Racing: A dream that turned to horror

Sam McRae falls under his horse and is dragged along the Southland track.

On a crisp autumn morning in Southland, Sam McRae would normally have been one of the 15 staff working out horses at the Branxholme stables behind his home.

Riding, feeding, and washing the feisty animals, 16-year-old McRae would repeat the pattern with up to 20 horses a day, all the while taking mental notes on each one's performance and demeanour.

He genuinely liked the horses, says his boss, trainer and stable owner, Brian Ridley. "He rode well and that's obviously a really important part of being a jockey. But he had a real way with the horses, too. He cared how they were, you could tell that by the way he worked. The horses responded well to it. It made for a better workout."

Thursday dawned sunny and clear at Ridley's stables near Invercargill. It's a quiet rural setting, lush and green, where the dominant sound is the rhythmic clip-clop of the horses walking around the stable are and down to the track, punctuated by their spasmodic snorting. Early mornings were not the favourite part of McRae's job - his employers grin and claim to have many "getting Sam out of bed stories" - but on a day like Thursday he would have been be well into a workout by 6.30am.

This day was different. McRae was not out working the horses. He lay inside the house in his coffin, victim of a racing accident last Saturday. Soon he would take what Ridley called his "final ride".

Amanda Swart, stablehand at Branxholme, returns to the stables with a telltale strip of grey mud stretching from her helmet to her boots. She has been tossed off her mount into a puddle on the track.

Ridley's training partner Brendon Black ambles over for a quiet word, checking she is all right. She laughs, he smiles and leaves her to it. Despite throwing Swart "for no particular reason" on the walk back from the workout, the horse is quite calm and Swart has only a bruised ego.

Falling off a horse is "almost as common as breathing" in the racing game, Ridley says. But it hurts and it can result in serious injuries. To die during a fall is not common.

"I think in the past 100 years of racing in Southland there have only been three deaths. It just doesn't happen that often. It's all set up so that it doesn't happen," Ridley says.

And retired champion jockey Lance O'Sullivan, who had nearly 14,000 career rides, said this week that the thought of being dragged was so horrific that jockeys never discussed it.

Riding horses was not new to Sam McRae, who grew up surrounded by them. His parents, Gareth and Robyn, are well respected in their industry. Nine years ago they moved from Southland to Sydney to work for one of Australia's leading trainers, Gai Waterhouse. From there the family moved to Macau, off China, to work with another top Australian trainer, Gary Moore.

Sam made friends easily and was a popular teenager within the expat racing circuit in Macau.

But despite living a horse-focused lifestyle and being of the right build for a racing career, the McRae's knew their son would not be able to fulfil his dreams in Macau, where only Asian jockeys could gain apprenticeships.

That led to their return home last October.

It was timely for Brian Ridley. He needed someone to manage his Branxholme stables and his old friends the McRaes were keen. And in January he took on their only son as his apprentice.

"Sam was riding real well," Ridley says. "He had a few wins and places at trials and he was certainly well ready for the races. He had a fantastic style and you could just tell by looking at him that he was in tune with the horses he was riding.

"I think he was going to be a great rider. He had it all going for him and he loved it, he really loved it."

McRae was first past the winning-post for the first time at an Invercargill race meeting in the middle of last month. The elation of that first win, he told his boss later, spurred him on so much that he won his next ride too.

The taste for winning did not leave him and he was looking forward immensely to his next ride at the Riverton meeting last Saturday. He walked the track on Friday to check it out and conferred with Ridley about the turns and the turf.

But tragedy struck not long after the gates opened. McRae's ride, Queen's Evidence, clipped the heels of the horse in front and stumbled. The move caught McRae unaware and he was propelled over the horse's shoulder.

The stirrup iron twisted, preventing McRae's foot coming free. Then began a sickening 900m drag along the track, his 46kg body flopping along, his head banging on the ground.

On course, Gareth McRae was watching. Before he knew what he was doing he was running to catch up with the horse. At Branxholme, Robyn was watching the race on television, her heart pounding with every stride Queen' s Evidence took.

On the track, jockeys Laura Parker and Kalai Selvan could see McRae was unconscious and unable to get free. Abandoning the race they tried desperately to get Queen's Evidence to stop.

It took two long minutes.

McRae died in Southland Hospital that night. His head and chest injuries were so severe that there was no chance of his surviving a transfer to Dunedin Hospital for surgery.

His parents and Brian Ridley and Brendon Black gathered at his bedside. They phoned his sisters, Casey and Tessa, who both live overseas, and held the phone to his ear as the girls said their tearful goodbyes.

Half an hour later McRae slipped away.

Choking back the tears, Black said it was one of the saddest moments of his life.

"I was honoured that they would even let me be there but they said we were all family. And they are. There is a big part of the family gone and I don't know how long it will be before we can come back from that."

On Tuesday, he slept with McRae's riding whip under his pillow. The death touched people throughout the racing industry around the world.

"I'm not sure why it's big news," Ridley said.

"Two boys were killed in Melbourne racing the other day and I didn't even know about that. The story about Sam has made news all over the world. It is testament to what kind of boy he was, I think.

"You always say someone will be missed. But Sam, yeah, he was only 16, but he'd given so much and was so highly regarded. He was a kid but he was also an adult."

Friends from Macau held a memorial service on Thursday and at the Randwick racecourse in Sydney a minute's silence was observed on Monday.

Similar tributes were made in New Zealand.

McRae should have been riding for Ridley on Wednesday at the second day of the Riverton meeting.

The horse, Art Scene, won. And Art Features - McCrae's favourite - won the previous race.

Both riders carried McCrae's whip and the other jockeys formed a guard of honour to see them back into the birdcage after their races - a gesture they repeated at McRae's funeral on Thursday while the commentary of his first winning race echoed out through the doors of the church.

"If there's one thing its taught me, it's to always do what you want to do. Life is short," Black said.

"Sam taught us that and I won't forget it."