Steve speaks to British-born handlers Archie Alexander and Matt Cumani about life as young trainers in Ballarat
They’re a couple of thirty-something likely lads, from England, searching for gold in their adopted home Ballarat in Victoria which is about 17,000 kilometres from the country of their birth.
Cambridge born Matt Cumani and London born Archie Alexander are not yet snapping at the heels of the state’s leading trainer Darren Weir, whose principal base is also at Ballarat, but they are making a damn good fist of things.
So much so that the joke among other Ballarat trainers, earlier this year when Alexander was having a good run, was that “Weiry’ was peaking over the Alexander stable fence.
Alexander’s run continued through the spring with feature race success while Cumani has turned around what looked like an annus horribilis with a dozen winners, at an incredibly high strike rate, in just on five weeks from mid-October.
Cumani was suspended for three months, in May this year, and fined $20,000 for failing to notify stewards of a strangles infection in his Ballarat stables. Godolphin’s Australian team was also sanctioned this year, but the nominated trainer escaped suspension, for failing to report an episode of the same contagious infection.
“It was tough and the fine made it especially hard when you’re still at the stage of establishing your business. You’re throwing every resource you can muster into it and not really expecting to turn a profit over the first couple of years. I suppose we’d had a honeymoon period over the first two years when people give you the benefit of the doubt. Then you wonder what impact the suspension will have but fortunately we had very loyal owners,” Cumani said.
Both men acknowledge that it’s one thing to start training some winners but quite another to make their businesses a financial success.
To this point they’ve done promisingly well, especially when you can consider that the one UK trainer who previously attempted a similar transition was Mark Wallace and he left Sydney with his tail, many pursuing it, between his legs.
“In terms of business viability, I’d say we’re just getting there now. We’ve spent a good deal of money in building additional boxes and renovating the house so you need consistent income,” Alexander said.
Alexander says he’d now have 35-40 horses in work after the numbers were fewer and subject to greater fluctuation two years ago. As was the case with Cumani during his suspension, Alexander concedes his resolve has been tested. “You start to doubt yourself when things aren’t going as well as you’d hope,” he said.
Cumani too acknowledges that there is significant capital expenditure and the strain there-of which has to be funded either by income or borrowings. “We rent stables from the (Ballarat) Turf Club, we have more staff than we did initially and we’re in the process of buying Robert Smerdon’s old stables,” he said.
Cumani now has 48 horses in work including pre-trainers. “We’ve got a lot of young horses and tend to do most of the pre-training ourselves,” Cumani said.
The depth of young talent was evident, last Saturday, when he had three runners in the Magic Millions 2YO Clockwise Classic (1000m) at his new ‘hometown’ Cup meeting. Two of them picked up a cheque, running second and fourth, in what looked a hot race and the stable won with Etah James (Raise The Flag) who’s now won four of six starts while stable stalwart Grey Lion (Galileo) was a brave third on unsuitably heavy ground in the Ballarat Cup (Listed, 2200m).
Both men are now settled professionally and personally and, with Australian permanent residency, see themselves as long term players in this part of the world.
Alexander married Annie Bowles earlier this year, while Cumani will marry Sarah Bell in February next year. Like his well known sister Francesca, Cumani is marrying an Australian. Bell is the granddaughter of P. J. (Jim) Bell who was chairman of the Australian Jockey Club from 1983 to 1992.
“She’s brilliant and has joined me in Ballarat and, no, the marriage is not just a visa back-up,” Cumani joked.
That might have been off the record as might have been Alexander’s comments about his wife and accomplished horsewoman Annie but they’re irresistible. “She rides work, runs the office, handles the complaints and helped set up the website. Oh and she’s a very nice person…and good looking,” Alexander said.
Not to mention that he’s done well in the brother-in-law department to boot. Annie’s brother Harry Bowles, who formerly worked for Timeform, is now teaching english in Taiwan but also writes the previews on Alexander’s website and provides a valuable, form sounding board.
“He’s amazing. He’s got his head around the Aussie form and is able to offer an opinion from time to time as to whether we’re running a horse in the right race or not. He’ll also comment on the nuances of tracks like Stawell or Warracknabeal where he’s never been but he knows them,” Alexander said.
Cumani says it’s taken time to understand all the Victorian tracks but he’s enjoyed the process. “I love country racing and I’ve tried to get to as many country tracks as possible. There’s various theories about most of them but I like to see them myself and work out which (theories) are accurate,” he said.
Both Cumani and Alexander secured their permanent residency after initially being sponsored in Australia. “I think our timing was right as the process has become harder in the last year or so. I think we managed to establish that we wouldn’t be a drain on the Australian economy and in our case we’re employing 24 people,” said Cumani, who incidentally, does not have Italian citizenship courtesy of father Luca but says he does feel ‘connected to Italy’ and now to Australia.
