SIMON ZAHRA - A LONG WAY FROM THE ACTION BUT RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF IT

By Graham Potter | Wednesday, April 7, 2010

When Crystal Lily swept across towards the outside rail in unscripted fashion over a pulsating last 150m of the 2010 running of Golden Slipper co-trainer Simon Zahra was not in the packed grandstand at Rosehill Gardens cheering his most famous winner home.

Zahra was in fact some nine hundred kilometres away in the trainers’ bar at Caulfield watching a scene unfold that is every trainer’s dream.

Well, maybe the dream was more straightforward. Maybe there was less of the heart-stopping drama in the dream ... less of numb feeling in the bottom of the stomach that was in play on Saturday as Crystal Lily taunted her rivals but traumatised her connections by running off the track over the concluding stages to let the others in with a sniff of victory.

Did Crystal Lily hamper Solar Charged badly enough to face repercussions for the erratic path she followed in the run home? Was the loss of ground she suffered by shifted out so markedly going to catch her out on the line? Those would have been the questions that flashed through the minds of all of those watching the intense battle over the final strides.

But, for Zahra and the rest of the Crystal Lily team, every fibre of their being was focussed on willing, shouting, screaming, urging their horse to victory and when she did get to the line first, another wave of emotion was released that was so varied in its composition it is difficult to categorise.

The mix of emotions and the rapid ebb and flow of feelings - from an adrenaline rush to numbness, from elation to satisfaction, from relief to disbelief - it was all there and crammed into micro-seconds of time which confuses the senses and makes reality hard to decipher for those caught in the moment.

Which brings us back to Simon Zahra in the trainers’ bar at Caulfield.

Winning the richest race for two-year-old’s on the planet was always going to be an awesome feeling, whether you were there to see it in the flesh, or whether you were nine hundred kilometres away looking after your stables interests.

Simon Zahra told HRO afterwards, “It wasn’t just the race. It was all the pressure of the last six weeks coming to a head.

“We always believed in her, but you know what those pressures are like. So it was all about the hard work coming together really. It was more all about the emotion of getting her to the race and seeing everything go to plan.

“I was a bit worried when she started hanging out. I thought she always had them covered, but, like I say, those were the moments where everything came to a head and it was very emotional going through it all.”

They say a picture can be worth a thousand words. Well there are five photographs of Simon Zahra on the right of the page depicting the trainer’s emotional ride. All were taken by HRO photographer Taron Clarke whose news sense was right on the mark. As you see, they sum up the aftermath of victory better than any of the words above.

The photos speak for themselves.

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