Sunday, October 25, 2009

Dominic Tourneur - Alcopop

Article from: The Australian
Oct 26th

WHEN Dominic Tourneur's mother saw an advertisement for a West Australian jockeys academy in a Perth newspaper in 1990, she thought it could be the answer for her music-obsessed 15-year-old son, who was wasting his time at school.

"I was never what you would call mad keen on school, so Mum signed me up," the now 35-year-old Tourneur recalled with a smile at the weekend.

"At first, I was really happy about it because I thought I was going to a disc jockey school. Then I found out I was going to be riding horses. I didn't feel so good about it then."

Tourneur's dislike of school quickly overcame any reticence and, despite having no previous association with horses, he decided to give the 10-week course a shot. Now, 20 years later, the Melbourne Cup and racing immortality beckon.

Along with part-time trainer Jake Stephens and a boom South Australian galloper called Alcopop, the jockey with the flashing smile, easy manner and bush pedigree is central to one of the great Cinderella stories of Cup history.

Following two unexpectedly decisive wins in Cup lead-up races, Alcopop, a tough gelding that only began racing a year ago and started out herding sheep on the Fleurieu Peninsula, has shortened into equal favouritism for Australia's greatest race.

Come race day next week, an expected flood of sentimental money from once-a-year punters is likely to see him start outright favourite.

All this makes Team Alcopop the David to racing's long-time Goliath, 82-year-old Cups king Bart Cummings, who this year is attempting to become only the second trainer in history to win the Caulfield Cup, Cox Plate and Melbourne Cup in the same spring.

For Tourneur, who has spent most of his career chewing dust on bush racetracks in far-flung places like Geraldton, Bunbury, Marble Bar and Alice Springs, and who for years worked a day job as a car salesman to make ends meet, Alcopop's amazing rise vindicates his decision four years ago to quit the WA bush and head to Adelaide.

"It was a big roll of the dice because my wife, Melissa, was pregnant at the time and we didn't know a soul in Adelaide," Tourneur said.

"But I'd reached the stage where I wanted to try and ride full-time again. When we got here, I worked hard, was lucky to ride a few early winners and things fell into place.

"Now we're going to the Melbourne Cup. I used to think that just having a ride in it would be a huge buzz, but to be on a live chance, it's pretty surreal."

Yesterday, there was a scare when Tourneur injured an ankle riding at Mount Gambier and was unable to fulfil his commitments.

Luckily, the injury was minor and Tourneur is expected to resume riding at the midweek races on Wednesday and be fully fit for Cup day the following Tuesday.

For Tourneur's racing world, upheaval is nothing new. As an apprentice he parted company with Perth trainer Graham Webster after a "personal dispute"

that was probably as much about the jockey's love of partying as it was the trainer's less than subtle approach to discipline.
He switched to the Ted Martinovich stable and ended up riding a lot at Bunbury, where his wife-to-be was working for country trainer Ross Price.

"Meeting and marrying Melissa was the best thing that ever happened to Dom," Martinovich said yesterday.

"He was always a bloody good kid but until she came along he was always out at nightclubs and dancing, that kind of shit. She straightened him out and settled him down.

"Her old man's a copper too. That might have helped."

But when the couple headed to Geraldton in the late 1990s, it seemed that Tourneur's prospects of a successful riding career were over.

Geraldton holds races fortnightly and only between October to April. For anyone trying to make it in racing, it's one of the last places in Australia to go.

On top of that, jockeys and trainers need day jobs to survive. Tourneur turned to selling cars.

"You meet a lot of people in the car game and I was actually pretty good at it," Tourneur said.

Tourneur spent eight years in Geraldton and won the local jockeys' premiership seven times, enough success to convince him to have one more go at the big time.

He considered Perth but decided racing there was "too cliquey". He also felt that he needed a totally fresh start. Martinovich told him Sydney and Melbourne would be too hard to crack and suggested Adelaide instead.

Today Tourneur is one of South Australia's hardest-working riders. Settled comfortably in Adelaide with Melissa and their two children, Blake, 3, and one-year-old Hannah, he chases rides all over the state.

Unlike most other riders who stick close to the city, Tourneur travels far and wide. He rides the southeast circuit of Mt Gambier, Bordertown, Penola and Naracoorte as well as Port Augusta, Port Lincoln, Alice Springs (where he has won the Alice Springs Cup three times) and places such as Casterton and Mildura in Victoria.

"You can get a good earn going out to those places and it all adds up at the end of the year," Tourneur says.

"When I was younger I might not have pushed myself so much but now I've got a family now and I have to think about how to improve their quality of living and plan for the kids to get good schooling and that."

In the Cup, Tourneur is hoping Alcopop can draw between barrier four and 10, which should allow him to settle the horse near the rail and put him to sleep until the business end of the race.

"The horse is going great and he's a terrific horse to ride," Tourneur says.

"He's very relaxed but has that killer instinct. If he's hemmed in or in a tight spot he'll find a way out even if it means bulldozing other horses out of the way. He wants to win and he's not afraid of anything.

"Not many horses are like that. Only a real small niche of horses will barge through like he does and have his kind of will to win."

Before yesterday's injury scare, Tourneur's plan was to ride at the Bordertown races next Sunday before heading to Melbourne the next day for the Melbourne Cup parade.

At some stage he'll go to Flemington, a track where he has never ridden, and walk the circumference to "get a picture of how things look and where we'll want to be and where we'll get rolling".

On Cup day, Tourneur will have one ride, in a 1000m race, before the big one. "The crowd will have built up by then and I'll get a feel for everything," he says.

According to Martinovich, Tourneur's laconic nature will hold the Melbourne Cup novice in good stead.

"You'll never meet anyone more laid back than Dom," Martinovich says.

"He's very relaxed and I think that will help him when the media pressure and everything else starts building up."

Tourneur and Alcopop will link up later this week for trackwork before the horse travels to Melbourne on Sunday.

Tourneur has the highest regard for trainer Stephens, a relative newcomer to training who before Alcopop was better known for the Flying Fish, his gourmet fish and chip shop and cafe at Port Elliot on South Australia's holiday coast.

"Jake is a great guy who likes to do a lot of the work himself," Tourneur says.

"He shoes the horses himself, massages them, does all sorts of things. He's very hands on with just about everything except the paperwork."

No comments:

Post a Comment