Straddie the dream
TOOWOOMBA horseman Jake Capewell once had designs on being an NRL star like his brother Kurt, but he could go one up if he qualifies his stable star Sir Warwick for the Stradbroke Handicap in June by winning Saturday’s BRC Sprint at Doomben.
Capewell comes from footballing stock – all four brothers have played at a high level but his slight build held him back so he headed towards horses instead.
Away from the bright lights of Suncorp Stadium where Kurt stars for the Broncos, Capewell goes about his business as one of the most respected pre-trainers in the country at his Westbrook property, just outside of Toowoomba.
“I spent a couple of years at the Gold Coast with the Burleigh Bears chasing the dream not long after I left school,” Capewell said.
“I didn’t quite get as big as the other brothers – I have three of them and they took all the football ability and the size too.
“I think they beat me to the dinner table each night or something. We were all quite heavily involved with footy; obviously Kurt is doing well and the other two (Liam and Sam) have won premierships at Ipswich when Kurt was there.”
Such are his skills with unbroken horses, Capewell developed a reputation as a “reschooler” of rogue horses, which eventually saw him take out a training licence of his own, where he has some six horses racing.
That pales into insignificance to the work he does for other trainers, however, where he schools around 70 babies at any given time, preparing them for a career in racing.
Trainer Tony Gollan gets Capewell to put the finishing touch on all of his new horses before they make their way to his Eagle Farm stables.
“Our main business is our early education and the spelling but I think I always wanted to give the training a go. We are starting to put a bit more time into that and as we go forward we can develop that side of things a bit more,” Capewell said.
“Tony actually trained out of this barn I am in now at the training centre when Toowoomba went to cushion (track). After that he went to Brisbane (Tony’s father) Darryl Gollan pre-trained Tony’s out of here plus a few of his own and then Darryl got sick so Lindsay Hatch started doing it out of the same barn again, then I moved in once Lindsay went to Toowoomba.
“We do pretty much all of (Gollan’s) breaking in and then their first two educational preps before they go to Eagle Farm.
“It is a sensational little training centre, it is quiet and has all the things to work the babies around.”