A hobby trainer who paid $6,500 for a yearling through a digital sale will take on some of racing’s biggest players when his bargain buy clashes with seven blue-blooded colts in the Canonbury Stakes.
Mellencamp, the only gelding in Saturday’s elite field, was plucked out of an Inglis online auction by Allan Boyle, a Scone-based miner who has trained the odd horse over the years while holding down his fulltime job.
At Rosehill on Saturday, Boyle will find himself saddling up alongside the likes of Chris Waller and Godolphin’s James Cummings as Mellencamp prepares to take on more than $4 million worth of horseflesh.
Three of his rivals– Great Barrier Reef ($1.4 million), Zambezi River ($1.15 million) and Flashing Steel ($1 million) – fetched seven-figure sums.
The next cheapest horse in the race is Sweet Ride who cost $320,000.
“There are three horses in there they paid over a million dollars for, so I guess the story in the race is, I’ve got the pauper’s horse and he is up against the million-dollar bluebloods,” Boyle said.
“But the horses don’t know how much you paid for them.”
Mellencamp is by first season sire Impending out of a Commands mare and won his only barrier trial at Muswellbrook comfortably, leading throughout.
Boyle did consider kicking him off at Scone on Friday but he didn’t think a 900m assignment would be ideal and with meetings at Taree and Canterbury on the same day, he was struggling to find a senior jockey.
He has been able to book Brock Ryan to partner Mellencamp over a more suitable 1100m in the Group 3 Canonbury Stakes (1100m), which isn’t Boyle’s first taste of black-type racing.
Twelve months ago, Gundec finished sixth in the Fernhill Handicap, an effort that caught the eye of an interstate bloodstock agent who subsequently bought him for 20 times his original purchase price.
Boyle has remained in the ownership and the gelding has since won the Victoria Derby Preview at Flemington, going on to contest the classic in which he was unplaced.
With plans to retire from mining in the near future, Boyle will focus more of his attention on training racehorses, albeit on a small scale.
“I have two in work, I’ve got two I’m breaking in at the moment and I have been offered a couple of horses to train,” he said.
“I will keep it to five or six, I don’t want any more horses than that, but that will keep me out of mischief.”
Boyle might find himself the mischief maker if Mellencamp can upset the bluebloods on Saturday.