Tickled Pinker

By David Nagel
CRANBOURNE trainer Greg Eurell added to his impressive list of equine achievements on Saturday when his four-year-old mare, Pinker Pinker, won the $3 million W.S. Cox Plate (2040m) at Moonee Valley.
The race dubbed the ‘Weight for age Championship of Australasia’ turned into a one-act affair down the short Valley straight as Cranbourne jockey Craig Williams rode the race of his life to win by a length and a half from New Zealand’s Jimmy Choux.
It hasn’t always been horse racing for Eurell though.
Now 51, he represented Australia in equestrian at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics but upon his return decided he’d had enough of horses and was going to live a long and fruitful life as a plumber.
He lasted a month.
His love of horses took over, but the equestrian world was not a viable option anymore and Eurell decided to enter the world of thoroughbreds. He started by breaking in horses, but to succeed in that profession he needed some tools of the trade that would lead to a natural progression towards training.
“Yeah, it sort of snowballed”, Eurell said. “To break a horse in properly we needed to take them to the racetrack, to do that we needed a training licence and to get the licence we needed a race horse.”
Eurell’s first horse – and winner – was Some Habit, who won a 2000m Maiden race at Colac in 1987. The horse opened up at the juicy odds of 30/1 and despite a nibble from the Eurell camp drifted out to 40/1.
“I don’t think the bookies rated us too highly back then, we had a few dollars at the 30/1 but it still drifted to 40/1,” Eurell says with a laugh.
Eurell set up base in Cranbourne in 1987 on a ‘bit of land’ that had a track used to break in the horses, he worked the horses there until they were educated enough to go to the racetrack. Within a couple of months, through word of mouth, Eurell had about 20 horses in work.
He did work for trainers like John Hawkes, George Hanlon, Lee Freedman and the legendary Bart Cummings and although none of them had a direct involvement in Eurell’s work, he couldn’t help but pick up tips along the way.
Eurell started to change his focus from breaking in to training horses and this meant there was more of the ultimate success in racing, winners. The more winners Eurell trained the more clientele he attracted and that period was a turning point in his career.
Eurell still breaks in horses for industry leaders like Shelley Hancox from Hancox Syndications.
The Eurell property backed onto a property where the Williams family resided, but with 37 acres separating them they hardly lived in each other’s pockets. Craig Williams became friends with the Eurell boys when they started to ride a bit of work.
“Craig was terrific, he’d come over at Christmas time and give my boys a gift, a whip or something like that, there’s always been an association there,” Eurell said.
Williams’ ride on Pinker Pinker will go down in the annals of Australian Racing as one the greatest rides ever. He found the fence from a wide barrier before threading a passage between horses from the 600m, not once losing momentum before seemingly appearing from nowhere on the turn.
Eurell had nothing but praise for both Williams’ ride and his professional approach in general.
“We sat down on Friday night and Craig expressed his thoughts on all the other horses, our opinions were pretty similar really,” he said.
“We decided to let the others do the donkey work, have their battles while we sit back and smoke the pipe and have one last clean crack at them.
“It worked out perfectly, it was a gem of a ride, you couldn’t script it, he’s in the zone right now, he’s confident and he does his homework, he deserves all the success he’s getting right now.”
The two Cranbourne boys certainly had a day to remember.