-age, on a straight six classified as ‘slow’, Vain clocked 1.09s. There were few horses in the world that would have lived with him that day, and it was the first of three victories across the four days of the 1970 Melbourne Cup carnival.

Thereafter, Vain was retired with inflammation in his near-foreleg, and the Johnson family fielded big dollars for the horse from overseas. They settled on Widden Stud in the spring of 1970 as the ideal place for his next career.

Family trees

In Melbourne, Tim Johnson is the grandson of Walter Johnson, one of the three brothers in Vain. Johnson is a lawyer these days, but he also had Ealing Park at one time, which stood Kingston Rule (USA) and Good Journey (USA).

He is the father of rising bloodstock agent Will Johnson, and the family remains attached to its history with Vain. Johnson was a young boy during the horse’s racing days.

“Vain was the first colt that my grandad didn’t geld,” Johnson said. “He basically bred racehorses, and that was the way back then. Most of the stallions that stood successfully in Australia at that time weren’t colonial horses, so the thought process from my grandad’s point of view was probably along those lines.”

Johnson doesn’t know what prompted Walter to leave Vain intact, but the horse was left a colt and he headed to Mordialloc trainer Jim Moloney.

“Walter’s private trainer was a bloke called Dave Walsh, and he said he was too old to train a colt, so they had to find a new trainer,” Johnson said. “Jim Moloney got the job because he had a stable jockey, and that was Pat Hyland.”

The Johnson family has scrapbooks and mementos from Vain’s career. It donated the Golden Slipper trophy to the Australian Racing Museum a number of years ago, and Johnson recalls a significant family anecdote.

“My grandfather died in Sydney in 1971, on the night he returned from Widden Stud having visited Vain in his paddock for the first time,” he said. “Walter had major heart surgery some 18 months before, and Vain had kept him alive, so when he saw the horse, he was happy then and he died in his sleep that night.”

A gentleman

Vain passed away on Christmas Day in 1991, a coy old horse of 25-years-old. To the end, he had the same good manners and disposition that he had always had, right back to his days on the track.

With the stable name ‘Joe’, he was described as sensible and quiet by his trainer Jim Moloney, with no special requirements outside of lucerne, oats, soya beans and molasses.

“He’s a mad eater,” Moloney said. “He might chew the bandages on his legs after a meal, but that’s more mischievousness than hunger.”

However, Vain was an intelligent stallion.

Throughout the 1980s, he was tended at Widden by resident vet Mark Wylie, who was in the early throes of a career in veterinarian science. Wylie said that he couldn’t get near the horse if he was wearing his traditional vet’s outfit.

“In those days, our PPE gear was King Gee overalls,” Wylie said. “And they were white, just so we could show off all the blood and faecal stuff. I realised very quickly that if I walked anywhere near Vain with those overalls, he would burr up immediately and I was in trouble.”

Wylie had a tiny window in ‘civvies’ to treat Vain, and he said there were times that the horse had him in a potentially dangerous corner. But not once did Vain make good on his threats, and Wylie said he was one of the most delightful stallions he has ever looked after.

“He was an absolute gentleman, just a lovely horse,” he said. “He was this big, robust, chestnut stallion with a wonderful, kind and warm personality. He was a highly intelligent horse, but he just did not like vets.”

Vain was a high-achiever in his long life, and it’s a credit to him that he is still mentioned in the same breath as Australia’s greatest sprinters. As a sire, he was an excellent example, but his line survives more through the females than the males.

As an example, the broodmare Market Maid (Marscay) went to him in his second-to-last crop in 1990, producing the filly Peach. In 2006, Peach visited Lonhro, and the result of that pairing was no less than Denman.

Smith’s special new recruit is Keiai Nautique (Jpn), who is by legendary Japanese sire Deep Impact (Jpn) and is out of the multiple stakes-winning mare Keiai Gerbera (Jpn) (Smarty Jones {USA}). That makes the 6-year-old a full brother to Smith’s G1 Cantala S., Makybe Diva S. and Toorak H. winner and now Leneva Park sire Fierce Impact (Jpn).

Keiai Nautique has already shown a trace of that family ability. He won three of his 24 starts in Japan, headed by a huge finish from second-last to capture the G1 NHK Mile Cup in Tokyo in May of 2018.

He also placed in the G2 Nakayama New Zealand Trophy, the G2 Kyoto Daily Hai Nisai S. and the G3 Tokyo Fuji S., along with a fourth placing in the G1 Asahi Hai Futurity S. at Hanshin.

