Trainer Peter Snowden looking to the future following Blue Diamond Stakes win

PETER Snowden is an unusual place. The slave-like commitment is there, as always, but everything is about to change.

Trainer Peter Snowden after Earthquake won the Blue Diamond Stakes. Picture: Getty Images

BY nature the racetrack can be a strange and cruel place.

So much so that even those on top, even those who have just climbed the mountain, as Peter Snowden had done at Caulfield yesterday, wonder about bigger pictures.

Snowden is an unusual place. The slave-like commitment is there, as always, but everything is about to change.

Earthquake won the Blue Diamond Stakes in the manner of a world beater; a filly Snowden reckons will be even better at three. She demolished the best Diamond field possibly ever assembled, yet Snowden’s mind was wandering.

Long before Earthquake matures Snowden will have handed in his keys to the next cab off the rank, John O’Shea.

In May, as the dust settles on the Sydney autumn carnival, the rebranded “Championships’’, Snowden will forfeit his role as private trainer for global giant Darley and he and son Paul will start out on their own.

If it was all about winning, then Snowden would have stayed put. But even in the afterglow of victory, Snowden cast himself beyond it, to an arrangement that might yield less but in some ways deliver more.

“This is a decision I thought long and hard about,’’ he said.

“Today you might think I’m mad but it’s not always about winning and losing, now always about the money. For me it’s all about family.’’

Family would have been very important for Robbie Laing last night. The kids would have been on standby, for cuddles.

Laing is as wide as he is tall and his broad shoulders carried a heavy burden late yesterday.

Polanski was his fairytale horse, the $4000 yearling who won the Derby.

His autumn campaign had been stop-start due to an annoying skin rash. He finally appeared yesterday, in the Futurity Stakes, run less than an hour before Snowden won the Diamond.

Polanski sat close to the speed before crashing back through the field before the turn. He wobbled to a walk in the straight, and wobbled some more before being surrounded by track staff up near the horse hospital.

Laing dashed to the horse as his wife Rachael and three young daughters, distressed in their race-day finest, waited anxiously in the mounting yard.

It turns out Polanski “blew’’ a sesamoid, an injury that killed off Mummify in the Caulfield Cup some years earlier.

Vets at Werribee are trying to save Polanski but it’s 50-50.

Despite constant heartbreak — yesterday it was Laing, today someone else — the darn sport is addictive.

Brendan McCarthy resurrected an old horse called Commanding Time, who’d done and tendon and endured throat surgery. McCarthy probably wondered about lots of things during Commanding Hope’s long rehab, but it all seemed worth it after the horse won the first race yesterday, at least in that moment.

Gai Waterhouse ploughs on with a smile regardless of life’s obstacles and she was typically beaming after the Melbourne Cup winner Fiorente returned with a classy, tenacious win in the St George Stakes. For Fiorente, the future looks bright, but it once did for Polanski too.

Peter Moody and Luke Nolen were in a mutual slump for many long months but both have emerged, highlighted by Moment Of Change’s win in the Futurity.

Mick Price, a slave to his trade, measures success and wellbeing by scores on the board and dollars in the bank and Lankan Rupee made the ledger look good with a dominant win in the Oakleigh Plate.

It was a good day for some, tragic for others. For Snowden, it was an unusual day where winning was nice, but not the only thing.