From dag to Boss man
AS Glen Boss attempts to make history at Flemington today, his former master Kaye Tinsley still admires how the kid who walked into his stable as a poorly dressed raw teenager with stars in his eyes went on to be the superstar rider he remains today.
Boss rides Sir Dragonet in the Cup and a win would put him on level footing with Harry White and Bobby Lewis as the most successful jockey in the Cup’s history, having won three times on Makybe
Diva from 2003-05. The Cup sits alongside a cavalcade of big-race wins, which comprise 92 Group 1s here and abroad, as well as Australia’s newest richest races, The Everest and Golden Eagle.
He has become one of Queensland’s greatest ever sportsmen in a career now spanning more than 30 years.
Boss started his career in country Queensland before transferring his indentures to Tinsley on the Gold Coast in the late 1980s.
He established himself in the top three or four riders in
Queensland before setting his sights on the big smoke, breaking through for his first Group 1 win on Telesto in the 1994 Chipping Norton Stakes.
“I couldn’t speak more highly of him. What he’s achieved, he’s achieved himself,” Tinsley said.
“Sometimes you don’t have to be on the best horse, it’s what you do for that horse and that’s what’s happened to Glen. He can make things happen.
“And he was prepared work at it.
“He would be the hardest to worker I’ve ever had. He never stopped.”
But oddly enough, riding feats aren’t the first thing that leaps out in T i n s l e y ’ s m e m o r y when he reminisces about his star graduate. It’s his first day at the races after joining the stable.
“His dress. How he was dressed to go to the races. My wife (Lorraine) pulled him up,” Tinsley said.
“She wouldn’t let him go out the door looking that way. Our apprentices had to be well d r e s s e d . She ended up taking him shopping, buying all the appropriate gear. It’s funny, because to this day, he’s the flashiest dresser of them all.”
Lorraine takes up the story. “He thought he was going to a disco I think, instead of the races,” she said. “He became a very dapper dresser after that.
“He was always a man on a mission. He knew what he wanted and where he was heading. He worked very, very hard for it.”
Tinsley, 78, saddled his last runner in 2007 and is now happily enjoying retirement on the Gold Coast. He and Lorraine, or ‘ Chic’ as she is known, have watched proudly as the Boss career played out in such spectacular fashion.