After being unplaced in his final two starts in Japan in November and January, Keiai Nautique’s owner Kazuhiro Kameda decided to change tack and try something a little different with the talented and well-related entire.

“The owner bred Fierce Impact as well, so that’s part of how this came about,” Smith explained to TDN AusNZ on Thursday. “This horse just lost a little bit of his form over there in Japan, so the owner thought a bit of a change of scenery might help to turn him around. We’re very excited to have the opportunity to train him.

“He’s performed very well in Japan in Group 3 races, Group 2 races and all the way up to Group 1 level, so he’s obviously a really good addition to our stable.

“He’s settled in really nicely with us and he’s looking great. He trialled at Randwick last week and put in a lovely performance.”

Smith has been struck by how similar Keiai Nautique is to his illustrious older sibling.

“They’re quite similar types of horses – it’s actually amazed me just how similar they are,” he said. “They’re quite alike physically. This horse is probably just a little bit bigger, but other than that they’re very similar.

“There are also some amazing similarities in their traits and their behaviour. It’s almost unbelievable how similar they are in some of the things that they do.

“But the main thing is that this horse looks like a nice horse, works like a nice horse and already has the score on the board in Japan. Now our job is to try to add to that in Australia and we’re really looking forward to trying to do that.”

Smith is keen to give Keiai Nautique another trial before mapping out an itinerary for his first Australian campaign.

“We haven’t really locked anything in yet at this stage, but we’re hoping to have a look at some good races later in the spring,” Smith said. “We’ll probably kick him off over 1400 metres somewhere, then step up to 1600 metres second-up and take it from there.

“But the first thing I’d like to do is give him another trial and get some feedback from the rider on how he’s tracking and then we can make a plan after that.

“Like his brother, he seems like the sort of horse who will perform well over 1600 and up to 2000 metres.”

Fierce Impact embarks on new career

Meanwhile, Smith is watching with interest as Fierce Impact moves into the next phase of his career, standing at Leneva Park in Seymour for an introductory service fee of $16,500 (inc GST).

An early 2-year-old winner at Yarmouth and Listed-placed at Goodwood as a 3-year-old, Fierce Impact delivered Smith a remarkable return on his 120,000 gns (AU$239,400) purchase price at the Tattersalls Autumn Horses in Training Sale in 2017.

He won five races and more than $3.1 million in stakes from 22 Australian appearances for Smith, headed by his Group 1 treble, along with placings in the G1 CF Orr S., Chipping Norton S. and Winx S. He also finished fourth in the All-Star Mile and sixth in the Cox Plate.

“It’s so exciting for us to see him kick off a new career at stud, and he seems to have settled in really well at his new home,” Smith said. “I can’t wait to see what he can do as a stallion.

“You never quite know with the genetics and things like that, but to me he looks like the right sort of horse to succeed at stud. He was an early winner as a 2-year-old, then trained on as an older horse to win three Group 1 races over a mile.

“To win those big mile races, you need to be a sharp horse with a very good sprint and he certainly ticked those boxes.

“He had a lot of speed, he was so tough and he was very sound. Once we got him going and put the blinkers on him, he never really ran a bad race for us.

“He raced consistently at a high level for three years and he retired to stud sound. I don’t think that can be underestimated. He also handled all sorts of track conditions and he just never put a foot wrong.

“I hope he gets a good go at stud and really makes it as a stallion. After where he came from and what he went on to do as a racehorse, it’ll be quite an amazing story if he does that.”

Sweet Thomas on song for Flemington

More immediately, Smith has runners in three states this weekend including the in-form stayer Sweet Thomas (Ger) (Dylan Thomas {Ire}) in the Flemington Cup in Melbourne.

The veteran has found a rich vein of form over the last couple of months, placing in the G2 Brisbane Cup on June 12 before scoring a strong victory in the Stayers Cup at Rosehill two weeks later.

“He’s in really good form, and he’s probably as well as we’ve ever had him,” Smith said. “I think he’s going better now than he has been at any other stage of his career in Australia. His work’s been really good and I can’t fault him going into this race on Saturday.

“The only thing I’m disappointed about is the fact that he’s drawn gate 12. That’s a barrier that puts you back in the second half of the field, and in these staying races, where they go slow early and then sprint home, it makes it very tough to make up that ground.

“But that’s the hand that we’ve been dealt, and apart from that, I’ve been really happy with how the horse is going.”