Picnic plunges to the Big League: Bedggood’s ascent on Top 10
A glance at Victoria’s Metropolitan Trainers Premiership in recent seasons sometimes seems as if its personnel has hardly changed, a bit like Leigh Matthews’ tenacious Brisbane Lions three-peat premiership side.
While the positions can sometimes switch, the players remained relatively the same.
Surnames such as Freedman, Hayes and Begg can make you wonder if you’re born into it, similar to an Ablett or Daicos. But every so often a horseman will appear from places such as Winslow (Maher), Berriwillock (Weir) and Wyandra (Moody) and climb the charts quicker than a Beatles hit.
While Gavin Bedggood was only raised as far flung as the Mornington Peninsula, his dad worked on spare parts for European cars - not horses.
As a teenager, a young ‘Bedgy’ as he is often referred to, was chasing girls who liked horses when he stumbled into the unknown world of racing.
Much like his horses who lack a flashy pedigree, he’s an unassuming character who is getting the best out of himself.
Now aged 38 and seven years into the training caper, it’s a spot in the states Top 10 trainers he is chasing now after a record breaking season.
“I’ve got no family in racing and started with no backing,” Bedggood explains.
“You can’t change your breeding and pedigree and I’ve just had to get the best results with the horses that I’ve had.
“We started seven years ago with a horse that was gifted to us that went to the picnics.
“No money and no owners and we’ve just built it .”
And built it he has.
Originally the build was at the back of the infamous Brookland Greens Estate in Cranbourne, which back in 2008 saw residents evacuated leading to a $20 million settlement for those who were forced to leave as a result of dangerous levels of methane gas.
“It was a five-acre vacant block out the back of the estate and we put some post and rail yards and shelters we built out of second-hand corrugated iron,” he recalls.
“We started training out of four sand yards and didn’t have any stables.”
While Mornington Glory’s win this season in the Moir Stakes saw Bedggood crowned a Group 1 winning trainer and total prizemoney earned for the past 12 months tallying more than $4 million, at first it was modest plunges on picnic races that kept the stable afloat.
“For the first three or four years it was a hobby - we went to the picnics,” he explains.
“We loved going to the picnics and having a bet.
“Karen (Flaherty) my partner used to run down to the betting ring and she got a reputation as ‘the lady in the activewear’ and she’d be spreading all this money around amongst the bookmakers.
“I loved it and would like to go back - but I wouldn’t get a price these days!
“I wasn’t sure if I was going to be alright at training but I always thought I was a decent enough judge in trackwork.
“When I started riding over jumps I gave myself three years to be successful at it or I didn’t want to do it – I didn’t want to be remembered as a hack.
“And when I started training I said the same thing – if I couldn’t make a living out of and be successful, I’d be better off getting a foreman’s job or keep riding trackwork.”
The first of his 187 winners would come on Cox Plate Day in 2017 in a four-horse race with a galloper named Maldonado and ridden by close friend Ray Douglas.
He recalls watching Winx winning her third Cox Plate driving home from Alexandra that day - the track seven years later he would train his own Group 1 winner at.
Despite winning by six-lengths - it was a four month wait until his second winner at Healesville and 12 months until that horse won again.
‘The lady in the activewear’
Gavin Bedggood (left) and partner Karen Flaherty (middle) quickly gained a reputation for landing a plunge on the Picnic circuit.
Pictured with Maldonado and Ray Douglas at Alexandra after training his first winner in 2017. The horse started $2.40. Image Courtesy: PicnicBet
While the prizemoney purses have got bigger – the plunges have remained.
‘Bedgy’ unashamedly loves a bet.
He pleasantly recalls Kingswood’s stable debut on Grand Final Day last year at Sandown when crunched from 51’s into $9. A premiership win of his own.
But like a true punter, laments about one that got away at the same course last week.
Signs of a looming bet might be him jumping in the saddle as part of a handful of horses he still rides each morning in trackwork – or nervously lighting up a cigarette before the jump.
“I am a nervous watcher definitely – wouldn’t matter if it’s a 58 at Bairnsdale or a stakes race,” he admits.
“But I am a pretty good sulker too and I can kick stones for a day!
“But I’ve been around long enough and if you aren’t prepared to lose you shouldn’t be in the game - it’s part and parcel.”
Occasional sulker maybe – determined – certainly.
“I don’t have any hobbies – I train racehorses that’s my life,” he says.
Arriving at his stables at 2:50am each morning, trackwork duties aren’t concluded until some seven hours later and days he’s not at the races, it’s not uncommon for him to spend hours on the road transporting spellers, pre-trainers or picking up new horses.
Until only recently, he could be at the computer well into the evening sending out his own accounts.
