There is an exuberant mood around the ownership group of Magic Millions runner Forgotten Spirit that not even a pragmatic trainer who survives on getting the best out of run-of-the-mill bush horses dares to challenge.
After scraping into the field, Forgotten Spirit is one of the outsiders in the $3 million Magic Millions 2YO Classic. Still, rarely has a plan 12 months in the making come together with such precision.
Channelling his inner Ciaron Maher as a trainer with ownership in a Magic Millions runner that belongs to another stable, Andrew Dale is happy to go along for a ride that one of his partners predicted was never in doubt.
On the advice of bloodstock agent James Mitchell, Dale, who trains out of Wangaratta in northeast Victoria, paid $100,000 for Forgotten Spirit at last year’s Magic Millions sale.
It was more than the trainer’s usual budget but it was already money well spent, according to Stephen Hines, the filly’s principal owner and a lifelong friend of the trainer.
“When we bought the horse, Stephen told me this filly is going to go all the way,” Dale said.
“He just said, ‘this is what we're going to do. We're going to break it in, we'll prep it up at Wangaratta, and then we'll find a trainer up there (in Queensland)’.”
With the natural speed influence of her sire Spirit Of Boom negating a reluctance to jump on terms from the barriers, Forgotten Spirit won an October jumpout under Dale’s name.
A connection to Scott Morrisey through another part-owner advanced the well-laid plans to the next stage and Forgotten Spirit was sent to his Gold Coast stables to qualify for Saturday’s race.
She achieved that when runner-up in the Gold Pearl last week and that’s when the final piece of an ambitious Magic Millions puzzle fell into place with Linda Meech taking the ride.
“Stephen is a big fan of Linda Meech. He told me 12 months he was going to get Linda to ride the filly in the Magic Millions,” Dale said.
“When we made the field, Stephen rang me and he says to me - tongue-in-cheek - ‘I’ve got the formula, I know what I’m doing’.
“Who am I to argue? As Stephen says, we’ve got one more box to tick.”
A former school teacher, Dale is a latecomer to the training ranks. He admits he is not a natural horseman but there are lessons learned from a long career in Australian Rules football as a player and coach that have kept him in racing.
Dale played a few games for Melbourne when it was the VFL in the 1980s, coached professionally in Tasmania and made a name for himself at a grassroots level in country Victoria.
In some ways, his approach to training is a mirror image of his playing and coaching days: mainly plying his trade around the Victoria-NSW border region while tapping into a synergy between conditioning racehorses and footballers.
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“The parallels or the principles of training athletes, whether it's humans or equines, are pretty similar,” he said.
“But I don't consider myself to be very good at it. I just consider myself to concentrate very hard on trying to place my horses in the right races.
“I'm the trainer that's in that marginal 10-to-30 in training sort of rank where the costs outweigh the potential revenue because you've got staff that need to look after those horses.
“And you've got costs like rent, track fees, all the things that you do. So that 10-to- 30 bracket of horses in a stable is the most vulnerable financially if you look at all the numbers.
“But I love my job, love what I do. I've got my boys working in the business and we're happy to go out to Balranald or to Leeton or Narrandera and try and get a winner just as much as hopping on a plane and flying up to the Gold Coast.”
In a racing sense, Forgotten Spirit promises to be Dale’s “VFL moment” - a chance to make it in the big league and his sacrifice to hand over the training is built on friendship.
The horse’s interests come before the trainer’s self-regard.
“Because she is by (Queensland sire) Spirit Of Boom it doesn't make sense that she's going to race in the early days in any other state other than Queensland,” he said.
Forgotten Spirit finishing second to La Bella Boom in a Magic Millions 2YO Classic lead-up race. (Vision: TouTube)
“I’ve kept a nice stake of ownership in the filly and there's lots of other things in the planning process at the moment.
“We’ve all been mates for years since our school days and they've got their ideas and what they'd like to do in the future and buy a few more.
“So, no, I don't have any regrets about her being transferred to Scott.”
Instead, Dale wants to embrace the occasion, armed with some inside knowledge that Forgotten Spirit will most likely appreciate testing ground to complement a pedigree that comes with an injection of stamina as the daughter of a mare who won a Group 2 race over 2400m in France.
He will do well to match the same fervour and enthusiasm shown by his fellow owners during the Magic Millions build-up on the Gold Coast during the week but he will be trackside.
“I wasn't going to go because I'm busy with my life and all that sort of stuff but how can you not go when you've got a runner like this in a race like this?” he said.
“And with rain forecast, we are really confident she will get through it,” Dale said.
“We’re hoping her pedigree really kicks in and her strength, courage and constitution comes through there because the last couple of runs, she's been quite strong working through the line.”
Hoofnote: The team behind Forgotten Spirit paid $150,000 for a Spirit Of Boom filly at this year's sale on Thursday as the hammer fell while Dale trained a winner at Wagga Wagga.
