“It is a track we all love and you never really expect to train a winner there.
“And he is quite a promising stayer with a future.”
Training thoroughbreds was an itch Purdon wanted to scratch and after a life devoted to harness racing, he is enjoying the new balance.
“I have been really lucky how many thoroughbred people have wanted to help,” he told the Herald.
“I couldn’t have got this far without the help of Glenn Old, he really opened the door for me when I moved to Matamata and I can’t thank him enough.
“I now have an assistant, Layla Hoeta, working with me and she is invaluable and I have had some great advice from trainers like Andrew Scott [Wexford Stables].
“He showed me some of the work programmes great trainers like Dave O’Sullivan and Mike Moroney would have used with their horses and it made me quite proud because I realised I wasn’t doing too much wrong.”
Purdon has just two gallopers in work (with two more spelling) as well as the two harness stars but says even with a small stable, the days are long because of the different schedules.
“You get up so early in the morning to do the gallopers and if you have trots the night before, it can make for a long day and not much sleep.
“But I am so glad I am doing it.”
NO ROMANCE
James McDonald has had to settle for a second straight nail-biting international defeat with Romantic Warrior.
The Kiwi jockey was beaten out in an incredibly tight photo finish in the Dubai Turf on Sunday morning (NZT) as Japanese galloper Soul Rush grabbed Romantic Warrior right on the line.
McDonald missed two days of the Sydney carnival to be in Dubai and it capped a “what could have been” autumn for Romantic Warrior and McDonald after he was also beaten in the last few strides of the Saudi Cup last month.
McDonald will return to Sydney this week to partner Via Sistina in the A$5 million ($5.4m) Queen Elizabeth on the second day of The Championships.
MULLIN’S ULTIMATE MOMENT
Champion trainer Willie Mullins was left in tears after the greatest moment of his career yesterday – and it had very little to do with the horses.
Mullins trained the trifecta in the famous Grand National at Aintree in England but the reason for his raw emotion was that his son Patrick rode the winner, Nick Rockett.
“This is the summit for me, I don’t think it can get any better than this. It’s just huge. It’s like something out of a Disney film,” he said.
Nick Rockett won the National from last year’s winner I Am Maximus with fellow stablemate Grangeclare West in third.
The master Irish trainer has achieved so much both with jumpers and flat horses and is often matter-of-fact about his victories. But this was different. This was family.
“I don’t know if I gave him a cheer, I was just speechless,” he said.
“I just broke down completely. I did for about 20 minutes after. I just couldn’t help it, I just completely lost it.”
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.
