Brian Mayfield-Smith, one of Australia's leading racehorse trainers, has retired. One of Mayfield-Smith's first owners when he started training in Cairns was former The Cairns Post editor ALAN HUDSON who recalls some highlights of those early times...

It was a Monday night early in 1971 when I took a phone call in The Cairns Post’s newsroom from an angry young man complaining about a story we had published that day.

We reported how a horse had escaped from a stable at Cannon Park racecourse and was struck by a truck on the Bruce Highway near the drive-in theatre.

The young man was Brian Mayfield-Smith.

He said the horse was his and he claimed the article implied neglect on his part, so we ran another short item the next day with his version of events.

The following Saturday at the Cannon Park races, Brian introduced himself and thanked me for what I had done. That was the start of a close friendship which has endured to this day.

Brian this month announced he was retiring after one of the most remarkable sporting achievements imaginable, going from a novice in Cairns to become Australia’s premier trainer in a little more than a decade.

When I met him, Brian was living in a small wooden caravan in the grounds of Cannon Park, with just two horses in his care.

I became one of his early owners a few months later when Brian purchased a horse named Constant Light from Brisbane and I raced it in partnership with my good friends George Fitzpatrick, Mick Kelly and Reg Walker.

It is well documented that Brian gave up a life as a ringer on western Queensland cattle stations and went to work for trainers in Sydney and Brisbane to gain experience before returning to his home town of Cairns to start out on his own in January 1971.

But at that stage he was a horse trainer without a horse to train.

"I went to the races every week, trying to find an owner to give me a horse to train," he said.

"But it was my mother who got me my first horse. She grew up in Gordonvale with Kevin Lucey, who had a butcher shop in Gordonvale and owned Marionvale Station near Mt Garnet.

"Kevin gave me Global Bid to train. We won with it at its first start and he won four of its next eight starts, including the 1971 Mareeba Cup when Ernie Yeung rode him.

"But Gay Meld was the first starter I had.

"I used to go into the Stratford Hotel every afternoon after work and the publican, Kevin Schmidt, would be behind the bar and always said that one day he would get me a horse.

"He bought a mare, Gay Meld from Brisbane, and she raced in the names of Kevin, his wife June, and June’s sister Yvonne Dobbin.

"I remember the day when she had her first start at Mareeba and I took her up in a two-horse float.

"When we saddled her, she reared up and finished with one leg over the fence. The clerk of the course had to lead her out and her jockey Max King ran alongside and jumped on."

However, she won the three-horse race easily and went on to win three of her five starts and then took out the 1972 Gordonvale Cup.

"She beat John O’Brien’s Royal Robber in a close finish at Gordonvale and everyone thought he had won, including the judge who put the numbers in the frame," Mayfield-Smith said.

"But, lucky for me, it was the first time that the photo finish was used at Gordonvale and the print showed that Gay Meld had won."

Brian still regards a win he had later that year as one of his most satisfying achievements when he won a 2000m race at the 1971 Cairns Amateurs with former Sydney galloper Grenoble Boy, owned by Cooktown publican Col Rowbotham.

"We set her for that race months in advance and other trainers used to have a go at me when he always ran near last in sprint races, but I told the jockey to ride him out for a furlong after the finish and by the time the Amateurs came along he was the fittest horse in the race.

"The jockey Ron (Rajah) Thompson let him slide towards the lead past the 1300m and he led into the straight and won easily. There were heaps of bookies fielding then and everyone had a big win (his starting price was 14-1)."

But it was not all plain sailing for Brian and he was involved in two incidents which could have brought an early end to his training career.

"I got into an argument at Cannon Park one day and had to attend a hearing before (North Queensland Racing Association secretary) Ted Carr in his office upstairs in the old National Bank building on the corner of Lake and Spence streets," he said.

"Mr Carr was a stickler for the rules, but he was fair. He told me, regardless of the circumstances that licensed persons could not
behave in the way that I did and if it happened again my licence would have to be reviewed.

"Well, as it happened I got into another fight at Innisfail a few weeks later and the steward, Tom Carlton, told me as it was the second time I would probably lose my licence.

"But he decided to give me the benefit of the doubt, and if it wasn’t for Tom Carlton giving me that second chance, heaven knows where I would be now as I had no other skills. I owe Tom a lot."

Tom Carlton later served for many years on the Australian Jockey Club’s stewards’ panel in Sydney.

His other setback came when he was swimming Gay Meld at the Green Patch in the Mulgrave River at Gordonvale and the mare panicked, lashed out with her forelegs and dragged him under the water.

"Mum was on the bank and she raced away and got Bert Healy, an old trainer in Gordonvale, to come and help, and Mum and Bert took Gay Meld back to Cairns for me," he said.

But the mare’s hoof had gouged the flesh out of Brian’s upper leg and the Gordonvale ambulance took him to Cairns Base Hospital where he discharged himself against their advice with his wound stitched and bandaged.

