End of the Line: King Island racing loses its heartbeat
The Miners Rest Cup gang
Calvin McEvoy, Andrew Bobbin, Archie Alexander, David Eustace, Bruce McAvaney, Jim Taylor, Tony McEvoy, Andrew Noblett and Henry Dwyer.
WHEN King Island institution Jim Taylor and his wife Sue set off caravaning around Australia recently, they weren’t sure what they would return home to on their beloved island in Bass Strait, known for its world-famous beef, cheeses, golf courses and its iconic summer racing carnival.
Racing on King Island has been going for 134 years and for the last 61 years leading trainer Taylor has only missed two meetings – when his son had open heart surgery and he then jokes it was so successful 12 months later he missed his second meeting for the birth of his sons daughter.
74-year-old Taylor is a larrikin but not even he could hide his emotions after taking the phone call he had feared when passing through Lightning Ridge in his recent travels.
He recalls the date vividly of August 28 - a meeting that determined racing on the King Island won’t be going ahead this summer.
The gavel had finally fallen.
For Taylor who has won 13 King Island Cups it’s a bitter blow. He who would normally spend AFL Grand Final week not fine tuning his players but commencing his pre-season with horses in paddock condition.
This weekend looks very different to the last four decades preparing horses.
“When I get back home we will think about getting horses into work and perhaps it might hit then,” Taylor lamented.
“In recent years we’ve done a lot of caravanning but have always had to be back for the cows and getting the horses in.
“l will miss the mornings with the horses, I will miss the banter on race days and of course meeting all the different people.
“I was that nosey bugger if there was some stranger hanging over the fence I’d go over and feel them out.
“It’s disappointing the hammer has come down and yes, it’s upsetting.
“But I was realistic and we’ve hung in for four years probably longer than we could have.
“There’s just too few trying to do a big job – but the race club gave it their best shot.
“Ring me in two or three months time and I’ll tell you how I am dealing with it.”
Just over 1600 people live on the tiny dot in Bass Straight but just four people put their hand up to train thoroughbreds for the upcoming season.
While crowds remained strong and no shortage of horses made available to them, an ageing population and lack of ground staff, rising costs and no visiting trainers this year seeking a summer working holiday saw the season reach its breaking point.
“We’ve just run out of people – it’s an age thing – and there’s very few young people in the horsed game here,” Taylor explains.
“There are four of us at my place every morning with the horses and we are all over 70.
“Horses have never been a problem, so many people have wanted to give us horses and they were always available but it has just got too hard.
“People are living in hope it starts up again next season but I really don’t know… for me personally, I am not going to get any younger.”
Taylor, who nicknames everybody ‘Tige’ is a lifelong King Islander, who has made a living as a carpenter, in the mines and the wharfs, but his name first hit racetrack form guides as a 12-year-old jockey.
“All they told me tell the stewards you are 13 but nobody ever asked me… everyone would have known King Island isn’t that big,” he laughs.
“I was no good as a jockey… but I loved it.”
Taylor’s son Leigh has taken a bit more naturally to the saddle and has ridden close to 200 winners on Victoria’s picnic circuit.
He recalls when Group 1 winning hoops Noel Callow and Craig Newitt came across and road on the island and also happier times when all four of his children would set off on horseback along British Admiral Beach.
“I’d come home from work in the summer and all the family would ride one and we’d all go down and ride on the beach,” he said.
“The Freedman Brothers back in the day were known as the FBI, Freedman Brothers Incorporated, so we got nicknamed the TFI because we call got involved”
Thankfully for Taylor swapping the saddle for the stopwatch in 1985 proved a masterstroke although the first of a bakers dozen of hometown cups would take 10 years – a horse he got off brother-in-law Ken Keys.
Taylor in fact raced the Group 2 Moonee Valley Vase winner, VRC Derby placegetter and now stallion Soul Patch with the Keys family.
But it’s a bond with another group of ‘mainland’ Victorian trainers Taylor will also cherish after Henry Dwyer spearheaded a group of six trainers from the Ballarat region to create the Miners Rest Cup in 2023 & 2024 pumping tens of thousands into the local community.
“Henry & I keep in touch and if I am awake (when Asfoora races) I’ll send him a text and I always get a reply back wherever he is in the world,” he said.
“That weekend fantastic and I still talk to most of those guys and its never a problem if I ring one of them asking for something.
“They were all so good to us… but they got their fair share of beer and crayfish in town that weekend don’t worry.
“Not too many had a go at the muttonbird mind you!”
The Miners Rest Cup, which Taylor finished second in both editions, also gave the local legend an opportunity to meet a broadcasting legend in Bruce McAvaney - and to put aside any previous differences.
“Sometimes at home I’d go crook at Bruce McAvaney if he was giving Essendon a hard time but when I met him, we got on fantastically,” he laughed.
WATCH: The King Island Cups King - Jim Taylor
While there are murmurings of a King Island Cup that could take place in Tasmania early next year, Taylor admits he has some thinking to do of his own.
Despite his record currently reading the last two horses he saddled up in January as winners – Taylor isn’t convinced on handing in his trainer’s ticket just yet.
“I’d rather saddle up my last horse knowing that it was coming,” he admits.
“Sue & I are doing a lot of thinking and we need to get home and chat to the owners and see what they would like to do.
“When I go back to Tassie it’s like catching up with another family so it’s not new to me to us and I haven’t missed a Launceston Cup for 30 years.
“It’s just getting places to stay for the horse but I think I’d like to look into training there over summer.”
For now however, Taylor is looking forward to Christmas Day without the burden of Boxing Day races for the first time in his life.
But despite the Island attracting thousands of visitors for its world-famous golf courses, don’t think Taylor is going to start filling in his Saturday afternoons on the fairway.
“Golf ruins a good walk!” he laughs.
But for Taylor nothing will ever match the racetrack greens and the heartbeat of the track he helped keep alive.
