INCREDIBLY, unbelievably (even a little hilariously), Swan Hill trainer Noel Watson is just 2800m from a start in the 2022 Melbourne Cup.
If his horse Redjina can win the $500,000 Andrew Ramsden Stakes at Flemington on Saturday, he has a golden ticket to the biggest handicap race in the world – where he will be shooting for a winner’s purse of $4.4 million.
And he will be flat out calling the Tyntynder v Woorinen footy match at the same time as his horse takes its first step on the path to immortality.
The big question on everyone’s lips in town is: “Dare he, dare we, dream?”
Fortunately his co-caller at the footy will be Guardian sportswriter Shane Fleming, whose most important job on the day will be getting a video of Watson watching the race.
It should make his Moonee Valley spectacular pale into insignificance.
All with a horse he bought second hand for about $10,000.
So second hand that after 12 months wandering around lowly rated bush tracks, when Redjina finally picked up a BM58 for him at Kerang on Boxing Day, Watson reckoned that was about as good as life gets.
Except Redjina just kept getting better. And better.
And then the five-year-old gelding took things to a new level – a stratospheric level for a hobby bush trainer who is really a harness racing man, football radio commentator, and real estate agent long before he was ever a horse trainer.
Clearly, Redjina didn’t get the memo.
On March 18, for a lark, Watson entered Redjina in a $75,000 handicap over 2040m at Moonee Valley. It was a last fling, of sorts, before the footy season started and he would be busy for months with no Saturdays to spare.
Except the horse won, Watson turned on the greatest celebration exhibition by a winning trainer in the history of horse racing and banked a $41,000 winner’s cheque.
Now there’s no stopping him.
In April he took Redjina to Caulfield – after asking directions in Melbourne because he had no idea where the track was – to see his horse run fourth, barely one-and-a-half lengths behind Point Nepean. In the Ramsden, Point Nepean is the favourite and stands between Watson and the bush and Flemington and its birdcage.
“I threw his name into the nominations and thought that would be the end of it. It’s an 18-horse field and the entree straight into the Melbourne Cup – I reckoned there would be around 50 nominations for a race such as this,” Watson confessed.
“But there were only 19. Nineteen! For a direct entry to the cup. For three, four and five-year-olds. Just 19. I simply can’t make it out, still can’t.
“My boy is No.11 on the list, so he’ll get a run. But the way it’s going, by final acceptances and then the barrier draw, there may not even be 18 starters.”
Which could be a good thing for Watson. The last thing he wants to see is Redjina out there in gate 18 – next stop is the carpark.
But with a good draw he’s not yet writing his horse off.
“If I had thought Redjina had a snowball’s chance in hell of getting a start, he would not have gone around 2000m of a heavy 8 track at Ballarat at the weekend; I just hope it hasn’t taken the sting out of his legs,” Watson said.
“We have been very attentive to him in the stables this week. We were going to spell him four runs back but this horse just loves racing, loves competing and we have stuck to his usual routine of put him in the paddock for a few days and then I reckon we will saddle him just once before the weekend and send him down as rested and as fit as we can.
“I’m not worried about him backing up on six days – you couldn’t hurt him right now if you hit him with a brick.”
With Watson on air at the weekend, the pressure of getting the horse safely to Flemington without getting lost falls on fellow Swan Hill trainer Nathan Hobson, who will be taking some of his own to Flemington – as well as sending a few across to the Echuca gallops on the same day.
“Six months ago winning a race, let alone a direct entry to the Melbourne Cup, wasn’t even a pipe dream,” Watson said. “Now people are asking me if I am dreaming about being there on that first Tuesday in November.
“And it’s already a bit of a dream and they haven’t even accepted yet. If he gets a really good draw, and if Jack Hill, the new jockey in place of regular Madison Lloyd, who has a broken leg, can get him well positioned early, he can just bowl along with the field until the attacks come and then he can use his kick.
“But folks, let’s have a bit of a reality check here – he’s currently a 40-1 shot and we’re talking Melbourne Cup. Yes, Redjina seems pretty good right now, but so is every other horse in this race.
“He’s never run a 2800m and, to be honest, I’ll be thrilled if he finishes in the first eight – that way you get petrol money for turning up.”
