South Australian trainer Paul Beshara, three-time Group 1-winning trainer with Happy Trails, remembered as a ‘lover of life’
The son and best friend of Paul Beshara reflect on the life and career of the much-loved Adelaide trainer, who died last Saturday aged 76.
“I can’t control the wind, but I can always adjust the sails.”
Adelaide trainer Paul Beshara lived by those words in a life rich with adventure, and touched the hearts of many who knew him.
Beshara passed away in Adelaide on Saturday after a long battle with cancer – aged 76.
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His heroics with bargain buy Happy Trails, a three-time Group 1 winner, are widely known, but they make up only a chapter of a life that was lived to the fullest.
“He was an absolute lover of life, and people could see that,” Beshara’s son, Simon, said.
“One of his favourite movies was Forrest Gump.
“It was solely his favourite because he just loved the adventures that Forrest had been on.”
Growing up in Semaphore, Beshara and his family lived a street over from the great Colin Hayes, and harness racing legend Alby Holberton.
It was at Hayes’ stables that he met lifelong best friend Gary Kennewell.
The pair – friends for 60 years – met in 1965 as teenagers. Beshara was 16, Kennewell was 15 – and had just left school.
“I went down there, and Paul was one of the first people I met,” Kennewell, a former top Adelaide trainer, said.
“We saw a fair bit of each other every day.”
Beshara’s older brother, John, was a top-shelf harness trainer, and Beshara began training trotters himself, renting a house and stables with Kennewell at Woodville.
“I started training down at Woodville in about 1975, and Paul and I were like best mates then,” he said.
“It was an old trotting stable, owned by a bloke called Johnny Sandilands.
“There was only lights in about three boxes out of the 10-15 that were there.
“Paul and I went down to the dump, and found heaps of wire offcuts, Paul decided to join all these little bits of wire together.
“We did 80 or 100m and put it around to the feed room.
“We had a little pet pig in a box – we had to have a light in there.”
Beshara and Kennewell went from the stables to the shearing sheds.
Kennewell started roustabouting, Beshara went and did a wool classing course, becoming an Australian wool classer.
“We had a lot of weekends away, if we were at Naracoorte for example, we’d jump in our FB Holdens and make a quick trip down to Wayville for the last couple of trots so we could have a bet,” he said.
“If we had a win we’d go out for the night and get on it – it was great.”
Leaving the shearing sheds behind, the pair headed up North in the 1980s, working on the Northwest Shelf, an offshore and onshore oil and gas project in Dampier, Western Australia.
“We drove up in a sandman wagon that belonged to a mate, there was about four of us, we also got a horse float off a mate of ours at Globe Derby,” Kennewell said.
“We put the float on the back, which was really good because we put all our gear in the float, and could sleep in the back of the car on the mattress – that was a wild trip.”
Simon describes his dad as someone who “chased the heights”, working different jobs in different states, and setting himself up for the future in the process.
“I don’t think there would be country town throughout Australia that Dad and Gary never visited,” Simon said.
“Whether it be sheep stations, working on the Northwest Shelf, the oil rigs in Western Australia.
“He become a ‘wharfie’ here in SA, but even then he reached new heights and became high up in the union, which took him up to Queensland.
“Whatever he did, he always made good money.”
So much so, that Beshara retired at the age of 47.
“It was my goal in life to beat him. And I’m 52 and I never beat him (to retirement),” he laughed.
“He’s flogged me.”
By the age of 50, Beshara was back in South Australia, and when friend Lenny Smith came knocking for a hand, Beshara found himself back working with horses.
His involvement grew, he purchased a property and started preparing his own team of racehorses at Morphettville.
He trained a winner with his first runner, with Hard Cash winning at Strathalbyn in 2004.
“It wasn’t too long before every horse that went through the stable, he won with,” he said.
Beshara’s racing fairytale came in 2012, winning the Group 1 Emirates Stakes with Happy Trails, a modest $11,000 yearling purchase in 2009.
Happy Trails competed in a remarkable five consecutive Cox Plates (2012-2016), narrowly beaten by Shamus Award in 2013, finishing second.
He won another two Group 1s – the Turnbull Stakes (2013), and Mackinnon Stakes (2014) – along with $3.2m in prizemoney across 65 starts.
Beshara adored him.
“The rest is history, he turned out to be a great horse … he had a ball with him,” Kennewell said.
Getting a horse to five consecutive Cox Plates is almost unheard of, even for racing’s elite, but Simon still wonders whether there was an element of “good karma” bestowed upon his dad.
“I’ve got to be honest with you. I never knew whether my dad was a very good trainer or just very, very lucky,” he said.
“Either way, you wanted the horse in his stables. You either want a brilliant trainer, or a really lucky bastard – I never knew which one he was.
