Bred by a billionaire, bought by a battler: The Jackal’s remarkable Ramornie legacy
The Ramornie honour roll boasts legends like Takeover Target, Razor Sharp, Mistress Anne and Cangronde … but The Jackal will always have a special place in the hearts of Grafton locals.
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There have been some great horses win the time-honoured Ramornie Handicap; Razor Sharp, Mistress Anne, Cangronde and the greatest of them all, Takeover Target.
But why is it that so many people’s favourite Ramornie winner – The Jackal – is the same?
He’s one of four horses to have won the race twice but only the ardent racing scholars could name the other three.
Everyone loves The Jackal, the horse bred by a billionaire but bought by a battler.
“He was a life-changer,’’ the horse’s trainer Paul St Vincent told Racenet 17 years on from The Jackal’s second Ramornie win.
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“I bought him at the Magic Millions Sale in June (2004) so he was a fairly late yearling by then, nearly turning two.
“Gerry (Harvey) bred (him). I paid twenty grand for him.”
Not big money for Harvey but hardly an insignificant sum for any country trainer to spend on an unraced horse at the time.
“That’s a fair few years ago and we weren’t racing for anywhere near the prizemoney we’re racing for now,’’ St Vincent says.
“That’s why he had to move about a bit and travel, Brisbane, Sydney whatever to chase the rich races.”
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Given St Vincent was stationed at Tamworth, The Jackal wasn’t that much further from Eagle Farm or Doomben as he was from Randwick or Rosehill.
In fact, 27 of The Jackal’s 74 starts were at Eagle Farm.
“He was in some pretty big races,’’ St Vincent said.
“The thing about him was that he didn’t like it if the track was soft.
“He was fairly sound. Towards the end, he had a few little niggles and has his issues that we had to manage continuously
“It wasn’t 100 per cent with nothing ever not going wrong, there was always something happening here and there but that’s training racehorses.
“I was lucky because we owned him, we could call the shots and if I didn’t like the way he was, if I thought he’s got something not right, I didn’t go. I could pull him out and I didn’t have an owner that I had to explain to.”
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For the record. The Jackal won 15 times including the WJ Healy Stakes, Star Kingdom Stakes, Prime Minister’s Cup and Falvelon Stakes.
But it was his two Ramornie’s in 2007 and 2008 that elevated him to cult status.
“That’s what country racing can do to horses,’’ the man they call The Saint says.“
“When they’re owned by country people and trained by country people and come out and beat whatever’s the best on offer, they seem to get plenty of coverage from it.”
So with another Ramornie nigh upon us, plenty of racing fans of a certain age with tell those younger of a horse named The Jackal.
For those of us who admired the son of Bite The Bullet from afar, we think of him every Ramornie day every year.
But for The Saint, it’s more often than that.
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“I think about him every day cause I’ve gotta feed him,’’ St Vincent said.
“He’s still alive, you know. He’s at my place at Tamworth. We’ve got a place out of town and he lives out there.
“He gets looked after pretty well.
“He’s rising 23, it’s not what you class as old, old, old but it’s pretty good I can tell you.”
A $20,000 purchase who would go on to win a million bucks and win not just the lifelong devotion of one man but the admiration of so many more.
The Jackal, like the Ramornie itself, was always destined to become ‘time-honoured’.
HOOFNOTE: Paul’s son, Aiden, can carve out a slice of his own Ramornie history on Wednesday should the eight-year-old Irish-bred Kingman son Sinawann trump his rivals in the feature sprint.
Originally published as Bred by a billionaire, bought by a battler: The Jackal’s remarkable Ramornie legacy
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