I’M JUST A BAGGY-ARSED, HOBBY HORSE TRAINER
STEVE Tregea only considers himself a hobby trainer. But he has a horse a billionaire would be proud to call his own. Sheik Mohammed famously spent three decades and tens of millions of dollars trying to land the Melbourne Cup.
Now the softly spoken Tregea has the chance to win Australian racing’s greatest prize in his first attempt when Incentivise takes on Flemington on Tuesday.
Bred on Queensland’s Darling Downs, Incentivise’s record has grown to unimaginable heights from what was an uninspiring start to his career, when he was beaten by a combined 25 lengths in three starts before the light switch went on. Now the one-time knock-kneed foal is set to start the shortestpriced Melbourne Cup favourite since the legendary Phar Lap in 1930.
After winning by nine lengths at Eagle Farm in June, big-time owners Brae Sokolski and Ozzie Kheir bought a 50 per cent share in Incentivise for around $600,000, with an eye towards the spring features. He would be transferred to Peter Moody in Victoria, while former trainer Tregea remained the managing owner.
Rarely do horses ascend to such heights where they assume public ownership.
But Incentivise will carry the hopes of the nation on Tuesday as two country Queenslanders in Moody and Tregea - along with a jockey who was down on his luck in Brett Prebble - attempt to pull off the fairytale story.
“I was hoping all the hype would get transferred over to Moody because he knows how to handle it well,” Tregea said.
“I’m just a baggy-arsed hobby horse trainer, as I keep calling myself.
“Melbourne Cups, Caulfield Cups and Cox Plates as far as I am concerned are too far out of reach for the average bloke – it is a million to one.
“It just shows you what can happen when you give horses enough time - one in a million can surprise you.
“It is remarkable, but that is what keeps dreams alive in the racing game, stories like this.
“I haven’t really had time to catch up with it, to be honest. “Next year I might.
“He is such an unlikely type. He looks like a stayer, but he isn’t the strongest beast in the world. He is not really a horse that is a great doer.”
No matter who you talk to, the consensus about Incentivise is the same: he is a genetic freak.
Not much in his breeding suggested he would be a staying machine who runs his rivals into the dirt at any point in the race, but it happens to be his best asset.
Chasing value for money, Tregea sent his broodmare Miss Argyle to freshman sire Shamus Award for $10,000 before he had any progeny on the racetrack.
The result even surprised Tregea, who puts significant time and effort into breaking down pedigrees to limit the chances of failure.
“It was only Shamus Award’s second year and he hadn’t had a runner, if I recall, because I followed his yearlings when they went through the sales and they weren’t very much liked because they were plain types – not unlike Incentivise,” Tregea said.
“When Shamus Award won the Cox Plate (2013), I thought it was a fantastic win. He led all the way, and he was a fast stayer.
“One of the things I look for in a stallion is to have speed. I don’t like those dour horses very much because you have to wait too long, and ironically we have ended up with a very dour horse.
“To get a horse like him,
discovers how a selfdescribed ‘hobby trainer’ helped shape a champion
out of a sprinting mare, it’s not really what you expect, is it – to be lining up in the Melbourne Cup? You’d have to say he will run the distance, it is just a question of how well does he run it against some of the hardened stayers?
“He can come up against an old handicapper or an old strong horse, and that brings him undone.
“But if things continue the way they are, it is hard to see him not running it out. My belief has always been the further the races go, the better he will get. Whether that extends to 3200m or 4000m or 4800m, I don’t know - but we’re about to find out.”
While beating your rivals out of sight in Queensland is one thing, doing it in Victoria during the spring carnival is another.
Those who slammed his 12-length win in the Group 3 Tattersall’s Cup at Eagle Farm in June as nothing more than a handy horse beating up on plodders are now eating humble pie as Incentivise continues to make a mockery of his doubters.
So are there regrets selling a 50 per cent share in what is now one of the hottest horses on the planet?
No. It’s all business for Tregea, who is happy being a passenger as Moody takes Incentivise on a wondrous ride.
With Covid-19 travel restrictions causing havoc and the day-to-day demands of running his Windermere Stud operation near Toowoomba, Tregea says there is no way he could have set Incentivise on the path to stardom by himself.
Having also recently sold the promising Command’n’conquer to Hong Kong, where he is quickly becoming one of the better horses in the region, Tregea is well aware of the commercial realities of breeding and training horses where more turn out to be slow than world-beaters. “I’m still happy,” Tregea said of the sale.
“I would have been just as happy to send him to Peter and keep him myself, but it seemed a sensible, middle-ofthe-road thing to do.
“It was a business decision at the end of the day.
“At that stage we were thinking it was a possibility he could get as far as he has.
“But you don’t imagine you’re going to be favourite in the Melbourne Cup six months out, do you?”
Nothing has been straightforward since, though.
Incentivise’s flight to Melbourne was canned, so he had to be taken by float from Toowoomba to Melbourne.
Then star jockey and threetime Melbourne Cup winner Glen Boss was denied entry into Victoria, setting connections on a hunt for a replacement jockey.
Once Prebble was selected, Incentivise crab-walked around the Victorian way of going, unable to get on his correct leg.
It raised alarm bells. “Everything was going to be new to him,” Tregea said.
“He had to go down to a new trainer, a new rider in the opposite direction.
“But once he got away with the first one in the Makybe Diva, he was away.
“Up until then I had grave doubts about what might or might not happen.”
History now awaits Incentivise as he looks to take his winning streak to 10 races and add a Melbourne Cup to what is fast becoming a stacked trophy cabinet.