“I used to say to him regularly, ‘you’re not entitled to get the winners that you get for having eight horses’.”
If it was good karma, it was well earned, Beshara enjoyed helping those in need, and loved being everyone’s mate.
He would spend one or two nights a week helping out at Fred’s Van Meal Service in Semaphore, providing a meal to those at risk of or experiencing homelessness.
“He always donated time to the Lions Club. He would always donate his time and organise wheelchairs for people,” he said.
“He knew all the homeless people by name, because he’d befriended them.
“Whether it be the queen or the janitor, they were dad’s best mate. He was just a wonderful person in that regard.”
His animals received the same treatment.
“You’d want to be reincarnated as one of his pets – I tell you now,” he said.
“Last week, he insisted that they spend $2200 pulling a couple of rotten teeth out the back of this old Chihuahua’s mouth – ‘Honey’.
“His animals were so well cared for. In particular Happy Trails.”
When strappers and horses were rushing in and out of wash bays at 60 second intervals, you didn’t want to be caught behind Beshara and “Roy”.
“They’d be lined up waiting to get in the wash bay because dad was shampooing Happy Trails,” Simon laughed.
“He would spend ten minutes washing the horse and they (strappers) would all yell out and he used to laugh his head off.”
It’s an insight into Beshara’s cheeky streak. Kennewell describes him as a great storyteller that would “make you think a lie was the truth”.
“Oh, he could tell a joke,” he said.
“He used to love getting people in a headlock and licking their ear, things like that – oh my god.”
It was a trademark move, even veteran jockey, and friend, David Tootell was on the end of the headlock move.
“Every grandkid, every nephew, has had that same treatment from him. That made me crack up laughing,” Simon said.
“Tootell would have been a 45-year-old bloke or something at the time.
“He must have thought, ‘this bloke’s the same size as my grandkids – so I’ll do it to him’.”
Beshara and Kennewell were a dynamic duo. Beshara even married Kennewell’s sister, Karen, who was his first wife, and Simon’s mum.
In Simon’s own words: “If they were in the same room, you would walk out with sore ribs from laughing so much.”
As young men, the pair were convinced they spent a night partying with famous British-American entertainer Bob Hope in an Adelaide club.
“They reckon they danced and had drinks with him … I still don’t know whether it’s true, but that’s all part of their story, isn’t it? He said.
“I wouldn’t have even been surprised if it was just a Bob Hope look alike.”
Beshara lived for a laugh, but he was tough, even when he and his younger brother Mark, 70, were simultaneously hit with a death sentence early last year, diagnosed with cancer in the same week.
The pair were diagnosed with Mesothelioma, a cancer that affects protective tissue lining the lungs.
“I think they traced it back to working at one of the wool stores in Port Adelaide,” Kennewell said.
“They (Paul and Mark) put in a ceiling or something, and in the place there was asbestos.
“They worked back that it had to be there.”
The doctor gave both brothers a timeline, “you’ll make this Christmas, but you won’t make the next one”.
“It’s a very, very aggressive cancer because there’s a lot of fluid in there. It easily spreads around the whole body,” Simon said.
“Mark died on Easter Sunday.
“Dad has always been headstrong. If he wants to achieve something, he’s always achieved it his entire life.
“He died (last) Saturday. He nearly made this Christmas, his plan was to send the doctor a Christmas card that said ‘you won’t make this coming Christmas’.
“He was a very strong man to the end, whatever he was going through in the last 18 months, he kept it away from the family because he just didn’t want anybody to have that burden.
“Realistically, it’s only the last two weeks that you noticed it grabbed a hold of him.”
Kennewell, who now lives in Melbourne, flew down to see his great mate last week, spending three days by his side at Ashford Hospital.
“The last words he said to me were ‘you’re the best friend I’ve ever had’,” Kennewell said.
“That was the last thing he ever said to me.”
By Beshara’s side throughout his battle was wife Collette, the pair were married for well over 30 years, with Beshara raising Collette’s two children, Nicole and Leigh as his own.
Simon describes her as his dad’s “absolute rock”.
“Honestly, if you ever have a partner in life, and you go through what he’s gone through, you would f----n hope they act like Collette,” he said.
“She was an absolute rock star. She never left his side.
“He used to have to kick her out of the hospital, ‘go home before it gets dark’ he would say.
“They both would have been successful people in life, but together, they were glue.
“He used to say, ‘I can’t control the wind, but I can always adjust the sails’.
“With Collette, they both adjusted the sails, so they made every post a winner together.”
Happy Trails to you, Paul.
Originally published as South Australian trainer Paul Beshara, three-time Group 1-winning trainer with Happy Trails, remembered as a ‘lover of life’
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