‘There’s something about the two-year-olds’ – Scott Darby and the magic of the Golden Slipper

As an impressionable teenager, Scott Darby learned about the art of training two-year-olds from one of the masters. Now one of Australia’s most successful syndicators, Darby is as passionate as ever about the Golden Slipper.

Between TJ Smith’s reign and his daughter Gai Waterhouse leaving a lasting imprint on the race, the Golden Slipper became the domain of two trainers.

It was the 1990s and Lee Freedman and Clarry Conners made Sydney’s signature race their own.

Conners trained Tierce (1991) and Burst (1992) before Freedman and his brothers provided four successive winners, starting with Bint Marscay in 1993 and ending with Merlene’s victory in 1996.

As the Freedmans expanded their business to become an early blueprint for the mega-operations that now dominate the Australian racing eco-system, the Conners’ stable, more blue-collar than corporation, returned fire.

Conners closed out the decade with Prowl’s win in 1998 and he welcomed a new millennium with Belle Du Jour’s astonishing victory in 2000.

Now one of Sydney’s veteran trainers, Conners keeps a much smaller team in work these days.

But his influence on the Golden Slipper will loom large, thanks to a two-year-old trained out of a neighbouring Warwick Farm stable in Sydney’s west.

The link connecting Bjorn Baker’s filly Within The Law to Conners can be traced to Scott Darby.

Darby is a public syndicator who has rarely found himself out of the spotlight this season.

An endless parade of winners in the Darby Racing silks is a reward for his ambitions as a teenager to work in the thoroughbred industry.

Throughout the journey, Darby has developed an uncanny knack for sourcing cheaply priced horses who have become Golden Slipper runners – and in She Will Reign’s case – an unforgettable winner. 

Eight years ago, She Will Reign skipped through the mud belying her $20,000 yearling sale cost. A year earlier Yankee Rose, a $10,000 purchase by Darby, almost won the famous Rosehill race. 

Darby’s instinct for value will be plain to see when Within The Law takes her place as the most inexpensive horse in the $5 million race on Saturday.

Within The Law cost $30,000 – a steal in this era of bloodstock inflation – but she is a genuine chance as one of two publicly syndicated horses in a race that has captivated Darby since he first walked through Conners’ stable door to start work more than three decades ago.

He couldn’t have timed his decision any better to leave a family-run business to see what racing had to offer as a wide-eyed teenager.

“I was 18 or 19 and I came into racing when Tierce and Burst were winning their Slippers and I just fell in love with it,” Darby told The Straight.

“Everything I did was about the Slipper, there’s something about the two-year-olds.

“Even this far into the game … the two-year-olds still really do it for me. And the Golden Slipper is the pinnacle.”

Conners built his reputation for mastering the art of conditioning young racehorses off the back of Victory Prince’s AJC Sires’ Produce Stakes win in 1984 – a race that also served as the trainer’s first success at Group 1 level.

And it was no surprise to Darby that the stable’s breakthrough in the Golden Slipper came with a son of Victory Prince when Tierce defeated Canonise on the track and kept the race off it after stewards’ inquiry into a positive swab.

Darby said there was always a sense of anticipation when untried horses entered the Conners yard: whether they hailed from established pedigrees boosted by prominent sires or were the progeny of new stallions on the scene.

“There was just something magical about it … the fascination with the new stock coming through and the breeding of them,” he said.

“Who was the gun sire of two-year-olds at the time, that sort of thing.”

Conners added the finishing touches in a manner that was as good as any trainer at the time. 

For Darby, it was like a blank canvas which became an equine masterpiece as the path to Golden Slipper success was laid out in the still air of a Warwick Farm dawn.

“I’d watch Clarry, watched the way he eased off the two-year-olds and how they would thrive in work just by giving them that little bit of back-off,” Darby said.

“It was old-style two-year-old training that some did better than others but it really whetted my appetite for two-year-old success as a syndicator.”

In Baker, Darby has aligned himself with a trainer who has a new-age way of running a stable.

“It was old-style two-year-old training that some did better than others but it really whetted my appetite for two-year-old success as a syndicator,” – Scott Darby

Media-savvy on mainstream and social platforms, Baker is one of racing’s walking billboards.

But Darby says the New Zealand expatriate, who has delivered countless memorable moments for the syndication company’s legion of owners, has a serious side when it comes to training.

Attention to detail is a key attribute and Darby is counting on the trainer getting it right once again amid a mid-season winning streak that has catapulted Baker into second place behind Chris Waller on the Sydney premiership.

“Anyone who knows Bjorn personally – what you see on TV and what you hear on radio – he’s a very different person behind the scenes,” Darby says.

“He sounds all fun and jovial in the media, but if you sit him down, he’s a mad scientist. He works so hard on his systems and upgrading facilities and the staff around him.

“If you go in and see the work that’s put in, you’re not surprised at the success that’s coming and that’ll flow right through to his two-year-olds in the stable as well.

“I think where we click is I’m super competitive and so is he and you need that competitiveness, that drive to want to keep winning.”

Within The Law goes into the Slipper as a winner of three races in four starts and more than $1.1 million tucked away in earnings.

She is a poster girl for the first crop of her Yulong-based sire Lucky Vega and therein provides a clue to how Darby and his team continually refine their selection processes, especially at an auction such as the Inglis Classic Yearling Sale.

“You’ve certainly got to do a fair bit of homework, that’s for sure,” he said.

“But we took a chance on a first-season stallion. Her pedigree’s OK but most of all she is a really nice type of filly. Not dissimilar to the types we’ve had success with before early.

“We try not to get too involved, especially at a Classic Sale, on the pedigree side. We just want to find the horse we’re happy with first, and then look at the pedigree. Pedigree will tell us how much you’re going to have to pay.

“Many fall into the trap of just finding a pedigree that you could sell, and the horse just doesn’t cut it. It might make a lot of money, but there’s a reason for that. It all starts with the horse, and she was well found by our team.

“We’re very fortunate, very blessed to have another bargain-buy filly in a Slipper who looks a really good chance.”