Out of the race
Retiring horse trainer Niall Phillips reflects on the highs and lows of a racing career that ranged from Melbourne Cup success to the day-to-day stress that left him on the brink of suicide
NIALL Phillips is happy with where the full stop sits at the end of his racing story. For a young lad growing up in Ireland, he never dreamt he’d finish up living in Australia, play a massive part in a Melbourne Cup win and train a stack of winners out of his Geelong stable.
An exhausted Phillips called time on his 15-year training career at the end of the 2016/17 racing season, deciding not to renew his license for another season.
He wants to start a new chapter — one that doesn’t involve 4am alarms, long trips in the car and the stress that comes with being a horse trainer. It’s time for something else. “For the first time in a long time, I can play daddy and take my girls to school,” Phillips said.
“I’m looking forward to seeing how the other half lives.
“Am I scared? Of course I am. But it is exciting.
“People ask me ‘what are you going to do? Where are you going to go?’ and I just say ‘I don’t know, I’ve got no idea’.”
For everything racing has given him, it has taken plenty away.
Phillips recently split with the love of his life Sharon and has missed doing dad things with his girls Lauren and Leah.
No one can ever fully understand the stress that comes with being a horse trainer until you are one.
The horse you pin all your hopes on for your stable, your financial future, can break down at any time.
Track riders are hard to find, owners even harder. The mega stables are spreading their wings too.
You can’t take a horse to Terang, Echuca or even Mildura these days without bumping into names such as Darren Weir and David Hayes.
The media paints the racing industry as one of glitz, glamour, fame and fortune.
For every one Weir, there are 20 others doing it tough.
Phillips admits the stress of training came to a head at Easter. He even considered ending his life.
“The last year things caught up with me and Sharon, and we drifted apart. I got pretty down,” Phillips said.
“Easter was a bad time for me. I hit rock bottom. I just lost all confidence in myself, I lost my way. You work seven days a week and there’s nothing for you. Things were upside down. I tried to take my own life.
“Lucky enough, I got through it and I think about how low I did get.
“I just think it’s the workload we put on ourselves and we get that down. It’s changed my outlook on life.
“I missed out on a lot of things with my kids because you sacrifice a lot for the industry with the hours you do.
“Like recently I went to Echuca and you leave home at 4.30am and
you’re not back until 8.30pm.
“There are really long days. The next day you’re knackered because you can’t catch up on any sleep.”
But the full Phillips story is not one of doom and gloom. Far from it.
Phillips was born into a family of 12 in Ireland. He was one of seven brothers and a sister that followed their dad into the racing industry. He left school at 15 to start riding. “It was always in my blood,” Phillips said.
“You grew up, left school at 15 to start riding horses.
“I did a little bit of race riding when I was 16 but always had weight problems. I didn’t expect to kick any goals but it was just basically you are going through the process of learning about horses.
“The opportunities in Ireland were just so hard and it’s so competitive because we’d race . . . four to five times a week. Out of the seven races, there’d be three to four flat races.
“It was always hard for a kid who had weight problems.”
Phillips built up his experience in the industry at Ireland’s racing mecca, The Curragh, and he moved up from stablehand to travelling foreman.
He then overheard a conversation with a trainer telling one of his stable workers that he should look at spending some time in Australia. That got him thinking about such a move.
Then his brother David returned from a spell Down Under with 1993 Melbourne Cup winner Vintage Crop.
David had travelled with the star stayer on behalf of master trainer Dermot Weld and had come back raving about the opportunities in Australia.
“Deep down, I didn’t say anything to my family members, but I was thinking about leaving Ireland for a while just to get away from the winter,” Phillips said.
“One thing led to another and before I knew it I was on a plane coming to Australia on my own. “It was a bit scary, a bit daunting.” So where did Phillips’ racing journey in Australia begin? With none other than Cups King Bart Cummings. Talk about an initiation. “It was a real eye-opener,” Phillips said.
“I got there 4am and it was just pitch black, you couldn’t see anything and they just throw you on a horse and then say ‘well you can ride so off you go’.
“I came from The Curragh where everyone goes out together. All of a sudden you’re sent out on a horse.
“All I remember that first morning was walking out on the track at Randwick and all I could hear was horses’ hooves galloping.
“I was thinking to myself ‘where the heck are they coming from?’ I didn’t know where I was going.”
Those five months with the Cummings stable would form the base for everything he needed to know about Australian racing.
