Freedman keen for April start on Coast
IF COVID restrictions allow it to happen, Lee Freedman hopes to be operational at his Gold Coast base by April as he returns to the place where he trained his first winner Blockade back in 1983.
“I bought some horses up for my old man (Tony) one winter,” the five-times Melbourne Cup-winning trainer said. “It wasn’t a permanent arrangement but I camped there in the early days and had a winner.”
Many years later he had a successful satellite stable at Eagle Farm, a venue where he won the first $1 million Stradbroke Handicap with Danasinga in 1996 and launched the career of superstar Mahogany in the winter of 1993.
Now the Hall of Famer, who trained the great Makybe Diva to two of her three Melbourne Cup wins, has decided to move back to Queensland.
He is frustrated by the diminishing industry in Singapore, where he has spent the past three years, and is keen to make a lifestyle change to be closer to his family.
He is also keen to be part of a Queensland industry he sees as gression.
“It’s a combination of a lot of things. Clearly it’s that (lifestyle) and also there seems to be a bit of a resurgence in Queensland racing at the moment,” he said.
“There’s more interest at government level and also committee and administrative level to really fire it up after what was a difficult period a few years back.
“It has a bright future. It has big population growth, which is always good to support a racing industry and there seems to be genuine enthusiasm. making good pro
“It’s a great industry earner for government, so it’s an industry worth looking after.”
Freedman, 64, said the global COVID situation made it difficult to put a timeline on when he will be up and running on the Gold Coast but he intends for it to be in the first half of 2021.
“I would like to be operational in April. If that means we have something ready to go to the races in April that would be great,” he said.
Though he made his name in Victoria, Freedman points out he has a few links to Queensland including his mum Del, who celebrated her 88th birthday on Saturday. “My mother ( who now lives in Victoria) was a Queenslander and still is ... her final meal will be a bucket of King Prawns and a long neck,” Freedman said.
“I got taken up (to Queensland) as a child … I still remember vaguely driving through canefield after canefield and then coming across this pub on a sand dune with this great big long beach. There was no sky scrapers and that was called Surfers Paradise.”
Freedman has also cated he will be open training partnership. indito a