How Pride of Jenni’s owner Tony Ottobre proved the naysayers wrong

The Marist Brothers at Assumption College Kilmore didn’t have high hopes for a young Tony Ottobre … but he’s become a true all-star in more ways than one.

Owner Tony Ottobre (centre) with jockey Declan Bates (right) and strapper Samantha Waters following Pride of Jenni’s All-Star Mile success at Caulfield last Saturday. Picture: Vince Caligiuri / Getty Images

The Marist Brothers at Assumption College Kilmore may have got it pretty right at the time when they suggested to a young Tony Ottobre that he wasn’t going to be an all-star sportsman.

Excellence runs deep at Assumption College Kilmore through the likes of former star footballers Neil Daniher, Francis Bourke, Shane Crawford and Billy Brownless. Handy footballer and outstanding cricketer Simon O’Donnell was educated there, while Group 1-winning trainer Tony Noonan was once a teacher there (supposedly, sex education came under his watch). Even filmmaker Fred Schepisi is part of a all-star Assumption Alumni.

As for Tony Ottobre? “Those were the days of the cane if you were a naughty boy – I reckon I held the record for a couple of years,” he reflects.

But on Saturday – thanks to the brilliant frontrunning effort of his star mare Pride of Jenni – he was the only kid from Assumption holding the All-Star Mile Trophy and a cheque for $2 million.

THEY CAN'T CATCH HER!

Pride Of Jenni runs them into the ground & wins the All-Star Mile for @cmaherracing & @decbates ⭐ pic.twitter.com/5MdE5gaxfB

— Racing.com (@Racing) March 16, 2024

• Pride of Jenni ‘too good, too tough and too fast’ in All-Star Mile

“I’m trying to get it into the car, it’s in a case, it’s that big and it’s on wheels its that heavy,” he said.

When it comes to owners, it’s generally only those who own the good ones who we come to know. We cheered with fruit and vegie king Nick Moraitis as Might and Power won the Caulfield-Melbourne Cup double, we donned Makybe Diva masks with tuna titan Tony Santic and we cheered the mighty Winx alongside the purple-wearing Debbie Kepitis and the market man from Brisbane, Peter Tighe.

Now, Ottobre and his Jenni horses are taking us all along for the ride.

From the day he learned to ride at a Kilmore horse school, Ottobre was hooked on racing – eventually becoming an apprentice jockey to Bob Winks and then Pat Burke at Flemington.

“I loved the outdoors at school, we’d be out cutting firewood for the dormitories, it was tough, but I loved it, and it led me to the horses,” he said.

“I was always a thrillseeker, you have to be.”

As a jockey, he never rode a winner, so he turned strapper before becoming a breaker with Colin Hayes at Lindsay Park – any need for an irony alert, given who Pride of Jenni beat on the weekend?

There have been plenty of victories since in Ottobre’s business career.

Tony Ottobre shows off the LED lights his company manufactured for trucks in a 2009 file photo.

“When I started my own car parts company (LED Technologies in 1989), I wanted to make it a happy place to come to work,” Ottobre said.

“We ended up without about 30 staff and had business in America and Birmingham in England as well, but it was always about our people.

“We’d take staff out for dinners, bowls, movies but every year we had overseas holidays, Thailand, Fiji, Vanuatu – some never had a passport – the last year I had the business it was Hawaii.

“I’d never wanted to work for anyone else. When I got out of racing, I worked in retail (discount stores), but I wanted to stick my neck out and have a go. I’d worked in the railways as a station master but left that to live the dream and worked hard make it come true.”

Horses were, let’s say, spare parts back then, with Tony more focused on getting his Taiwanese manufacturers to build products to pester the establishment and make sure you stopped before running into the car in front.

His first ownership venture was with Dantone’s Princess, a horse he owned with his mate Daniel Groves (trainer Jim Mason won a race at Moe with it back in 2008). Black Bart came next (“I wish it was Black Heart Bart”), but he still won four and that was when Ottobre found Darren Weir.

“No doubt who’s #1 now”

Tony Ottobre on his Pride and joy taking out The @Sharp_EIT All-Star Mile.@cmaherracing@decbateshttps://t.co/6mANbCMlxUpic.twitter.com/R0Mr6JIBlD

— Melbourne Racing Club (@MelbRacingClub) March 16, 2024

Then came Where’s The Bar and the punt. There is some suggestion that Tony – who did and still does like a wager – might have landed a juicy little plunge when Where’s The Bar won a race at big odds. Because not long after, he went to New Zealand to buy a “decent” horse for decent money ($170,000 at the New Zealand Bloodstock Ready To Run sale). That horse was Jennio, a more-than-useful racehorse who became a more-than-useful broodmare as the dam of this week’s Rosehill Guineas prospect Mickio (named after son Michael).

Today, the horses are as much business as passion – it’s sell the males, keep the females and race and enjoy the rest under the banner of his Cape Schanck Stud, located on the beautiful peninsula alongside The National Golf Course.

Ottobre’s goal is to breed and race a Melbourne Cup winner before he turns 75 … so, within the next decade. And of course it will be a Jenni.

Most of us already know why almost every one of Ottobre’s horses is a “Jenni-something” – the tribute to his late daughter Jennifer, who succumbed to brain cancer in 2015.

Tony and Lynn Ottobre with their late daughter, Jennifer. Picture: File

After Jennifer’s tragic death, her favourite sky blue and purple colours replaced Ottobre’s original silks, which were Richmond-inspired yellow and black diamonds. That didn’t seem to matter to the Tigers, who won three of the next four premierships (2017, 2019, 2020).

“Of course, we think about her every day, it’s been eight years now but as soon as I something beautiful I see Jenni.”

Jennifer carried the Italian Ottobre fighting spirit. To the end. Given perhaps nine to 12 months to endure her brain cancer, she got married to her husband Luke before passing away some four years later.

“If I see someone in a wheelchair I see her, she was in a chair that last six months of her life, things just remind you of her and if you haven’t experienced it, I can never expect anyone to understand it,” Ottobre said.

“But we are okay, the horses make it so much easier to get us through and we always think of the best they have to offer us as she did.”

Especially when it’s Pride Of Jenni. And you live and breathe it on your own terms. Without any babble.

Originally published as How Pride of Jenni’s owner Tony Ottobre proved the naysayers wrong