THE SUNSHINE COAST NEWSPAPER COLUMN - ANOTHER NOTABLE ACHIEVEMENT FOR GLEN BOSS

By Graham Potter | Sunday, May 26, 2013

Graham Potter writes a weekly column for the Sunshine Coast daily. Due to demand from those having trouble accessing the paper these columns are now also published on HRO courtesy of the Sunshine Coast daily

Caboolture raised jockey Glen Boss is something of a national sporting celebrity. His three successive Melbourne Cup victories on Makybe Diva have ensured that status will remain untouched by the passing years with his feats firmly placed in racing folklore.

But Boss is not one to rest on his laurels. At the meeting at Ballarat last Thursday a humble fourth placing was enough to put another landmark achievement behind Boss’ name.

With that result Boss surpassed Damian Oliver’s long-standing stake earnings record in Victoria (set as far back as the 2001/2 season). In that season horses partnered by Oliver earned $9,215,040 in stakes. That fourth placing at Ballarat took Boss to $9,217,710 … and he is not finished yet. There is still nine-and-a-half weeks of the season left to run.

It is approaching twenty-nine years since Boss’ grandparents took him to the Gympie races as a fifteen year old. That visit was to be a defining day in Boss’ life.

In his own words, when speaking to Liz Hayes in his Sixty Minutes appearance, Boss explained the effect that outing had on him.

“We pulled up at Gympie racecourse,” said Boss. “It was about 200 metres from the finishing line. There was a race being run at the time. So I run across to the fence, you know, and I can just remember like it was yesterday.

“The horses come in around the bend and just the speed and the noise and the jockeys were obviously feeling for their whips and starting to put pressure on their horses and they thundered past and I just went, 'Oh, my God'. I went home and quit school that week and went straight back up to Gympie a week later to get introduced to a trainer to start my apprenticeship.”

Like any racing life, it hasn’t all been plain sailing for Boss with serious injuries, clashes with stewards and major disappointments being part of the package, but the work ethic that had to be involved in claiming his latest record shows his appetite for his profession and his push for success is every bit as evident as it was that when day a fifteen year old boy watched those horses thunder past him at Gympie.

So, it is congratulations to Glen Boss.

Hopefully his feats will help inspire another generation, just as he himself was inspired all that time ago.

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Maybe it is an age thing … the older you get the quicker time seems to pass … but it seems like just the other day we were looking forward to the upcoming Queensland Winter Carnival and here we are now already nearly halfway through our feature race season.

The length of the Carnival and the positioning of races has been tweaked slightly over the years but the bottom line remains … the carnival passes all too quickly … and therefore the time we have to promote the local product in the national spotlight can translate into little more than a fleeting image in the grand scheme of things if the moment is not grasped with open arms and ‘promotion, promotion, promotion’ does not become the catch-call of the day.

I’m not privy to the expense and the estimated value of the return of those promotional options taken up by Racing Queensland and the individual clubs for the carnival period this year and, as such, I can’t call it either way as to whether they are doing enough to kick a goal.

Promotion is just another part of the multi-faceted playbook that racing authorities have to manage but its importance cannot be stressed enough so It would be helpful to racing enthusiasts if those details mentioned above become available via a post carnival report and review process detailing just how effective racing has been in getting its message out there during this premium time.

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