But such his rise in the training ranks, it’s quick to forget Bedggood was at the top of his field as a jumps hoop. 12 years of riding saw him famously win the Grand Annual aboard Banna Strand who famously went ‘from villain to hero’ in 2013 as well as success in the Brierly, Von Doussa and Australian Steeplechases. He even won a race in Ireland.
Current jumps jockeys Richard O'Donoghue and Darryl Horner Jnr now ride trackwork for him, while he was also the first jockey to hold a jockey managers license and handled the careers of Brian Higgins, Brandon Stockdale and Jason Benbow.
But for the man who has held the title of a trainer, jockey and manager - there’s one tag he can’t shake and he is most known for – tried horses.
Asked simply if he’s now sick of the reputation of being Mr. Fix It?
“That’s how we made our name so there’s nobody to blame but myself and I am not ashamed of it,” he professed.
“I could buy a tried horse today for $100,000 and it could be sold by the end of the day and if I bought a yearling for the same money I’d still be holding it twelve months later.
“The support has rolled on from success – I remember when I first started buying horses more often than not I would get left with a quarter or half of every horse.
“So yes, it is frustrating.
“But by the same token hand I think we’ve had four two-year-old runners this season and they’ve all gone really well.
“This year we’ve had 15 or 16 yearlings which we’ve never had before and I’ve moved on half a dozen tried horses on the online sales.”
Bedggood feels selecting more tried horses himself than he’s had given could be part of the winning recipe and admits having to tell people he’s not a ‘miracle worker’ with some horses he’s been asked to take on.
Statistics suggest he’s purchased over 40 tried horses in seven years of training ranging from as much as $200,000 to $1,500. The success goes without saving given his rapid growth.
“I’d often sit there on a Friday and as soon as the catalogue dropped even before bidding goes live, I would be scrolling through it and I would quickly have an inkling on the horses I did and didn’t like,” he says of Inglis Digital sales.
“I remember driving to Sale races with my iPad on my lap and seeing Just Folk listed and I thought ‘I want that horse’.
“It can take all day Sunday watching hundreds of replays and when Deane Lester was alive I would probably drive him mad.
“I don’t think it’s potluck as to which ones work… but I don’t want to give too many secrets away either!”
Even a VRC Derby winning-trainer in Denis Pagan quizzed him recently when he purchased and then again when he on-sold his horse Turn It Up Tommy after two race wins.
While some trainers are more inquisitive, Bedggood admits he isn’t always met with the friendliest of receptions from his competitors if notching wins with their former horses.
So who would the tried horse guru give a horse to if he had to… Bedggood answers without evening drawing breath.
Grahame Begg.
“His horses look immaculate, he places them well and he dots his I’s and crosses his t’s,” he says in admiration.
“I have a yack to him at the trials and races and I see his horses from the tower at Cranbourne and you can just see why he’s successful.
“If I lost my license tomorrow he would be the first port of call.”
Speaking of calls, there are two less phone dials he has had to make recent times which he is still adjusting to, with the passing of great mates Deane Lester and Robbie Laing.
“It’s been a kick in the guts,” he says.
“Deane was great to me and we raced horses together and he was sounding board and I’ve known him my whole life in racing.
“Robbie I worked for 13 years and he was a friend and we joked every morning.
“They both had great advice and it’s been a pretty sombre time.”
Never far from his side however is partner, Karen, whose dedication goes far behind getting a bet on at the picnics in the early days.
“We blue like cat and dog but it wouldn’t run without her and I probably don’t let her know enough,” he said.
Despite not having Lester and Laing’s advice to lean on these days, his Cranbourne stable has managed to jump from outside the Top 20 trainers last season to on the cusp of the Top 10 in twelve months with a total of 61 winners – a third of them coming in the metropolitan area.
Having overachieved a goal of 50 wins set at the start of the season, one number he hasn’t quite landed on is the right number of horses to train after acquiring 15 new boxes recently and taking him to a total of 60.
“I said half a dozen was me at the start, then I said 20 (horses), then 30 was enough and 45 when I bought the new place on-course at Cranbourne,” he laughs.
“But I think I’d end up in an asylum if I took anymore than we have now!
“But I don’t just want to have 60 horses, I’d rather have 45 horses I like than having horses fill boxes just to pay wages – I don’t want to be that trainer!”
So what trainer does he want to be?
“I’d hate to retire on one Group 1 win and train the rest of your life and not get another one – that would be the pits!”
So like that Brisbane premiership side referenced at the beginning, who built a dynasty on hunger, heart, and hard hits - Bedggood’s done the same, only with horses and hustle.
And just like them, one premiership was never going to be enough.
