Champion trainer Lee Freedman opens up about how he stumbled from Everest to the bottle

FIVE-time Melbourne Cup-winning trainer Lee Freedman has revealed how a fluctuating career had taken a heavy toll on him.

Lee Freedman

RETIRED champion trainer Lee Freedman, whose five Melbourne Cup winners place him second only to Bart Cummings, has revealed how a fluctuating career had taken a heavy toll on him.

Freedman, now divorced and admitting to bouts of depression and heavy drinking, writes in an exclusive column in today’s Melbourne Herald Sun that he is as happy as he has been for some years.

Freedman described racing as “a disease cured only by death’’ and now a “lovely disease’’ after some dark times in recent years.

At 57, Freedman is middle aged by training standards but he said it was unlikely he would resume his famous career.

“You never say never, and who knows I might one day hang out my shingle again, but it’s not on my radar,’’ he said.

Freedman, who now works for wealthy owner Lloyd Williams, described a training career of vast extremes. He described his greatest achievements as akin to scaling Everest but said there were moments of “bewilderment and isolation’’.

“The view from those lofty heights is beautiful and intoxicating but it doesn’t last long and the descent is arduous,” he wrote. “I felt the pain of training poor horses, after that (Makybe Diva and Miss Andretti) era.

“Still, the early starts, the long days, all the problems and yet no joy. It affected me more than I thought it would.

“My marriage was over and that brought on bouts of severe depression. I turned to the bottle for some kind of answer, as we all know both of these are serious matters and needed to be dealt with, and I worked away at trying to fix both.”

Freedman said the decision to hand over the reins to his brother Anthony “seemed like the right move” because he was “showing genuine signs of wanting to step up to the plate”.

“I helped out at Markdel for a while, trying to sort out a life that had clearly reached a fork in the road,” he wrote.

“My boat sailed on. I did a stint in the UK preparing Lucas Cranach for both cups and it is a piece of work I count among some of my best. If a hoof injury hadn’t seriously affected his preparation, I feel he would have won one or both of the big cups.”

Freedman also touched on his short-lived partnership with Graeme Rogerson, saying the pair were “short on horses and long on (unkept) promises”.

Now with Williams, an owner he prepared the superstar Mahogany for, Freedman sees better days ahead.

“I now approach the days with a lot more joy,” he writes. “I am no longer a horse trainer but I get to see very good horses every day. I get to learn their various traits and see them getting fitter week by week every day and heading towards their goals.

“I also have the unique opportunity to observe and offer advice to an impressive group of young men and women, some of whom will, one day, make decent trainers.”