Very good interview in the SM on Pete....by Robert Craddock
A long road from Roma to royalty
• by: Robert Craddock
• From: The Sunday Mail (Qld)
• April 01, 201212:00AM
• EARLY RISER: Black Caviar with her trainer Peter Moody. Source: The Sunday Mail (Qld)
PETER Moody is one of sport's most remarkable modern success stories. Raised in the western Queensland towns of Wyandra and Charleville, he is now considered Australia's top trainer and his standing has grown through his association with the unbeaten legend Black Caviar, but a large part of him has never left the bush.
Q: What's your quirkiest memory of the fame of Black Caviar?
A: One of the oddest things at Orr Stakes day was a lady flying in from California that morning and then flying home that night just to watch this horse race. When Luke (Nolen) and I sit down and sign autographs you hear these stories. Another time she won the Newmarket and Collingwood had played Friday night.
There was a line of 300 people and three-quarters of the Collingwood team, Nick Maxwell and all of them, stood in line for an hour to get a photo. These are blokes who are ushered through the front door of wherever they go in Melbourne and they waited all that time.
Q:Do you get nervous when Black Caviar races?
A: The only way she can get beat is if something goes terribly wrong. I really feel for the people and the public. I get beaten 20 or 30 times a week. It is second nature for me.
I would be gutted for the people who follow her. There was a lady who once had her house flooded in Grafton, but instead of going home, she thought she would stay and watch this good horse to lift her spirits before she went home to clean the s - - - out of her house.
I would be more gutted for them than me.
Q: When you first saw her in the sale ring, what took your breath away?
A: I first saw her four days before she went through the sale ring and my first attraction was she was closely related to Magnus.
She was just a monster but just so graceful in everything she did. I got on the phone and started ringing people and said: "I need this horse."
The one bloke who came back was the principal owner Neil Wherrett. He said if you love her that much I will come and have a look at her.
Q: Black Caviar has won a fortune but do you actually make a profit out of her?
A: People see you at the races and it's all glamour, but it gets to the stage where over the last 12 months a horse like Black Caviar - as stupid as it sounds - has been business negative.
I don't want any bastard to get the tissues out for me and I am pleased it's my problem rather than anyone else's, but people see you at the races with all the glamour and you think at times if they only knew.
Q: That's amazing really . . .
A: Yes. She costs me more than she earns me. You have some clientele in the egotistical minority who won't come to your stable because they feel they are not that bigger part of it.
That is the mindset of some people and until she retires it will be hard for me to rejuvenate my horses. You have to employ so many extra people to cater for a horse like her.
It is a bit like sometimes you see a football club win a premiership and because they have to pay all the bonuses they go broke.
Q: So people brush your stable because they think you will be obsessed by your star?
A: Yes. It would be much easier to have Black Caviar if you were training three horses.
She has won eight Group 1s. I have trained 34 or 35. She wins six races a year and I train 200 winners a year. She is not the be-all of my business but people think because she is the headline horse it takes away from their opportunity with the stable.
I try hard to offset that.
Q: Trainers have to be businessmen, vets, conditioners, salesmen ... which is the hardest one?
A: You have to be a marriage counsellor, a priest and banker for 40 or 50 staff as well. That's the hardest part. Being the banker is the toughest.
We have to pay for the feed, the farrier, the wages, the racing costs ... I have to bill that out and 90 per cent fix you up straight away.
Five per cent fall on hard times and cannot pay you straight away and 5 per cent stuff you over. People don't realise that 10 per cent is not only your cream, it can put you in the red.
Some months I win $1 million in prizemoney, but instead of making a profit, I get a bill.
Q: Do you still get up at 3.05am?
A: Yes. I refuse to get up at 3am - that's a terrible hour - so 3.05am makes me feel a lot better.
Q: You have had terrible problems with sleeping and general health, haven't you?
