Racing: Bush horse cult figure in town

Corowa. Population 4000 in a good month.

A top night out is taking in a movie or a beer at the country and western bar.

Things are about to change in the sleepy little rural town, only a decent three iron shot over the Victorian border in New South Wales.

If Leica Falcon gets over the line in tomorrow's A$5 million Melbourne Cup, Corowa will never be the same again.

Leica Falcon, second favourite for the Melbourne Cup, is already a cult figure in Corowa, yet he's been to the races only nine times.

Yet just about everyone who witnessed his phenomenal Caulfield Cup performance, and the entire 4000 Corawaens, have him winning the Melbourne Cup.

Which would be staggering.

We say it every year, but you simply don't orchestrate Melbourne Cup luck.

Godolphin's three-horse Cup campaign is already over. The world's richest racing stable tapped the mat more than a week ago when their two main chances fell apart.

Yet here is a 57-year-old weatherbeaten good bloke from the bush with a horse Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid al Mahktoum would love to own and has spent millions trying to find to win his first Melbourne Cup.

Richard Freyer is unknown in New Zealand and wins only six or seven metropolitan races in Melbourne each year, but don't be fooled into thinking he's a rookie.

He's been the leading trainer in the Riverina area for decades, the same as his legendary father Jack achieved decades before that.

It's Leica Falcon that's the rookie.

Only a month or two ago he won a one-win race at Wagga. He then took an intermediate-rated race at Wagga, came to town three weeks later to win an open race at Sandown, 15 days later he won the stakes-rated Winning Edge then stepped straight into the Caulfield Cup.

A realistic analogy would be a 16-year-old being plucked from schoolboy rugby to a senior club side, three weeks later playing for his province and being an All Black a month after that. Then making captain.

Freyer loved Leica Falcon's mother Lady Peregrine. Apart from two Berrigan Cups and two Towong Cups, the "real good, tough mare" won a Jerilderie Cup.

No, you haven't heard of the race, but possibly the town.

It's where Ned Kelly robbed the local bank and, some say, famously took the bank manager's wife to church.

Freyer is honest enough to admit he wasn't sure what he had when he took Leica Falcon to the races for the first time.

"It was a 1000m maiden race at Wagga and he jumped 15 lengths behind the rest. It was a real heavy, deep track and I thought: 'what the hell am I going to tell the owners'.

"Anyway, he stormed home to finish fourth - it was an unbelievable run."

Leica Falcon had been odds-on (less than $2) in most of his races since.

The race he didn't win - fifth in the Caulfield Cup - settled Leica Falcon's greatness.

It was monumental. He was in all sorts of trouble at the back of the field and was last when he turned into the short Caulfield home straight.

The strides he took to eat up the ground did not sink in at first viewing.

"He does have an unbelievable stride," said the modest Freyer.

The bushie does not sound like someone who easily bags a fellow man, but he has little good to say about Craig Williams' Caulfield ride.

"Everyone's saying the horse was partly at fault, perhaps being field-shy. There's nothing wrong with the horse, it was jockey navigation that was the problem.

"Craig kept riding into dead ends. He was putting him where there was nowhere to go."

Williams has been sacked and replaced by Kerrin McEvoy who, ironically, is contracted to the Godolphin stable and would have been riding one of its chances.

The youthful McEvoy spends most of his time riding in Europe, but he knows his way to the Flemington winning post.

The first time he stepped onto Flemington on Melbourne Cup day, he took the 2000 Melbourne Cup on Brew.

Massive bets were laid on Leica Falcon to win the Melbourne Cup when the odds were very long.

One Corowa resident tried to get on the Leica Falcon Caulfield Cup- Melbourne Cup double to win a million dollars, but bookmakers refused the bet.

Instead he took several other horses in the Caulfield Cup and now stands to win huge on the Railings- Leica Falcon double.

Don't worry about the 3200m tomorrow - Freyer isn't. The longtime horseman's intuitive eye tells him all he needs to know.

"He looks to me like he'll run it easily. In fact, before the Caulfield Cup I said to a friend that I wished it was 3200m."

Freyer doesn't want to get ahead of himself. He doesn't want to think about that possibility.

But he knows Corowa will go off its head.

And could you imagine anything better than a bush horse bred from a mare that won the biggest race in a town Ned Kelly made famous, arriving in Melbourne after a four-hour float trip to lift Australia's greatest prize.

That's fair dinkum bushranger stuff.