07/04/15

When you do what I do for 18 years, you often go out of your way to help people in the dog-eat-dog world that is racing, but you can go out of your way to try to give someone a hand, but most of the time you know you are wasting your time. Helping out licensees across the three codes is hard yakka. In racing parlance, you’re literally flogging a dead horse, as put simply if the one you write the positives about fails to live up to the expectations you put on them – you can be left with egg all over your face.

And so it came to pass that some well-versed people got in my ear several months ago about a kid from Hong Kong called Shenny Chan. He’d travelled to Australia aspiring to be a budding apprentice jockey – but fair dinkum that’s a challenge even if you are born in Australia.

And there’s a couple of very important aspects about all the young people from Hong Kong, Japan and Korea and those places – those that I have met – and I’ve met quite a few over the years and that is firstly that they are respectful of adults and secondly they are very well mannered. They don’t have any grandiose ideas about themselves like some of the Aussie kids have, which I believe is the result of being raised in an environment of no discipline at home or in schools. Additionally from my observations many Aussie teenagers also lack a work ethic, finding sleeping in until 11am on weekends a more attractive proposition than bounding out of the cot and doing anything constructive to help their family out. Plus Aussie youngsters encounter all sorts of social diversions along the way, such that when they get welcomed to the real world and have to join the workforce it can be a real culture shock, with the end result being the Aussie kids can go off the rails at the drop of a hat. In short, the young people from overseas seem to me to be less likely to take the wrong fork in the road – and happily stay on the straight and narrow.

A couple of months ago I penned a story about an affable young man named Shenny Chan who had turned 25 just a couple of weeks before the story. At the time it was advised that he was born in Hong Kong on 1 February 1990 as the oldest of two children to his construction worker father Kwan-mo and his school assistant mother Siu-ying. Kwan-mo and Siu-ying’s 46-kilogram bundle of joy had nothing much going for him when he lobbed in Australia. He did however walk daily with the best bet of the day called “hope” by his side. Sure he was happy to back himself, but at the end of the day he was just another hopeful kid from overseas who had that dream of making it big in racing. Dream on young man – but I guess there’s nothing wrong with dreaming – that pastime is free.

So Shenny Chan arrived in Brisbane in April of 2014 on an arrangement between the Hong Kong Jockey Club and Racing Queensland and he finished up being apprenticed to Brisbane based trainer Brian Wakefield.

It’s hardly a State secret that he struggled to get rides after arriving at Brian Wakefield’s stable, albeit he was still able to out-ride his four-kilogram claim via having ridden five career winners whilst with Wakefield. In Queensland, an apprentice jockey gets a four-kilo claim for their first five winners after which their country claim becomes three kilograms.

Shenny Chan’s first winner was up in the South Burnett area, at the sand track at Wondai, where he won aboard the Norma King trained Vain Dazzler on 12 July 2014. But there are only a certain number of trainers and owners that will put a four-kilogram claiming apprentice on their horses, but conversely, the only way kids can learn to ride is from getting experience, so it’s a classic Catch-22 situation.

In his first seven months of riding whilst being based in Brisbane, Shenny’s biggest thrill, in half a dozen or so wins, was getting home first on the Bryan Dixon trained Coco Dubawi in the Thangool Cup on 13/9/14. Just close your eyes for a moment and imagine being a kid and winning a non-TAB Cup race out in the bush where the country people often treat their local Cup as if it’s the Melbourne Cup? Imagine being a green kid and be standing there at the presentation and being the centre of attention, being able to text your mates after the race meeting when you got your mobile phone back from stewards and telling them “I won the Thangool Cup today”. The mates don’t need to know it’s only worth $12,000 in total prizemoney – or whatever it’s worth. Sure the Melbourne Cup might be worth about $5,988,000 more, but a jockey’s percentage of $12,000 is okay if you are used to living on the smell of an oily rag.

But with rides nigh on impossible to come by, the decision was made in February this year to send Shenny to successful and respected Barcaldine based trainer Todd Austin. The idea met with immediate success at his first Saturday of riding from his Barcaldine base when he travelled and rode at a Gladstone meeting. In fact by the time the sun had disappeared over the Gladstone horizon at the end of the day, Shenny had ridden a winner, Base Jump, for Lee Keirnan, as well as two close seconds, namely Our Magic Madge and Strike Zone for Bryan Dixon, along with a third and a fourth.

When I spoke to Shenny on 17 February at home in Barcaldine where he lives with trainer Todd Austin and his family, the apprentice told me “It’s a beautiful place Barcaldine. Everyone is happy”. But life is a two-way street when an apprentice is on loan for three months like Shenny is, so I rang Todd Austin later that same evening and asked him if he was happy with his new apprentice. Todd told me of Shenny, “He’s got a great work ethic and he’s willing to listen and learn, so I’m very happy with him”. Asked on 17 February how many horses he had in work at Barcaldine, which is 1069 kilometres north-west of Brisbane and how many of those horses Shenny would ride trackwork each day, Todd advised, “I’ve got 36 in work at present and Shenny would ride between eight and 10 work each morning”.

But after the events of the last few days you can bet “London to a brick on” that both Shenny Chan and his boss Todd Austin will remember the Easter long weekend of 2015 as being really special. You see the kid that couldn’t get a ride down in the South-East corner of Queensland that the trainer out in the sticks agreed to help out, booted home five winners – two at his home track of Barcaldine last Saturday and he followed that double up with a treble yesterday at Augathella. And all five winners were for his new boss Todd Austin, so they are certainly proving to be a formidable combination. And interestingly only two of the five winners started favourite.

I stand corrected, but by my maths, after viewing the weekend’s thoroughbred results from around Australia I reckon that makes Shenny Chan the most successful jockey across the entire nation – in terms of races won – by a jockey that rode at race meetings Easter Saturday and Easter Monday.

I didn’t ring Shenny Chan last night at Barcaldine – and I didn’t need to speak to Todd Austin for an update on the kid from Hong Kong for there was no point in that. As they say in the classics “actions speak louder than words”. You see when you are an aspiring apprentice jockey, it’s hard to show anyone if you have any natural ability in the saddle if you can’t get the opportunity to showcase your talent from getting rides. Todd Austin gave the young man a go and after five winners and two thirds from cumulatively nine rides across two days during Easter he’d been entitled to feel proud that he said “Yes” one day to a phone call in February.

Rest assured it won’t be rocket science to work out who’s first to trackwork at Barcaldine this week – or next week for that matter. Just look for the Hong Kong man in the main picture above.

Today on www.brisbaneracing.com.au there’s the second of four big montages of photos from Marburg last Saturday. On www.sydneyracing.com.au David Clarkson writes on the wet start to The Championships, whilst on www.melbourneracing.com.au Matt Nicholls has his Monday Musings column on Tuesday because of Randwick being transferred from Saturday to Monday.