A: I was really crook 20 years ago in Brisbane and I thought I was dying. I had to sit on a bucket at Eagle Farm to watch my horses work because I didn't even have the strength to stand up.
I was just married and dad had just died and I got to the stage where I wasn't sleeping at all.
They sent me to Queensland Uni, took blood out of me and there was an old Chinese doctor in the Valley called Edgar Moo. He told me I had chronic fatigue syndrome but it was in my head. All I needed was someone to tell me I was all right.
Q: I loved that quote where you said once about how ironic it was that you spent your whole life being ridiculously fussy about your horses but treated your own body like a pack of poo tickets.
A: That's what my wife said to me. She said you kick your staff's backsides if they are not cleaning up after themselves and your horses are not fed the right diet and everything is not spic and span and, all you do is abuse your own body with lack of sleep, cigarettes and crap food.
Q: Have you cut down on the fags?
A: No, I have not cut down on the bungers and I am the biggest consumer of Fourex Gold in Victoria.
I don't drink anything else. In the last two or three years I have won the Caulfield and Sandown trainers' premiership and you get $3000 worth of wine. I have done a deal with a guy at a bottle shop where I give him the $3000 worth of wine and he gives me a pallet of Fourex Gold.
It works out very nicely.
Q: Your relationship with jockey Luke Nolen sounds fascinating ... a great bond and the occasional blue?
A: We do but we have a great relationship. We are not best mates but we can sit down and have a bit of fun.
We don't live in each other's pockets. I will blow up and he will blow up back but we both realise we can't drag our heels.
Q: What's the biggest blue you have had?
A: I remember I once half accused him of pulling a horse. I said to him: "Geez, I hope you haven't given that a run because I don't believe you can ride that bad."
I have never seen a bloke throw a greater wobbly in all my life. He wanted to have a fight. He said: "You low bastard, if you think I pulled that you can go and get stuffed." He threw things and stormed off.
Honestly Charlie Sheen could not have put on a bigger act than he did so I knew he must have been innocent.
Q: Any people you have met that have taken your breath away?
A: The first year I went to Royal Ascot with Magnus I was leaning on the running rail having a smoke and watching the Queen coming up the straight in a carriage on the big screen, then she went under the grandstand and the next minute she came through the enclosure straight past me.
So there's Peter Moody from Charleville leaning on the fence with a durry hanging out of my mouth and I could have reached out and deadset touched her. I remember thinking "how's that for a lout from Wyandra?" I was gobsmacked.
Q: How did you feel wearing a top hat and tails to Royal Ascot?
A: The funny thing is you feel all right because over there you are the silly bastard if you haven't got it on.
Q: The old racetrack in your home town in western Queensland at Wyandra has closed down. Does that sadden you?
A: It is sad because there were probably 30 Wyandra-type situations around Queensland. Even the local gymkhanas, everyone used to have one of them but the insurance just killed them.
I used to sponsor a memorial to my father at Wyandra so it was a little bit of a heartfelt thing for me.
Q: Is there anything you learnt from your bush days that you still use in practice?
A: Even to this day I learn from bush trainers. I went to the Roma Cup in November and talking to guys like Mark Goodwin and Craig Smith and the Baker boys. I pick up a lot of things.
They talk to me as if I am a leading trainer who knows everything. If only they knew how much I'm learning off them. I love picking their brains.
Q: What will you being doing in 15 years time?
A: I don't know. One thing I would love to do is beef up the rights of racehorse trainers.
We are the bank of the industry yet we effectively have no rights. I'd like to ramp up the rights of trainers as jockeys have done over the past decade. At times trainers have been extremely hard done by. I feel for the next generation of young blokes.
It is getting harder all the time.
Q: Do you ever sleep in?
A: It depends. The last three weeks I've averaged four hours sleep a night, but guess what happened Sunday.
For the first time I can remember I turned my phone off and slept through to 9am. It was great.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/ipad/a-long-road-from-roma-to-royalty/story-fn6ck6i3-1226315424655