Cumani joked he might have to be wary about any dual citizenship should he chose to return to politics! He worked in the office of then-Conservative leader Michael Howard, in Britain, before the 2005 election. “There’s similarities between the two games, racing and politics. A lot of diplomacy and plenty of spin,” he said.
“I was always desperate to look for something other than horse racing but even when working in politics, I found myself spending more time reading the Racing Post than reading the political pages,” he said.
“I had sponsorship from OTI and Lloyd Williams,” Alexander said. “And the permanent residency didn’t prove too difficult. The options now are apply for citizenship or you can apply to renew the permanent residency every ten years. I think I’ll be staying unless some with weird happens.”
Cumani’s also in it for the long haul although there could well be a temptation to return to Newmarket should his father Luca choose to retire. But racehorse trainers don’t retire, do they? And besides, Cumani junior points to the excellent prizemoney on offer in Australia; not to mention his impending marriage to an Australian.
“I see myself here for ten, twenty years…maybe forever. The racing’s great and racing plays a real part in the overall sporting landscape. The prize money’s fantastic and I’ve invested in property or at least the bank has,” he said.
The differences are not that great in training styles between England and Australia according to Cumani. “I think that’s a misconception. Essentially it’s gallop three furlongs, home two,” he said. In Australia, that’s five – home two which means work over 1000 metres, quickening up the last 400 metres and you’ll hear that hundreds of times every morning at every training track in Australia.
“Obviously there’s some differences. I might be more inclined to run a horse first up at a mile (1600 metres) and here horses are more likely to have a spell whereas they’ll stay in the yard in the UK. There’s obviously a difference between training tracks and the gallops but here, at Ballarat, we have the lovely 1400 metres uphill track and training methods are not that radically different I’d say. I still train similarly to my father,” Cumani said.
He also sees the odd irony in terms of the two racing cultures. “Australia is seen as the home of two-year-old racing and yet there’s only two races for the two-year-olds over Melbourne Cup week and five at Royal Ascot. We also need more two-year-old races here (Australia) over a little further, 1400 to 1600 metres,” he said.
Alexander says his approach is fundamentally a blend of the methods he’s been exposed to in both hemispheres. “I’d think English and Australian trainers could probably learn a lot from each other,” he said.
He was at the Ballarat ‘jump-outs’, which are barrier trials, when I rang him last week. “That’s one obviously sensible thing here. The horses go to the races with plenty of experience whereas in England, a young horse might have seen the barriers once and that might have been in the middle of an old paddock.
“Yet, on the other hand, a lot of Australian trainers might struggle with the concept of running a horse like Rekindling in the Melbourne Cup off a break of almost two months,” he said.
Cumani’s first trip to Australia was in 2007 when his father’s horse Purple Moon (Galileo) finished second in the Melbourne Cup (Gr 1, 3200m). “I was here for two weeks but I admit I didn’t do much work,” he said.
The work began in 2014 when he did the Australian yearling sales with Guy Mulcaster who is Chris Waller’s bloodstock advisor and then worked for Waller for eight months.
He’d previously broadened his horizons with Ed Dunlop in Newmarket and spent two years in America, first with Todd Pletcher and then Paddy Gallagher.
Alexander, whose father Hamish notably bought Derby (Gr 1, 1m4f) winner Generous (Caerleon) as a foal, has a broad range of experience from riding for champion National Hunt trainer Nicky Henderson as a youngster to working for Alec Head, Criquette Head-Maarek, Todd Pletcher, Mark Johnston, Aidan O’Brien and Lloyd Williams.
He also spent time with Anthony Cummings and Danny O’Brien, in Australia, in between travelling the east coast and exploring the iconic Great Ocean Road.
As to the choice of Ballarat and the huge shadow cast by Darren Weir, Alexander has previously said it’s a positive rather than a negative. “It’s actually an advantage training next door to him. He proved good horses can be trained at Ballarat, he’s put it on the map. His aim is 300 winners a year, mine is 30. I’m rowing in one direction, he’s rowing in another.
“I’d like to think I’m a better trainer now than if I’d just stayed in England the whole time. I get to watch Darren Weir every day and obviously he does an amazing job,” he said.
And the challenge continues. Typical of most trainers, Cumani concedes me may have been over-zealous at this year’s sales. “We probably bought a few more than we could sell so there were still shares unsold several months later but we’re getting there now,” he said.
Replenishing stock is, of course, key to any trainer’s survival and just one of a myriad of ancillary tasks a trainer faces on an almost daily basis.
Who’d want to be a racehorse trainer? “It’s a fair question,” Alexander says. “But it’s about the love of the horses and the competition and it’s really all I ever wanted to do. Winning races makes it worthwhile. Yes, the bigger race wins are better but not by that much. There’s great satisfaction in winning a race with the horse everybody said couldn’t win or winning one for the owner who hasn’t had much luck. A win’s a win.”
And Alexander and Cumani are winning plenty!