Greenmount Hotel couple Fred and Carol Keong, pictured outside the premises last week, have thoroughly enjoyed the feats to date of 2YO One Lickety Split - a black type winner during the Brisbane Winter Carnival. The horse may yet be sold to overseas interests.

The tiny hamlet of Greenmount sits nestled up in the hills of the Darling Downs, a mere bat of an eyelid and you’d miss it, in the trip by car between Toowoomba and Warwick. Not a lot happens at Greenmount, but that doesn’t stop the place from being home to some of Queensland’s best-known thoroughbred studs.

When visiting country towns I reckon it is always a good idea to pop in and have a counter lunch at the local - and get to savour some good old fashioned country hospitality, a hot counter lunch and a cold drink. Enter Fred and Carol Keong, mine hosts of the Greenmount Hotel, just a one-kilometre drive off the highway that links Toowoomba and Warwick.

If you do pop into the Greenmount Hotel you’d best allow a bit of extra time if you decide to strike up a conversation with Fred Keong about racing, as his interests in the sport are many and varied. He part owns recent impressive Brisbane Winter Carnival winner One Lickety Split and he has a smart greyhound being trained for him, which races as For Jakes Sake.

Fred and Carol Keong moved to Greenmount “just on 12 months ago” for what Fred calls “part of a five year plan.”

Fred has grown up around racing and one of his best mates is former Eagle Farm trainer Les Ross. Fred explains “I’ve known Les since I was 17 and I worked for him for a few years as his stable foreman. We are still close now, as since Les retired from training racehorses, he has a karaoke business and he comes up to my pub one Saturday night a month - and we all have a ball. The country people love to support him and last time he was here a couple of weeks ago we had about 50 here. Admittedly most of them were ordinary singers, but no one cares, we just have a ton of fun.”

Following his stint in Brisbane as foreman with Les Ross, Fred moved to outside Ipswich, becoming foreman for Minden trainer Tim Gillespie “for about three-and-a-half years,” before venturing into the pub game.

Whilst Fred has raced horses like Flying Kwila, Roman Ace, The Pigman and Nanatan - spread among trainers like Les Ross and Tim Gillespie, he has a laugh as he decides, off the cuff, to blame a Caloundra trainer named Dave Newman for getting him involved in racing saying, “Dave talked me into racehorse ownership, so this is all his fault.”

But Fred’s comment is only tongue-in-cheek, and in the last few months he has no doubt felt blessed that Dave Newman was so persuasive, as nowadays Fred is one of four friends who lease the talented Gordon Yorke, Coffs Harbour, trained 2YO, One Lickety Split, who has taken all before him since he kicked off his career in style with an easy win by one-and-a-quarter lengths in a Grafton Maiden Plate on a “slow 7” track on 7 April this year. One Lickety Split then came to the big smoke at Eagle Farm in Brisbane on 18 April and with 3-kilo apprentice Luke Cumberland riding like a man inspired, he won easily again, this time impressing his trainer Gordon Yorke to the point when he decided to raise the bar for the youngster and take on all comers in the $100,000 Listed Golden Stakes at Doomben 21 days down the track. When the sun peeped its head over the horizon on Golden Stakes day, One Lickety Split had another hurdle to jump, as it was the first day he’d been to the races with a “good” track underfoot. Was he just a wet tracker, given that his two wins from two starts had been on rain affected going? Easy in betting on course, One Lickety Split rounded up his opposition, coming from seventh on the home turn, to win running away at $5, yet again proving that old racing adage of “the more they win, the better the price”.

Subsequent to those three wins in a row, One Lickety Split was unplaced at his next two starts, firstly in the Listed Doomben Slipper on a “heavy 9” track, then on Stradbroke day at Eagle Farm, in the Group 1 TJ Smith Plate, again run on a “heavy” track.

As at today, One Lickety Split has $124,400 in the bank, but his impressive wins at his first three starts have seen offers come in to buy the colt, who is by the Great Britain stallion Medecis, from the Bite the Bullet broodmare Blind Panic. “A decision was made to sell him for $400,000 but the deal fell through”, advises Fred Keong who continued, “the ultimate decision rests with breeder Colin Clarke from Marburg, but if someone comes along with the right money I think he’d be sold. The lessee’s of the horse, like my partners and I, have reached an agreement with Colin if he was sold. Colin breeds a few well-bred horses each year and knows what he’s doing. For instance Colin even did a lot of homework before he eventually decided to place this horse with Gordon Yorke. He had a look at a lot of trainer’s statistics and he went and visited a lot of racetracks to look at the facilities at each of them and he concluded that the Coffs Harbour track is one of the nicest tracks in Australia to train horses on. He then met Gordon Yorke and Gordon explained what he does and so that’s how Gordon got One Lickety Split to train.”

Fred Keong advises he leases One Lickety Split “with friends Paul Robinson who owns the Grandchester Hotel, Peter Whitfield who owns a demolition yard and Russell Hewson who I went to school with. We all get along well and we all realise racehorses need to have plenty of patience. Gordon (Yorke) originally had a high enough opinion of the horse to want to head to the Golden Slipper with him, but he ran out of time of get him there”.

Apart from One Lickety Split, Fred also owns “a share in an unraced Falkirk 2YO and another horse that Gordon Yorke has in work – One Kool Cat – a winner of one of his three starts to date”.