| FEATURE RACE COMMENT |
YEAR: 2011
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For practical reasons, Gay McClymont chose to watch her race at Addington on Saturday from the rooftop of the new stabling area. It was certainly an occasion for the Gore trainer, being the first time a horse in her colours had started at Christchurch Headquarters, but on the tote her trotter Larix wasn't given much of a show and McClymont wasn't about to argue. "I knew we weren't going to be needed in the birdcage after the race, so I thought we may as well watch from a spot closer to where she'd be coming back in," McClymont said.
From her head-on vantage point McClymont could see Larix had put herself in the finish, but it wasn't until a few moments later when course commentator Mark McNamara confirmed it that the reality sank in. "That was a huge thrill," she said. "You take a win wherever you can get it but to win one at Addington is certainly a buzz."
McClymont and her husband Nick didn't have much time to celebrate their victory in the $25,000 Group 3 Kahdon Four-Year-Old Trotters Championship, because as soon as they were finished in the swabbing box they loaded Larix onto the float and began the journey home. "It doesn't take long to come back to earth when you've got a farm," she said. "We've got hay on the ground, and we've managed to get some of it in but there's still half a paddock to do. It's rained a lot down there lately, and every time the hay starts to dry out enough it'll pour again; it's very frustrating."
The McClymonts live in Gore and own a 200 acre sheep farm at Whiterig about three kilometres away. At peak there's up to 900 ewes and 200 hoggets to manage, but as Nick is a full-time tanker driver for Fonterra, Gay does most of the work herself. "I've always said that the farm has to come first and the horses second, because the farm is what pays the bills," she said. "Things have had to change a little bit this season though." That's because Larix has really put McClymont on the map during 2010/11, winning four of her 10 outings. She's been a 'hit or miss' type of trotter ever since her career began last March though, evidenced by her record of six victories from 16 starts in total but not a single placing amongst them.
McClymont and her mum Rae Given bred Larix themselves. The 4-year-old Safely Kept mare is out of Tamarix, who they also bred, and McClymont trained her in the last four of her five victories. "Brendon McLellan helped me with Tamarix early on," she recalled. "And she actually started out as a great pacer - running a quarter in twenty-six at the Gore workouts one day; we thought we had an Oaks filly. But she never tried an inch once she got to the races, so in frustration I stopped in the middle of training one day and threw the hopples away. She had a few issues and took a bit to get organised, and at one stage when we were busy with lambing I gave her to Brendon."
Tamarix ironically won her first race while boarding at McLellan's, and the same thing happened with Larix too. McClymont broke her wrist badly in a shearing accident and was in plaster for a year, so her good friends Geoff and Judy Knight took Larix into their care and she qualified and won her first two races from the couple's stable. "I don't think Geoff was too happy about giving her back in the end," she smiled. "She was lovely to break in and is lovely to work with, but she's got her funny wee ways too. She just got into her head that she couldn't get round corners. When she's good she's very very good, but when she's bad she's horrid. And once she gallops she's usually history. I mean, she's had sixteen starts but you couldn't say she's had sixteen races. I do very little on the track with her now. Our farm's a very rolling property, so for work she goes up hill and down dale. One day she might see a rabbit, and the next it'll be a duck. I just take her around the sheep and stop at all the gates as we go through them, and she's not near as silly as she used to be."
Another component in the equation is Larix's driver Nathan Williamson. "He's fantastic with her," she says. "I wouldn't have a horse if it wasn't for Nathan, because he's looked after her beautifully and taught her all the way through. She knows him really well, and seems to relax for him. He's had big wraps on her right from the dayhe drove her in qualifying, too."
So did Larix's trainer get any of the $50 dividend on Saturday? "I actually don't bet. I've always maintained that if I put money on a horse it'd be the quickest way to stop it. You might wonder 'what if' when they pay what she did, but you don't regret it when you see them gallop away."
McClymont's career tally is now sitting one short of double figures. Larix has won four for her since October last year; Tamarix recorded the same amount of victories between early 2001 and March 2002, and for her first training win you have to go back to March 1995 when Saperfluous scored at a hometown meeting in Gore. All of her wins have been trotters, but that's just coincidental. She did actually win a pacing race with Luigi in 1999, but "they took it off me for him moving one cart width out down the straight, and I'm still sour about it to this day".
McClymont bought the farm at Whiterig off her parents, and her mother still lives there. Of course it's famous for sending forth a great pacer in years gone by as well, because McClymont's late father Lionel Given co-bred, co-owned and trained none other than Sapling. "we soon got used to travelling up and down the country with a horse like him," McClymont remembered fondly. "It was Dad's partner (in Sapling) George Cruickshank that actually got me started in the eighties when he gave me a share in the broodmare Spruce, who was a half-sister to Sapling."
One of the best horses McClymont ever bred was Spruce's Double Century gelding Try A Fluke, who was sold to Australia after a couple of starts and ended up winning a Hunter Cup. With the 'highs' has come the 'lows' too though, because both Larix's half-sisters were lost within two weeks of each other to colic and twisted bowels in 2007. "The next one out of Tamarix is a 2-year-old Sundon, who was born on my son Graham and his wife Vicky's wedding day so I gave them a half-share in him as a present. He's the first colt I've bred since Dad died in 2004, so I've named him Given. She foaled a Sundon colt on Christmas night, and has gone to Monarchy."
In addition to being a farmer, and affectionately calling herself "a hick from the sticks" who trains a horse of two, McClymont is on the committee of her local club and was even President for a three-year term at the turn of the century when Gore celebrated it's centenary.
Credit: John Robinson writing in HRWeekly 9Feb2011