However, the wound flared up a month later and his doctor told him he would have to go into hospital and have skin grafts on his leg.

"I told him I couldn’t go into hospital as I had horses to look after, but he said I had a choice: the horses or my leg, so I spent the next month in hospital," he recalled.

It was obvious even in those early days that he was a resolute young man, determined to succeed in one of toughest jobs in the world.

I recall how he often told me of his ambition to graduate steadily from Cairns to Townsville, then to Brisbane, before moving to Sydney, then regarded as the major racing centre of Australia.

"And I won’t be taking a backward step," he said at the time.

I didn’t say so at the time, but I thought it was more a fanciful dream than a realistic ambition, but it is remarkable that Brian achieved the step-by-step transition from his modest start in Cairns to Sydney’s training ranks within six years.

The horse that helped him claim success in his move from Cairns to Townsville was a smart sprinter named Don’t Delay, owned by
Ted Little.

A few years later, Brian felt that Don’t Delay was up to city class, so he made the move to Brisbane with a few runners, one of which was an emerging sprinter named Torbadol, owned by the Heatley family of Townsville.

Torbadol became the star of Brian’s team in Brisbane and won a string of races before he acquired another galloper named Tiger Town, the trigger for his next big step to Sydney in November 1976.

Brian leased stables adjoining Randwick racecourse owned by Fil Allota, who had retired after a stellar training career, and it was there one day that he took a phone call from Ken Ennever, manager of Nebo Lodge, the Rosehill stables where Millie Fox had 60 horses being trained for her.

Mrs Fox was the widow of Stan Fox, who had made a fortune in the coal industry and had invested heavily in thoroughbreds.

Ennever arranged a meeting with Mrs Fox which resulted in Brian being offered the job of taking over Nebo Lodge and becoming Mrs Fox’s private trainer.

"I couldn’t work it out why she wanted me with a team of only seven horses when she had so many good trainers to choose from," Brian said.

But he took over in April 1978 – a move that catapulted him to become one of Sydney’s elite trainers.

The sad part of the move was that Brian’s mother had died in 1977, aged only 53, and had not lived to see the success she had hoped for and helped him to try to achieve.

"If it wasn’t for Mum I’d never even have got started," Brian said.

He ended up winning more than 300 races for Mrs Fox but they were mainly horses moderately bred from Australian stock.

In 1984, Sydney businessman Bob LaPointe and English breeding magnate Robert Sangster took over the ownership of Nebo Lodge, providing the stable with the quality gallopers that led Brian to defeat Tommy Smith for the 1985-86 trainers’ premiership.

He also won the next two premierships, before Smith assumed the mantle once more.

The highlight of his training career in Sydney was winning the 1987 Golden Slipper with Marauding, but he also won two Sydney Cups (Late Show, Marooned), a Doncaster Handicap (Magic Flute), VRC and QTC derbys (Handy Proverb, Bravery), and VRC Oaks (Diamond Shower).

In 1995, at the age of 48, Brian shocked the racing world when he abandoned his Sydney training
career and moved with wife Maree to Africa to save wild animals from cruelty and extinction.

But it did not work out and when he returned in 1997 to Australia, he decided to train horses again and chose Flemington as his base.

He had great success with a small team of up to 28 in his stable, with quality gallopers like Rubitano, Prince Rubiton, Sudurka, Innovation Girl and Oliver Twist.

He almost achieved his ultimate ambition when Maybe Better
finished third in the 2007 Melbourne Cup, but this year has seen his stable drop from its 28-horse capacity to only 17 in full training, and he said he was faced with a commercial decision to retire.

"It has been pretty hard," he said. "I never thought it would end like this with all the success I’ve had. I didn’t want to retire, but I had to act sensibly."

He said he would decide on the next chapter in his life when he and wife Maree return in January from a holiday in Africa, but he told me he would not shut the door on the racing industry.

"I would like to be involved in the thoroughbred industry, maybe as a consultant to help people make the right decisions," he said. "I might also do something about the rehabilitation of retired horses.

"Maree’s sister Debbie is involved in showjumping at Warrnambool and we could send some horses to her to see if they are suited."

Brian already has some of his former champions living out their life at his own property at Yea, in northeastern Victoria.

"Rubitano, Prince Rubiton, Maybe Better, Diamond Jake and The Collector are there but we haven’t room for any more," he said

Brian said he was pleased to have been given the chance to talk about his early training days in Cairns.

"People should never forget their roots and I’ll never forget where I came from and the people who helped me get started in Cairns," he said.

"And I’ll never forget that day at the 1971 Cairns Amateurs when I won with Quran and Grenoble Boy and (course commentator) Dick Chant said, ‘A young trainer named Brian Mayfield-Smith won a double here today and you’ll be hearing a lot more of him in the future’."

No one that day could possibly have dreamed how prophetic those words would prove to be.

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