Racing: Thrill of the chase still fresh for family

Australia's three-day May racing carnival at Warrnambool in Victoria has a simple marketing tag: "Where heroes are created."

Last Thursday, Taranaki 10-year-old Frankoo Verymuch bounded from obscurity to win the Grand Annual Steeplechase, a marathon event over 33 jumps and 5500m.

"Frank" was suddenly the talk of the nation. Sports shows on television and radio were buzzing, talkback callers wanted to know more. He made the national news.

Frank two days earlier won the Brierly Steeplechase at the same venue, which elevated him to favourite for the carnival's feature.

Never would he have anticipated running in front of a 20,000 crowd in a town so far removed from his Taranaki birthplace of Rahotu. And a short-priced favourite as well.

As the story unfolded, detailing Frank's path to the racetrack, everyone wanted a piece of him.

Aussies just love racing stories like this. A horse plucked from a country paddock for life on the pony club circuit; cajoled from owner Amie Bingham two years later as he blossomed into a nice-looking type; the story behind the name Frankoo Verymuch (the truth later); the brilliant judgment of trainer John Wheeler to enter him at all and the expert skills of jockey Brett Scott.

"There were a lot more tales about Frank than made the news," Amie Bingham said.

"The day I brought him home the paddock boss [her other horse, Flynn] lined him up and gave him such a beating we thought we would have to put him down. His knee was so banged up I cried for days but he came right slowly and he had his own paddock after that.

"And remember the time he dumped mum [Helen, who was in Warrnambool too] and she landed on her hand and broke it."

The fact that Amie was in the throes of completing a clinical psychology degree caught press imagination. Particularly the topic of her thesis: The benefits of increasing choice and independence in children with disabilities when working with the Riding for the Disabled.

Amie's late dash with brother Zac from New Zealand to Warrnambool last Wednesday for the Grand Annual tickled them as well. (Their sister Jane missed out because she couldn't find her passport; still can't).

"It was pretty hectic," Amie said.

"We struck a racing-mad Asian taxi driver who, once we told him the story about Frank, gave us a ride from the airport to the railway station for $15 in his corporate limo.

"We had no idea where Warrnambool was, so had turns at sleeping to make sure we didn't miss the station. We found out later it was the last stop on the line."

Both were blown away by the day of the big race.

Said Zac: "Just being there was an experience. The crowd was huge (20,000 attended in a town of 25,000) and the atmosphere was something else. For our horse to win was special; it's a day I'll never forget."

Success at the 'Bool' is nothing new to either Wheeler or Scott. It was the pair's third Grand Annual following Fox Boy (1997) and The Sundance Kid (1998). The Brierly win was Wheeler's fourth after Famous Way (1996), Foxboy (1997) and The Sundance Kid (1998). There have been similar spoils for Wheeler at Australia's other great jumping carnival each Easter at Oakbank in South Australia.

When we began racing this horse John said: "Don't think he'll be ready to race quickly just because he is a seven-year-old. He has to learn as much about racing as a two-year-old."

Spells from training through shin soreness and stone bruises among others all came and went as Frank progressed through to last week.

Said Wheeler: "But this year he came up better than ever and it was not a hard decision to take him."

The week capped a magic spell for Scott, who rode Karasi to win the world's richest jumping race in Japan three weeks earlier.

Now for the name Frankoo Verymuch. First up he was called Frank after former All Black Frank Bunce, whom Amie took a teenage shine to. The racing name comes from the last line of a joke when a customer complained to a Chinese takeaway owner that the chicken in his order was "rubbery".

"Frankoo Verymuch," was the cook's reply.

- NZPA