Hobby trainer loving the fun of it

Hobby trainer loving the fun of it

As thoroughbred horse racing becomes increasingly dominated by mega-stables, a hobby trainer from Waitārere Beach is proving that it’s still possible for part-timers to get a slice of the chocolate.

Ange Greig likes to keep her horses happy – and herself too – with regular trips to the beach. She goes early. The sun is just poking up over the Tararuas. The horses trot and canter along the sand near the water’s edge and when it’s time to cool down they have a walk in the water. 

Sometimes, when they need a training gallop ahead of raceday, she puts the pedal down. The horses lengthen stride and the tempo of the hooves hitting sand lifts, sounding like a drum roll echoing down the beach.

There’s no greater feeling.

It’s a team effort. Husband Pete drives alongside just in case she has a spill, and he helps out with everything behind the scenes too, like the grooming, the feeding, and driving the float to the races.

“Winning a race is the icing on the cake but we do it day to day for the joy of it,” Ange says. “I’m buzzing in the morning when the alarm goes off. It’s a hobby that we can share, and it’s something to talk about – it’s pretty much all we talk about.

“And it’s cool that family and friends are all a part of it and can share in the fun.”

Owning a racehorse ain’t cheap. But being so hands-on means not having to pay wages, or trackwork riders, or for float rides to and from the races, helping to keep costs to a bare minimum. 

Growing up Ange rode show ponies and like most of her generation followed her parents to the races every now and then.

Horse racing was huge in Levin in the 1970s and 1980s, an annual Bayer Classic each November attracting the best horses from New Zealand – even jockeys from Australia – and often attracted crowds of 10,000 or more.

Ange was bitten by the racing bug back then, but it wasn’t until she was in her early 40s that symptoms returned and she successfully applied for her trainers licence.

When her first horse, King Max, managed to place 4th in a race one day 10 years ago it gave them an incredible buzz. But when stablemate Choice Attitude won in his sixth career start, at Whanganui in January 2018 “it felt like we’d won the Melbourne Cup”.

Ange and Pete can yell out their kitchen window to Choice Attitude, now 12, who is in the paddock next to the house. Their horses are their pets, and some, like their latest winner Rich Attitude, they bred and raised at home from birth.

So when Rich Attitude won a $25,000 Dave Hoskin Carriers Maiden (1400m) at Whanganui at the weekend it was a massive achievement, and it gave Ange her third winner as a trainer.

It wasn’t the Melbourne Cup – which is now worth $8 million – but Pete says you can’t put a price on the thrill of seeing a horse you have cared for since birth win a race.

They came home afterwards and after feeding Rich Attitude and putting her back in her paddock, they celebrated. They watched the video of the race on repeat and laughed that voices yelling in the background were theirs.

“I don’t know if people realise how hard it can be just to get a horse to the races, so when they win there is no greater feeling,” she says.

One sage piece of advice Ange was given and that stuck was to be patient with horses, both at any given moment and in preparing them for raceday.

“I was told patience doesn’t cost anything. I think horses reward you for being patient. You can’t push them,” she says. “I don’t know if you there’s any magic formula you can give them, but one thing I do know is having a happy horse helps.”

Ange and Pete enjoy breeding their own and know that sometimes they’re competing against horses that have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. But that’s part of the challenge and has always been the beauty of racing.

They have only a handful of horses at home and all have pet names. One of them, Primo Attitude, is lining up tomorrow at the Ōtaki-Māori races.