Racing: Trainer turns down cash to follow Derby dream

MIKE DILLON looks at a Derby candidate and checks what's happening on the track.

Leeane Poulson has been having sleepless nights.

Not worrying about trying to win Wednesday's $350,000 Mercedes Derby at Ellerslie; worrying about the hundreds of thousands of dollars she has refused for her Derby hopeful.

But then Poulson knows horse racing is built on dreams.

Never mind the need for a new car.

Never mind the worry of how she will put her 14-year-old daughter Evelyn through vet school.

Never mind she has only two other horses in her Takanini stable.

And never mind that if Athens doesn't win New Zealand's finest classic race, she says she will have to do something serious about maybe getting a job to supplement the family income.

The winning post at the Derby is all Poulson has dreamed of for the last nine months.

On Wednesday the Takanini mother of two faces - with an aggregate 10 wins from her stable in the last two and a half years - two of New Zealand's finest trainers Roger James and Murray Baker who have the Derby favourites Sixty Seconds and Barborough.

The enormity of the task facing Poulson does not appear to faze her as she quietly discusses her pride and joy.

"I have never really been a money person," she says, explaining how she turned down huge offers for Athens a few months ago until she took the smart 3-year-old off the market because the Derby dream was getting just too close.

"The satisfaction of simply having a good horse is enough."

If you gently prod Poulson, she admits that probably the underlying factor of her not selling her 70 per cent share in Athens and making her life a whole lot easier was lack of desire.

"I would put a price on him when asked and the people wouldn't come back.

"They would come back after he had run another good race and want him for the original price and by then I had added a few more thousand."

After his good fourth in the Lindauer Guineas at Ellerslie Athens was removed from the market.

"They have more than matched my highest asking price since then, but I have said no. I have probably never really wanted to sell him."

To put a new slant on an old racing line, it's now the Derby or the bush.

If you are going to have dreams, don't put a ceiling on them.

At the beginning of this year, Poulson thought Derby - actually the $A1 million Victoria Derby, run three days before the Melbourne Cup.

"We were going to take him to Melbourne then, hopefully, bring him back for the Derby at Ellerslie."

To that end, every 2-year-old start in the autumn was to educate and prepare Athens to run 2400m.

Even to the extent of almost undermining the horse's chances in rich races like the Eclipse Stakes and Ellerslie Sires Produce Stakes by dropping him to the back of the field each time to teach him to settle.

"But we gave away the idea of Melbourne after the Lindauer Guineas because he got very hyped up that day and we figured he wasn't ready for an atmosphere like Flemington."

Poulson has never wanted to do anything but train horses. She was apprenticed as a jockey to her father Harry Jackson, rode in 40 trials, but says she was not good enough to ride raceday.

"I had a pony and never went to pony club. Never wanted to, all I ever wanted to do was gallop him fast with my sister."

Going up against New Zealand's best without any formal training is a daunting task. Most people would say life has been tough, but Poulson doesn't see it that way.

"I've got everything I want."

Poulson admits she has made mistakes, but gives every indication of having learned from them.

Athens. she says, was only 90 per cent right when he won the Highview Waikato Guineas, run the same day as the Victoria Derby.

"But we've got him at 100 per cent now."

In-form rider Gary Grylls has climbed off his Avondale Guineas winner Leica Guv to ride Athens following a flashing late run into fourth in the group one Bayer Classic last start.

A win on Wednesday, Poulson, says, will take the pressure off having to search for more horses for her stable and stop her and husband Tim dipping into their savings to feed and clothe the family.

Or if Athens doesn't win, but runs a huge race, there is always the offer to buy.

The racetrack is described as the boulevard of broken dreams.

Except Leeane Poulson's aren't broken yet.