While even considering Wheeler retiring seems laughable, consider the fact the two greatest equine heroes he trained, Poetic Prince and Rough Habit, raced in the mid-1980s and early 1990s respectively.
Wheeler was training champions 40 years ago and he wasn’t a kid then so yes, the numbers add up even if the energy levels suggest Wheeler could be pulling our leg about his age.
“No, I’m 75 next week and I am loving life,” he tells the Herald.
“I only have 11 horses in work and I have shares in most of them as do some of the family.
“I have one owner in Aussie I feel like I have had for 100 years and he won’t let me stop training for him until I die so I keep going around,” he laughs.
As legendary as he has been in New Zealand, Wheeler’s record overseas, particularly in Australia, is remarkable.
“I have trained nearly 300 winners in Australia and 19 Group 1s which I am quite proud of,” says the man who also trained St Steven to win Japan’s biggest jumping race in 2002.
Wheels says there is an art to traveling horses, one he has watched plenty of rivals and even mates, get wrong.
“There is no point having your Grand Final here then going to Aussie looking for another Grand Final, that doesn’t work very often.
“I prefer to have them on the way up but fit, rather than coming to the end of a campaign.”
He will try to show off skills again with Herbert, who he part-owns with good mate and former Taranaki Racing boss Carey Hobbs, next season.
“I have had a few people ask me why we aren’t taking him this year but he has done enough after this weekend,” says Wheeler.
“He won the big innovation race [$350,000] and went super behind Waitak last start and I think he has a great each way chance on Saturday.
“He has come a long way because he was a very unusual horse when I started with him and I reckon it took six races before he had any idea what he was doing.
“He is still a bit on odd bugger. He has to go down to the start with the Clerk of the Course but I think next season he is going to be a really good 2000m horse.
“Then we can take him to Aussie, I’d love to take a good horse there again.”
Once stable star Herbert heads to the paddock next week Wheels will amuse himself with two jumpers he will race this winter, thrilled jumps racing has been thrown a deserved lifeline.
Today’s Manco-sponsored Ellerslie feature is a typical big mile handicap, providing plenty of value with just the small issue of finding the winner.
Any one of six or eight could win without surprising, from topweight Sacred Satono to an emerging three-year-old Tardelli.
Add to that an even $100,000 Star Way Stakes for the two-year-olds and a $120,000 Trelawney Championship Stakes which contains some real deal staying three-year-olds and today’s meeting holds centre stage on a very rare day for Auckland racing.
All three codes will hold meetings today, with the greyhounds kicking off early at Manukau while Alexandra Park holds the meeting postponed on Thursday because of the weather.
With exceptional three-year-old pacer Marketplace in the Derby Prelude and a small field led by classy Beside Me in the Oaks Prelude tonight and the Alex Park meeting coming after the Addington day meeting, punters who missed their domestic racing on Good Friday will get more than their fill today.
Michael Guerin wrote his first nationally published racing articles while still in school and started writing about horse racing and the gambling industry for the Herald as a 20-year-old in 1990. He became the Herald’s Racing Editor in 1995 and covers the world’s biggest horse racing carnivals.
