Don’t remember the date but it was Bunbury race course and Damien Oliver still claimed 3kg as an inexperienced apprentice jockey.
Damien and his brother Jason were close friends of my best mate, Kim Hunter, and there was a keen interest being shown by some punters as to the possibilities this kid possessed.
Jason was a good jockey too, so was their father Ray, who I saw win a Perth Cup on Fait Accompli.
Sadly, both died in horse racing accidents, Ray when Damien was tiny and Jason when Damien was acknowledged as one of Australia’s finest riders.
For the children’s mother Pat, race days must have been a mixture of joy and apprehension as she watched the boy’s compete.
In the Bunbury race, with less than 100 metres to go, Damien was wedged in behind four horses vying for the lead. Helpless.
Then he did something almost every apprentice jockey doesn’t do. He punched a hole between two pickets of the fence – where only half a hole was visible to the naked eye – and drove his mount to victory.
Melbourne racegoers, indeed turf fans across the nation, would have seen similar acts in the past 35 years of Damien Oliver’s career. Nothing to see here. But this was a kid, a mid-teen learning the ropes. It was extraordinary.
Kim and I had backed it and went from feeling despondent that this was another unlucky selection to the euphoria of success.
But sometimes money is not the ultimate in horse racing. Just sometimes it’s seeing something you don’t quite believe and wonder what it all means.
This was one of those occasions.
I stood almost speechless on the concrete steps of the Bunbury grandstand and tears came to my eyes.
“Apprentices can’t do that,” I said. “I’ve watched Harry Wulff, Mark Sestich and Mark Grigsby ride through their claims and I’ve never seen that before. They just can’t take those gaps.
“This kid is something special.”
In 1994, as a racing journalist, I paid tribute to Oliver, who had taken a risk and gone to Melbourne to further his ambitions.
“Oliver remains virtually unlauded in his home state, despite winning the Victorian jockeys’ premiership in three of the last four seasons.
“To me this is akin to a WA footballer winning the Brownlow Medal more than once, not as an experienced league player, but walking into an AFL club as a junior and asking to be given a game.” Kalgoorlie Miner, 12 August 1994
He was apprenticed to Lee Freedman, a no-nonsense, good person, and worked within Freedman Brothers Incorporated, with Lee’s siblings. The stable was beginning its emergence as one of the best in the land and Damien was in the middle of it. He longed for race day rides so he didn’t have to muck out the horse boxes.
Horse racing gets a bum rap from more than 50 per cent of the population. Many don’t even think it should be considered a sport.
Despite racing for millions of dollars in stake money, the public still believe it’s rigged. The naysayers certainly but, curiously, so do many of the people who regularly bet on it.
It happened again on Saturday when I spoke to a fellow party goer. Knowing the man to be an occasional bettor, I told him that Oliver had won the last three races at Ascot in his final three rides, including the race named in his honour. The reply was: “Do you think the other jockeys let him win?”
To a racing tragic, this is just so naive.
Imagine Le Bron James scoring in the final seconds of a playoff final?
“Was it rigged to make it more exciting?”
Did Collingwood’s passage to this year’s AFL grand final have the league’s blessing? Were all those by a few points’ wins rigged to get bigger crowds to the main matches and further excite public interest?
Roger Federer plays his last Wimbledon and wins in a tie-break after some other contender throws it away with a couple of errant returns?
Too ridiculous even for Ripley. But with racing just say what you like because it’s all rigged anyway.
So they watched in their thousands at Ascot on Saturday as Damien Oliver weaved Munhamek through the gaps to win a $1.5 million dollar race. Sadly, it wasn’t on easy to find free-to-air TV.
Not like Shane Warne’s 500th wicket where we had the live Channel 9 coverage, cringe-worthily crossing to the reaction of Ray Martin and his young son after every Warne delivery.
Have we grown up from those sickening days of cross promotion when even the late Richie Benaud was contracted to insert lines into his commentary like: “Don’t forget to watch Sons and Daughters on Wednesday when Kylie mistakes a sheep for her new boyfriend and gets lice in her hair.”
How the poor man must have blushed as he said those pitiful promos as a super of Sons and Daughters rolled across the screen below?
But back to the main story. Damien Oliver. I was lucky enough to have dined with him in 2019 the day following the Collingwood-West Coast Eagles rematch of the previous year’s grand final.
My cousin Ann Jones had bought a package at auction during a Carbine Club lunch which included tickets to the match and lunch with Damien among other treats.
It was a racing table. Ann is the daughter of Hugh Jamieson, trainer of stars like Gilt Patten; Diane Leslie (nee Parnham) and husband Gary have been going to the races since they were babies and Diane is the daughter of former WA Turf Cub vice-chairman Norm and cousin to Perth trainer Neville. Damien’s wife Trish and I made up the six.
As he pondered the size of his parmigiana, I told Damien my Brownlow comparison I had written so long ago.
“I’m not pissing in your pocket but I’ve also been watching a lot of Melbourne racing since Channel 78 started and I don’t think you have ridden better.”
Northing I have seen in the ensuing four years has altered that opinion.
Then came Saturday.
Riding a treble in back-to-back races doesn’t happen often. Even Zac Purton in Hong Kong, who rides one winner every four times he climbs aboard, doesn’t often win three in a row.
To win this treble in the last three races of a program is very unusual; to win at your last three rides of a glittering career when you have announced this is your final day in the saddle is unique.
If you could make similar comparisons across all sports would it have ever occurred?
In their farewell matches, Pele scores a hat-trick with his last three strikes; Buddy Franklin kicks the final three goals in a cliff-hanger grand final; Shane Warne takes three wickets in his final over to clinch an Ashes? Impossible.
Even immortals have their limitations.
Not so Damien Oliver.
Congratulations on a career of firsts.
I WRIGHT 