Melbourne Cup 2021: Incentivise rider Brett Prebble is also a winning in business

Brett Prebble will be on a winner no matter what the result in Tuesday’s $8m Melbourne Cup.

Melbourne Cup-winning jockey Brett Prebble at his Melbourne factory which makes high-quality whips, saddles and other riding gear. Picture: Aaron Francis

Brett Prebble will be on a winner no matter what the result in Tuesday’s $8m Melbourne Cup.

The star jockey rides Incentivise, the extraordinary horse that is the shortest-priced favourite for the big race since Phar Lap won in 1930.

Prebble, 44, steered the five-year-old bay gelding to a stunning victory two weeks ago in the Caulfield Cup, and trainer Peter Moody has it primed for the run of its life in the nation’s biggest race.

Incentivise has captured the imagination of hard-core punters and the general public, and has the bookies running scared. Some have even paid out on it winning already, and will lose tens of millions of dollars if it does.

“I’m just excited,” Prebble told The Weekend Australian. “It’s a great position to be in, a privileged position, and I’ve taken it with both hands. We’ve both done justice to each other, the horse and I. We’re in good tune together. I’ve only ridden it three times (for three wins) and it’s been special each time.”

Moody is most famous for training the legendary and undefeated Black Caviar. This is his best ever chance to win his first Melbourne Cup.

“It is going to take a hell of an effort to beat him,” he said this week while remaining wary of a field that includes 2020 winner Twilight Payment and international hopes such as the highly rated Spanish Mission.

In a twist, though, it turns out that Incentivise’s jockey Prebble is also a canny businessman and will have a piece of every other rider in Tuesday’s big race.

He founded and owns Persuader International, which from humble beginnings in a Ballarat garage with his father has gone on to make and supply jockey’s equipment such as whips, saddles, helmets, boots, goggles and other accessories to just about anyone and everyone in racing.

“It’s a good thing, it takes my mind off things. It’s not an overnight success story, we have worked very hard at it,” he said. “I’m self-made and self-taught. I come into the factory most days, even if it is for a few hours.

“You have to put in the work as a (business) owner. We’ve lost some workers and the whips don’t make themselves. So I’ll get in there and punch out 80 of them in five days, no worries.”

Prebble on Incentivise after winning the Caulfield Cup. Picture: Getty Images

Prebble faces the same challenges as every other small or ­medium business owner. He’s sweating on rising freight prices, the quality of materials and dealing with suppliers overseas. Late this week, he was conducting job interviews at his factory in Melbourne’s northwest.

He just happens to be riding the Melbourne Cup favourite as well, and his customers are the other jockeys who will be trying their very best to beat him across the Flemington finish line.

“Out of 100, 98 of the jockeys will have all my gear. For the Cup, it’s all of them,” he said.

“James McDonald was in the other day and I’d made the whip for him. He likes it at 160 grams, and I’d got it to 161 grams. So I went pretty close.

“They do give me a bit of grief over their products, asking when they’re getting their orders and so on. But they love coming into the factory and checking out what’s been worked on. It’s like other people going into retail stores and having a look.”

Prebble started the business two decades ago with the help of his dad and then his business partner Mark Bourke – they still each own 50 per cent today – when still a precocious 24-year-old making his way up the jockey ranks.

“I’m mad about the gear I use and there was a gap in the market for whips. Ollie (Damien Oliver) loved these American ones. Dad was always good with his hands so one day we pulled one of them apart and he taught me how to bind them up and away we went,” said Prebble.

“Kerrin McEvoy started using them and then suddenly we’re making 100 whips a week from the garage of my place then in Ballarat. It got too big and so I bought a factory in Melbourne.”

All the while, Prebble would turn into a star on the track and move to Hong Kong, riding for 16 years in the toughest racing market in the world.

He would fly back briefly to win the 2012 Melbourne Cup on Green Moon for Lloyd Williams, but said times had since changed.

“I don’t dwell on the past. I’m a future-looking sort of person. Every race is different and this year there are five serious horses in the race. Incentivise hasn’t done the 3200m yet but he will run it out. He will give his absolute heart out for it.”