Unlucky Trainer Gets The Strawberry, Misses The Cream

The Age

Tuesday November 11, 2008

Patrick Bartley

GERALD Ryan wasn't in the top five jockeys during the 1970s and '80s but he was recognised as an astute judge of horses.

While apprenticed to trainer Owen Lynch he experienced the successful times of the Epsom training circuit. He was in awe of Lynch, Bob Hoysted, Andy White, Ian Saunders, John Hawkes, John Meagher and Ross McDonald.

He learned how to set a horse for a race and how to mould a horse into a stayer. In the early 1980s he teamed with Ian Hutchins, son of Melbourne Cup-winning trainer Ray, to pull off a plunge at Sandown that, in many ways, was ahead of its time.

Damian's Lad had raced twice over 1000 metres and seemed to struggle, but Hutchins and Ryan had put months of work into the gelding and knew that he would improve vastly when moved up to 1600 metres. The race at Sandown was chosen and Ryan recalled yesterday how supremely confident he was.

"Everything down to the finest detail was considered. So confident was I that I walked from the jockeys' room convinced of victory," he said.

Backed from 50-1 into 33-1, the stable punters worked the plunge cleverly. They had taken the cream of the top odds but not over-indulged, which would have forced the horse's price to come crashing down with bookmakers betting back all over Australia.

They put small amounts of money on for a win and tied up the daily double and quadrella.

Ryan eased Damian's Lad to the outside and he cruised to the lead. With 100metres to go Ryan looked over his shoulder and saw a horse making a genuine challenge, but, after a hard-fought finish, Damian's Lad scored narrowly.

The challenger was Nicholas John who went on to carve out a successful career that included a win in the Metropolitan eight weeks after the Sandown race.

And, as a trainer Ryan, never forgot the teachings of how to prepare a horse to land a plunge. So, when he came came across a filly of immense quality at his stable on the Gold Coast, he knew what to do.

After putting in months of foundation work, he decided to do the unthinkable - according to the old school of trainers - by starting a three-year-old filly in a class-six race at her first start.

Ryan, keen not to alert anyone to the filly's ability, brought up an open sprinter from his Sydney stable and, after the filly easily defeated the older horse, he knew that she could cope with a class six. Jumping seven grades would ensure that the filly, Mardi Gras, would be at tasty odds. Mardi Gras was backed from 40-1 into 9-2 in a well-orchestrated plunge and scored easily.

Another Melbourne trainer wasn't so lucky when, after taking his four-year-old to Queensland with a record of four starts in two years for four lasts, he'd suddenly found the key to this gelding and started him in a maiden at Doomben where he was backed from 66-1 into 6-4, only to be beaten by a nose.

The horse who thwarted the plunge happened to be the great Strawberry Road.

© 2008 The Age

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