Racing: Jumps family fails to convert galloping Guv

Comeback galloper Leica Guv may be surrounded by people whose second nature is to jump horses over obstacles, but don't expect to ever see him in that role.

The 2001 Mercedes Derby winner, who returned from a two-year retirement to win at Ellerslie on Saturday, is trained by Cambridge horsewoman Emma-Lee Browne and raced in partnership with her husband David.

She is the daughter and sister respectively of internationally successful showjumping riders Jeff and Katie McVean. He is the grandson of those doyens of jumps racing, Ken and Ann Browne, and a brother of successful jumps jockey Missy Browne.

True to the family tradition, Leica Guv has seen a jump or two, but that's the start and finish of his prospects of becoming a jumper.

"When we were in Brisbane with him two years ago he was going nowhere and I decided to give him some schooling in the hope it might turn him around," Emma-Lee Browne related after Leica Guv had run away with Saturday's Crombie Lockwood Mile.

"He was hopeless; no, he was actually scary. And the worse he got, the faster he wanted to go. Not for me thanks."

Leica Guv was trained by Jeff McVean for his Victorian owner-breeder Bob Scarborough when he won the Mercedes Derby, Avondale and Lindauer Guineas and topped the staying category of his age group on the 2001-02 Free Handicap.

But it wasn't until he was a five-year-old that he showed anything near the same form, when he dead-heated with Penny Gem in the November 2003 Counties Cup. By that stage McVean had been joined in a training partnership by his daughter.

Later that season he undertook a Queensland campaign, but that and, seemingly, his racing career ended with a last and second-last placing in the Doomben and Brisbane Cups.

More than a year went by in a spelling paddock, but the stroppy gelding's wasted energies proved too much for his former co-trainer and she successfully sought permission to put him back into work.

She was by then the wife of a polo-playing farmer whose hill-country property at Kiwitahi, south-east of Cambridge, was the perfect change of environment for the recycled racehorse.

The only recent time that Leica Guv has been given conventional trackwork was for a brief period before he made his raceday return at Paeroa last month. He finished second on that occasion, third when stepped up to 1600m two weeks ago, and made a quantum leap in fitness when he won over the same distance on Saturday by more than six lengths.

The birth 11 weeks ago of the couple's daughter Chloe meant David Browne has been in charge of the daily training routine, something his wife was more than happy to pay due credit to on Saturday.

"David has done a great job and the bonus with him doing the riding is that on raceday the horse has a lot less to carry than the 90kg he has been used to," she said.

Opie Bosson, who rode Leica Guv when he won the Northland Breeders' Stakes nearly five years ago, gave his mount a saloon passage under topweight of 58kg, tracking the leader All's Well to the turn and taking over with ease.

"He didn't love that ground but he got through it okay," he said. "We had things under control a fair way out."

Leica Guv hit the line 6 1/4 lengths clear of All's Well, who was comfortably clear of the battling favourite Danz Star.

Now that he has refound winning form Leica Guv will be kept going, with the $30,000 Te Awamutu Cup (1600m) next on his winter agenda on July 8.