Police probe those with grievance against Racing Victoria chief steward Terry Bailey

WHO has a grievance against racing stewards in general and Terry Bailey in particular? Andrew Rule runs through the list.

The front door that had six shots fired through it. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

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WHO has a grievance against racing stewards in general and Terry Bailey in particular?

A grievance strong enough for someone to commit, or commission, the potentially fatal outrage of shooting up his family home?

It is, of course, a process of elimination.

High on the list of persons of interest — only because he put himself there — is Danny Nikolic, who until four years ago was high on a different list.

The former champion apprentice was a big-occasion rider who stayed cool under pressure, the weight of owners’ expectations and the betting of big punters.

But Nikolic’s high-speed existence fell apart after he was targeted in a stewards’ inquiry into the running of Smoking Aces at Cranbourne in 2011.

He survived the inquiry but his testy relationship with chief steward Terry Bailey didn’t.

Terry Bailey and Danny Nikolic.

Jockey Danny Nikolic with Terry Bailey at Seymour racecourse in 2012.

The clash came to a head at Seymour races in September 2012, when Nikolic allegedly threatened Bailey and his family after an earlier exchange in the stewards’ room over an insolent “joke” by the jockey.

Bailey later gave evidence that Nikolic said: “We’ve all got families, c--- and we know where yours live ...”

Nikolic would later swear blind he hadn’t said anything like that, asking racing administrators to believe that Bailey would perjure himself with a fabricated accusation just to “get” a cheeky jockey who had become a stone in his shoe.

Inevitably, perhaps, the authorities decided the robust and sometimes abrasive chief steward was probably a more reliable witness than the volatile jockey, known for outbursts of abuse and threatening behaviour.

Nikolic was banned from riding for two years over the incident.

He copped another two years in 2013 for threatening behaviour towards steward Wade Hadley, and also was banned from Crown Casino and warned off racecourses.

The front door that had six shots fired through it. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

Terry Bailey fronts the media after the shooting.

Nikolic’s livelihood and lifestyle were shot down in one hit.

This is not a reference to the sudden exit of his former father-in-law Les Samba, the colourful interstate racing identity shot dead in a Port Melbourne street in early 2011.

Because Nikolic had been through a nasty split with Samba’s daughter, Victoria, it was natural that police looked long and hard at the jockey and his associates and any possible motives they might have to harm Samba.

A potential line of inquiry was whether Samba, a money launderer with organised crime connections, might have “invested” with Melbourne “friends” and had then fallen out with them.

Police wonder why someone used a public telephone in a bayside suburb to call Samba not long before he was killed.

They believe the caller had at least one mobile phone of his own but didn’t want to use it to set up the meeting that ended in Samba’s death.

Police on the Samba case are also looking at an underworld figure with tentacles deep in racing.

Police at Mr Bailey’s home. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

No doubt his name will already be on the list compiled since Bailey’s Templestowe house was hit with gunfire on Sunday night.

But the Nikolic faction and the underworld figure won’t be the only ones who need eliminating.

The detective training maxim that the mind should be like a parachute — “if it’s not open it won’t work” — means that other potential Bailey enemies will be asked to explain their movements around 9.30pm Sunday.

That “to do” list should ­include at least some horse trainers.

Once detectives have worked through that lot, they will have to consider the possibility of unknown unknowns. Could someone out there have a secret grudge against Bailey?

Possible, but not the way to bet.

Maybe, as some sources hinted, it is people who used to make a lot of money peddling cobalt.

The sort of people who ride iron horses.

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