Before Tony Ottobre, there was Dick Monaghan. Or, as Michael Lynch wrote in The Age in 1991, “I’ll Do It My Way” Monaghan.
Trainer licences seemed easy to come by in Queensland in the early 1990s, when Monaghan, a Gold Coast builder and horse owner, decided he’d train Stylish Century better than Noel Doyle, Bart Cummings, Bill Mitchell, Ron Gill and Jeff McCarter.
It wasn’t long after Monaghan took the reins when Stylish Century, while in the care of his daughter, almost drowned in the Flemington horse pool. It was a freak accident, but the Stylish Century arrangement had taken a strange turn.
If not for the expert horsemanship of Gerald Ryan and one other, the popular globetrotting Derby winner would have sunk.
Like Monaghan, Ottobre is a racehorse owner who may have struggled to adhere to Bart Cummings’ great rule about owners who wanted to help him out. Cummings’ fee was $60 a day “but $120 if you want to help me”.
Ottobre has raced through trainers at the same rate as Monaghan had with the eternally dizzy Stylish Century.
Before she’d begun racing, Pride Of Jenni went from David Brideoake to Shane Bottomley and back again. After five starts with Brideoake she found herself at Symon Wilde’s at Warrnambool, then Ciaron Maher and Dave Eustace and eventually, just Maher.
One of the sacked trainers, particularly, wasn’t sad to see Pride Of Jenni go because she took the owner with her.
Ottobre hasn’t been as omnipresent as Monaghan, the builder who thought he could train a champion, but he has been an owner who prefers not to let his horses do the talking. Nor his jockeys. He once banned them from speaking to racing.com.
The social media era both brought Ottobre to life and exposed him to what in Monaghan’s time would merely have been bar talk.
A post on the Thoroughbred Village Forum in 2020 that followed a reprint of the Lynch story from 1991 posed: “How would this owner go in the social media era?”
Monaghan, the businessman who thought he could out-train Bart, would have copped plenty, just as Ottobre has felt the wrath of X, a platform he abandoned amid constant bombardment.
Ottobre cancelled his “Pride Of Jenni” account after the mare failed first-up in the Memsie Stakes. The handle had been the most argy-bargy on X (or twitter) since Alligator Blood’s owner Allan Endresz’s spirited keyboard combat with his detractors.
Both Endresz and Ottobre had experienced personal heartbreak. Endresz’ wife Joy died after a long battle with cancer in June 2022, a day after Alligator Blood won the Stradbroke Handicap. Ottobre’s 30-year-old daughter Jenni died in 2011 from brain cancer shortly after her wedding. Neither man would die wondering. Some protocols could take a back seat.
Ottobre, a former apprentice jockey, horse breaker and breeder who once worked at Lindsay Park, and a successful car-part manufacturer, said his social media life had “gone a bit too far”.
“I’m 68 years old, I’ve never been on social media and I thought I need to get off now. I would’ve loved to have kept it going but unfortunately the people with IQs of about 50 got the better of me and I had to shut it down,” he said.
Trainers bite their lips when entrusted with good horses owned by individuals whom Cummings would have charged double.
Ottobre instructed Maher to run Pride Of Jenni in the King Charles Stakes in Sydney a week before the Cox Plate.
Maher went along with it, but it seemed that a gut-buster in the King Charles – after which Ottobre complained to stewards about the tactics of a rival – flattened her for the Cox Plate.
Pride Of Jenni runs again on Saturday in the Champions Mile at Flemington. It has been a busy campaign. Maher seemed rather low-beat when asked on radio about Pride Of Jenni’s prospects at Flemington, where a familiar cog in the team will be absent.
Declan Bates, the unheralded Irishman whose pairing with Pride Of Jenni proved a magic carpet ride of a series of stunning wins, was dumped for Ben Melham. It was the owner’s call.
— Declan Bates (@decbates) November 6, 2024
Social media took sharp aim, just as it tore strips off another imposing owner, Brae Sokolski, some years ago.
Sokolski, a rich young businessman propelled by genuine smarts and boundless self-belief, sacked popular Linda Meech for Mark Zahra aboard favourite Thought Of That in the 2019 Victoria Derby.
Michelle Payne was fined for tweeting that Sokolski was “a pig” and that Meech’s dumping was "one of the most ruthless decisions made ... disgraceful".
Meech was both diplomatic and blunt.
"Of course things like that bother you. I've had 20 years in this racing game, Brae's probably hasn't been there quite as long, but I won't let that get to me," Meech said, adding: “I hope that it (Thought Of That) gets beat."
With Meech pulling his tail, Thought Of That ran 10th in the Derby.
Sackings are rub of the green in racing, as jockey Daniel Moor, a multiple victim of it, tweeted after Bates got bumped for Melham.
“We get replaced all the time, and let’s not forget that we’re also pretty well skilled in the art of sacking a horse ourselves. That’s racing,” Moor wrote.
While rub of the green, sackings often rub the wrong way. Racing is a volatile sport of volatile people.
Craig Williams is probably the most sacked champion jockey of modern times.
David Hayes sacked “Willow” in front of a gang of media at Caulfield some years ago. He was then dumped from Zaaki, then Giga Kick, by the sprinter’s management group.
It led to boisterous X commentary about loyalty and fickle owners.
In the UK, the big owners mostly call the shots, which occasionally impacts here. Champion Aussie jockeys have often been ditched for the likes of Ryan Moore, who’d swoop in for Coolmore from the Breeders Cup.
Owners sack trainers and trainers sack jockeys daily. Trainers take great financial risk in sacking rich owners. But it happens.
In Europe, Daniel Wildenstein was famous for sacking jockeys, including Lester Piggott, which prompted his trainer, Peter Walwyn, to order Wildenstein to collect all of his horses.
“We get replaced all the time, and let’s not forget that we’re also pretty well skilled in the art of sacking a horse ourselves. That’s racing” - Melbourne-based jockey Daniel Moor
The sacking cycle keeps everyone on their toes.
In 1991, Monaghan defended his role with Stylish Century and that stumble from overbearing owner to trainer.
"You only get one innings and I want to enjoy it. A horse like this comes along only once in a lifetime. I'm doing this because I love it so much. If I was a billionaire I would do the same thing,” he said.
As Stylish Century’s unravelled, Cummings was downgraded from trainer to observer.
He mused mischievously of Monaghan. "I think Dick's the only one who understands racing.”
Bart, who died nine years ago, was dry as dirt. Often cryptic, you can imagine him describing Pride Of Jenni’s owner as “an interesting fella …”
