LARRY’S VIEW - BRISBANE RACING’S BIG DAY OUT

By Larry Cassidy | Friday, May 13, 2011

Larry Cassidy currently has forty-two Group 1 successes behind his name. He is a multiple Premiership winning jockey having taken out three titles in Sydney and one in Brisbane. Larry’s View, the personal blog of this top class rider will appear on horseracingonly.com.au every Friday, workload permitting.

A packed crowd. A superstar on show. How good will it be to be at Doomben on Saturday!

As a seasoned jockey going about my work I’ll try to treat it as a normal meeting as much as possible, but that is probably something that is easier said than done.

Obviously when you arrive on track there is a different vibe. There are more people and that naturally creates a different atmosphere and as the day goes on the noise gets louder in the buildup to the big race.

It’s exciting and it puts a spring in your step compared to your normal off-carnival Saturday meeting or your normal Wednesday meeting which can be very dull.

This Saturday, in Doomben's fabulous new enclosure, there is going to be a lot of people around and the atmosphere is going to be electric - which is fantastic!

What I try to focus on when I go out for a big race is to keep my horse relaxed and as focused as possible.

It is great to soak up the atmosphere, but the most important thing is to keep your horse relaxed in the preliminaries so it doesn’t use up extra energy.

In the straight and the finish of the race you definitely hear the noise of the crowd.

It is a bit of a blur, but you do hear the noise. Not that it helps you that much other than with the adrenalin rush. I mean if you are in front and you hear the noise of the crowd, you don’t really know if you are way out in front or if something is coming at you fast, but it is a great feeling to be riding on these big days.

On Saturday you know most people are going to be cheering for Black Caviar.

The first time I saw her was last Saturday morning.

She was actually walking from the middle of the track and I’d just come off the track on Buffering. She walked from Eagle Farm to Doomben and followed me all the way.

It was exciting for me to see her for the first time. I’ve seen a lot of good horses, but that was the first time I’d seen her in the flesh and it was definitely exciting to see her.

I nearly had a kink in my neck because I was turning around and looking at her the whole way.

I kept watching her and looking at her while we were walking over. She had a nice blue rug on. It was still a bit dark, but she looked magnificent.

I was in front of her and I jokingly said, "here doll, have a look at this" pointing at Buffering's rear end "because that is all you're gonna see on Saturday."

The bloke that rides her in work said, "oh, what’s that one?" I said, "Buffering." He said, "good on you for thinking like that, but I don't think so!!!"

Jokes aside. It was a thrill to see her for the first time.

It terms of beating Black Caviar, you go out with a plan but the plan is to try and win the race and not just ride against her. I think if you ride against an individual horse, then you are not doing justice to your own horse.

You must go out with a plan for YOUR horse that will give it the best possible chance and you then just hope Black Caviar has a bad day.

That’s the way I’m going into the race. I going into the race thinking, yes, we can win. It might seem an impossible task, but I'm going with a plan to give my horse the best possible chance to win the race. There is a difference. I think that is all we can do and hope for the best.

I gave a quote, tongue in cheek, that I was going to sit on Hay List’s hind-quarters and push Black Caviar three deep on the turn and then burst between them and it will be all over.

Well, jeez if only it could happen like that. It’s a bit of a dream, but in racing you have got to have dreams.

I said before my idea is to treat theses big race days as a normal meeting as far as I can but, I guess, realistically, there are other differences besides the size and noise level of the crowd and the superior quality of the runners on show.

In the jockey’s room things are very competitive anyway but, I suppose, when there is bigger money up for grabs it is even more competitive, particularly with the top jockeys coming to Queensland from down south.

That’s what we are there for. You want to ride in the big races and you want to win them, so it is definitely more competitive.

There is a different vibe in the jockey’s room. Maybe there is a little bit more seriousness as the stakes are raised.

We are only at the beginning of the carnival at the moment. As the carnival goes on more jockeys come up and the competitiveness increases again.

The rewards are bigger during the carnival and hopefully I will get to enjoy some of that.

There are also obviously disappointments.

I think the only time it is really disappointing is when you go into a big day and your horses have been performing well up to that day and you look like you’ve got good rides on paper and yet they all run disappointingly and finish out of the money.

If you’ve run second and got beat a head because you got pushed deep maybe on the corner and you think you could have won, well there is going to be a disappointment there too, but you quickly move on to the next race.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have won forty-two Group 1 races. The first one in New Zealand obviously was a big one for me, but the one that really comes to mind as a highlight was Arena winning the VRC Derby.

I’d been copping quite a lot of flak from the press down there. The headlines read "Cassidy the King of Sydney is Larry the Loser in Melbourne".

Obviously, that made me feel bad but I was determined to show that I was as good in Melbourne as anyone.

Then I came out and rode an absolutely perfect race on Arena. So to come out and win that race at that time, made me feel really good.

The other one that stands out is the Singapore Derby where I gave a pre-race interview describing how the race would be run and won and things panned out
one hundred percent the way I said they would. The plan worked one hundred percent … which is quite unique.

Any jockey worth his salt will always be giving his all in search of his next Group 1 win.

Eight of us will be in the saddle doing just that at Doomben on Saturday with Luke Nolen seemingly in the driver’s seat aboard Black Caviar.

It is Brisbane Racing’s big day out.

Don’t be left out. I’ll see you at the track.

Till next week,
Larry

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