“We don’t clock them as much in Ireland (in gallops). We just go on different gauges and different speeds,” he said.
“Over here it’s really done by the clock. I had to learn all of that.
“I spent a lot of time riding with Peter Ryan. He was great to me, showing me times.
“I had to get an understanding of Australian horses as well. The racing here is completely different.
“To me, it’s 600m racing regardless of whether it’s a 1200m or a 2000m race. The tracks are also so tight compared to Ireland.”
After venturing down to Victoria with a couple of horses for Cumming’s son Anthony, Phillips decided to stay in town.
He joined up with Michael Healy and worked with him out of his Freshwater Creek base.
After a short trip back to Ireland, Phillips returned to Australia with the goal of returning to race riding. He wanted to ride a winner for his dad.
Surf Coast for Nigel Keat gave him that opportunity at Terang. And despite what Phillips describes as a slaughter of a ride, Surf Coast got up. Mission accomplished. His dad had bragging rights in the pub that night when he told his mates of Niall’s win.
Phillips retired from race riding soon after that.
“When I rode that winner, Dad said to me ‘first winner is the hardest, blah, blah, blah’, but I said I’d had enough and that I was over it,” Phillips said.
Stints with Peter Tennent and Mark Bairstow followed. His time with Bairstow was especially fruitful, with the duo collecting 54 winners in one season.
However, they had a disagreement over the future of the stable and Phillips decided to move on.
He picked up a job working 4pm to midnight at Godfrey Hirst. Talk about being a sucker for terrible hours.
But with plenty of time to kill in the morning before work, Phillips found himself working for Winchelsea trainer Simon Royal.
Then in 2002 Phillips was lured into training in his own right.
“When I started training my brother Dave said to me ‘what possessed you to take out a trainer’s licence? It’s really hard’. I said, ‘the opportunity is there. I don’t want to look back and think I should have tried’,” he said.
At the same time, Niall also played a key role in Media Puzzle’s Melbourne Cup success.
Dave had ventured out to Australia with the tough stayer as part of Weld’s training staff.
They had targeted the Geelong Cup as Media Puzzle’s way of earning a spot in the race that stops a nation.
Niall’s local knowledge would play a huge part in the riding instructions given to star hoop Damien Oliver, who took Media Puzzle forward from his barrier.
Dave told Ollie to go out and win the race with full authority, and he obliged, setting a new track record in the process.
“It was probably more of a buzz with Dave coming out with the horse that year. We got into a bit of trouble with the change of tactics but it paid off in the long run with the horse getting into the Melbourne Cup,” Phillips said.
Tragedy would then strike with Oliver’s brother Jason dying after falling in a trial in Perth just days before the Melbourne Cup.
Oliver would use all of his courage and ride Media Puzzle to one of the most emotional Melbourne Cup wins in history.
In 2011, movie The Cup was made documenting Oliver’s win.
Jersey Boys musical star Bobby Fox would play Niall in it.
Having someone play him in a movie still gives Phillips a chuckle.
“I met Bobby when they were at Geelong doing the filming,” Phillips said.
“We were having a chat and I asked him if he’d done any movies before and he said it was his first and I said ‘well it might be your last’.”
Horse owners John Viney and George Draper would form the base of Phillips’ stable when he was out on his own.
It was a humble start with four horses — Aussie Loti, Cedar Springs, Romantic Springs and Candy Cores — they’d all go on to have solid careers, winning multiple races under the Phillips name.
He toiled hard over 15 years, always performing well in the Geelong trainers premiership. At its peak, Niall’s stable had 18 horses.
Costa In The Glen was the best horse Phillips trained, while Candy Cores had the potential but suffered injury problems.
In recent times, Mr Dashing had a stack of untapped potential but died from pneumonia after having surgery.
Draper owned Phillips’ first winner Aussie Loti and was also the owner of his last, High Diamonds.
It is only fitting that one of Phillips’ most loyal owners would bookend his training career.
It was Dave back in 2002 who first asked Phillips what he wanted to achieve from his training career.
“I said ‘whether I do it for a year, 10 years or 20 years, if I give it away and meet somebody down the street and they want to shake your hand and buy you a drink, then I’ve achieved something,” Phillips said.
It’s a fair bet to say he has achieved much more than that.
“Easter was a bad time for me. I hit rock bottom. I just lost all confidence in myself, I lost my way. You work seven days a week and there’s nothing for you. Things were upside down. I tried to take my own life. “