Old fella comes home

By Justin Robertson
“NOT bad for an old fella.”
Devon Meadows trainer Greg Cameron could not have expressed it any other way after his six-year-old horse Second Go won an all-local affair, the race four 1300-metre Lady Luck Handicap in front of 5,000 punters at the Pakenham Oaks day races last Thursday.
“How good was that? We’re just stoked,” Cameron said in the mounting yard after the race win. “This win is really for my son – Brad – because he does everything. It’s great for him to prove that he’s doing a few things right.”
While all eyes were firmly on the fashion, it was hard to ignore the abundance of local trainers taking part in the Oaks racing. Of the 65 trainers that spanned seven races, 34 were local – 25 from Cranbourne, eight from Pakenham and one from Nar Nar Goon.
Aside from Cameron, two Pakenham trainers also claimed Oaks Day wins.
Pakenham’s Peter Foster won race five’s 2400-metre Jarrcon’s Construction Handicap with Trojan of Troy who galloped away to win by a few lengths and trainer Greg Hayes’s Doyadeal – owned by former trainer Giuseppe Alati – pinched race six’s 1000-metre Pharmore Pharmacies.
Foster said he was confident all week about his horse’s chances.
“He just loves a little bit of sting out of the ground and he and the jockey get on very well, and he has a very good spurt at the end which is what I was very impressed with,” he said. “The home ground advantage is great especially when everyone at the track backed it and if he got beaten it would have taken a very good horse to do it.”
With only a handful of starts under Cameron’s watch, his New Zealand-bred horse is proving to be an old stayer that will tough it out in any condition. His past five races have seen a first along with two seconds – one by three quarters of a length – and a sixth but Cameron said the Oaks Day win was his best performance.
“It was such a fantastic win. The small field helped us because he can be a bit funny when there are more horses,” he said. “It was great to finish with two other top Cranbourne trainers – Greg Eurell and Colin Davies.”
Cameron said he bought the horse for $5000 and initially had some trouble with him.
“When we got him home we noticed he had some trouble in the knees. It was just a matter of nursing him along and spacing out his runs and bring him along that way,” he said. “It was a bugger of a horse when we got him. He had bad teeth and just to get him to do anything was a hassle – he’s certainly put in well for us in the handful of starts he’s had.”
Greg Cameron has been training horses now for 20 years and is looking to hand over the reins to son, Brad who will obtain his licence later this month.
“I’m looking forward to taking a back seat and becoming more of a mentor,” he said. “I really do that now and only help when things go wrong, but he’s the one that’s spent all the time with the horse and if any hassles arise we just sort it out together.”