 | RACING HISTORY |
YEAR: 2004
FEATURE RACE COMMENT
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| The cover of the Weekly says it all ! |
Cup Day was a cocktail of triumph and tragedy for Ollie and Irene Haines at Addington on Tuesday. Minutes after watching Just An Excuse give Elsu a repeat beating in the Canterbury Draught New Zealand Cup, the Haines’s learned their good friend Graham Higgins had died in the stand nearby.
Higgins was a member of the Cambridge Harness Racing Club, President of the club from 1986 to 1989, and was part of the support team behind Just An Excuse. Ollie, visibly shaken by the death of his old friend, took some consolation on hearing that he'd died calling out ‘Go Mitch’.
It was all part of a turbulent ride the Haines’s have had since winning the New Zealand Cup with Just An Excuse last year when he was a warm favourite. Through one reason and another, Just An Excuse had fallen from favour, and Ollie sat on the sidelines as trainer Robert Mitchell used all his professional skills to put the jigsaw back in place.
The time he spent on the horse was unbelievable. “He has virtually lived with the horse for the past six weeks. “Back and forth to vets, tooth men and farriers. “I’m sure if he’d been in a big stable he wouldn’t be here now,” he said. There was a chewing problem that some attention to his teeth fixed. There was a jarring up problem to his club foot that some special cushioning to his sole fixed. And then there was the abortive mission to Ashburton, which nearly unfixed their whole campaign.
“We were gutted after Ashburton,” said Haines. “It didn’t seem fair; we wanted a rewind. “It wasn’t the fact we didn’t win there, but the fact he didn’t take any part in it.” But Haines didn’t lose faith in Mitchell, nor in the horse. He chided the media for doing so. “I don’t know why you fellas wrote him off,” he said.
Ironically, the Haines’s had been associated with the Butcher stable for 13 years, before Mitchell was given the horse after he’d been tried by Cambridge trainer, Brent Donnelly. The Haines’s had dozens of horses at the time, but five years ago Ollie stuck to a principle and culled more than 30. One of those he couldn’t quit was My Excuse, a Smooth Fella mare and her Live Or Die colt foal.
The foal was Just An Excuse and the culling was successful, because only My Excuse and a Camtastic-Another Excuse 3-year-old remains. Ollie still takes time to bless his Addington luck.
“I’ve only raced two horses here, and they’ve won five Group races.
Just An Excuse has won two Cups and the Superstars, and Smooth Performer won the Oaks and the DB Fillies Final,” he said. And while Todd calls Addington his second home, the Haines’s don’t mind the place either. They could, however, do without the emotion and high drama that came with their visit this time.
Credit: Mike Grainger writing in the HR Weekly