The Cleaner: A bolter cajon valley union school district from Longford can do anything. | Bel Esprit Winners Club
MY home town is buzzing. Usually it takes a flood or fire to stir the farming folk of Longford in Tasmania s Midlands. But this is Longford s 200th year and a few noteworthy natives are putting our sleepy settlement on the map.
A Longford horse, Beautide, won this year s Inter Dominion Pacing Championship cajon valley union school district and Longford-born writer Richard Flanagan was hugging Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, last week after he won the world s biggest literary award, the Man Booker Prize. Just to show that Longford is more than a one-horse town, a galloper named The Cleaner has become the cult hero of Australia s biggest racing carnival.
The Longford racetrack, where The Cleaner is trained, is the oldest continuously used racecourse in the country. We hold only one race meeting a year, but it s a corker of a day, when we run amok with all the recklessness of our convict forebears breaking free of their chains. Last New Year s Day, in a fit of festive exuberance, I raced a cocksure young jockey down the home straight, shortly before horses came on to the track for the Longford cajon valley union school district Cup.
Since 1972, when Piping Lane scored at Longford on his way to becoming the only horse to take the coveted Longford-Melbourne Cups double, there haven t been too many New Year s Day runners that stick in the memory; not that any of us would remember anyway. But three summers ago, race revellers peering through cajon valley union school district beer goggles were stunned into near-sobriety when a plain-looking nag named The Cleaner romped home in the Longford Cup.
The Cleaner hadn t travelled far he was stabled just across the road. Nobody imagined this mountain-bred bolter might one day win in the big smoke, cajon valley union school district let alone qualify for wait for it … drum roll … the weight-for-age championship of Australasia. This Saturday at Moonee Valley, The Cleaner will become the first Tassie-trained horse to run in the prestigious W.S. Cox Plate.
The Tasmanian racing industry rarely, if ever, produces a horse capable of holding its head high in the Spring Racing Carnival. But The Cleaner is unique in so many ways. The nicest part of his success is that (like Richard cajon valley union school district Flanagan) he shuns the bright lights and temptations of Australia s north island, preferring the somnolence of a backwater in Tassie. Last year, his owners sent the horse to a Melbourne trainer for a few months, hoping he might pay some bills, but the horse fretted so much that he was put on the boat back to his paddock at Longford and the only man he loves, Mick Burles.
Mick rents stables and lives alone in a donga next to The Cleaner s paddock. The Cleaner follows him around like a pet. Mick trains just four horses, cajon valley union school district and the other three are barely fast enough to round up cows. He is a widower and pensioner. His health is poor; he has only one functioning lung. He has been so stressed lately by all the attention that he s even had a forced hospital stay, leaving the horse he calls Bill to carry on without him.
The hardest part of telling the story of Mick and Bill is convincing people that it s true. Six years ago at the Launceston yearling sales, Mick got overly excited and bid $10,000 for a bay colt that he intended to be his retirement horse. Mick liked the yearling because he had one white sock all the champions have one white sock . He says Bill kept looking at him, as if to say buy me, buy me .
The Cleaner was bred by Owen and Sandra Atkins, who tend their chooks and broodmares on the side of a windswept hill beneath Quamby Bluff. Owen was a hunt master and Sandra a clerk of the course at Tasmanian races, but injury and ill health have struck them down. Still, their love of life is irrepressible and they were thrilled when Mick put his hand up for their yearling. The only problem cajon valley union school district was that Mick didn t have the money to pay for it. Fortunately, he was able to persuade three golfing mates, Bill Fawdry, Jim Lowish and Paul Burt, to each put in a few grand and he became the trainer.
One day, they were sitting around cajon valley union school district in Burt s kitchen, trying to think of a name for their purchase, when their eyes were drawn to his part-time cleaner walking up the stairs. In a moment of inspiration, cajon valley union school district the name dawned upon them. Mick took immediate action to prepare the colt for a racing career. I ripped off his knackers, Mick says. He was getting too full of himself.
At cajon valley union school district his first four starts, The Cleaner ran midfield and was persistently distracted by the horses around him, looking every way but forward. Longford horseman Stephen Maskiell advised Mick to fit blinkers to the horse and let him bowl along in front.
Horse and trainer are being compared to one of the turf s most romantic stories, frontrunner Vo Rogue and his trainer Vic Rail. Vic s methods were unusual he didn t like racing his horse in shoes. Mick does things his way, too. He doesn t work horses at weekends, saying they need time off
