It can be a lonely trek in the dark from Pakenham to Warrnambool but when you’re towing home your first ever Stakes winner, the minutes go by remarkably quickly.
Jo Mugavin had plenty of time for the enormity of her biggest win in Friday’s Listed Torney Night Cup to sink in as she drove almost four hours home to her west coast training base.
She and her fiancé, jumps jockey Jordan Hart, were the authors of their own racing fairytale when their $2500 Inglis Digital purchase Bright Legend outstayed her rivals under lights over 2500m.
As the sole owner and trainer of the mare, Mugavin will pocket the lion’s share of the $120,000 winner’s cheque.
For a 33-year-old trainer attempting to forge a career in a high-pressure and high-stakes sport like racing, the significance of both the win and the payday aren’t lost on her.
Neither was the fact she had to be back at the stables only hours later to make sure her small team of racehorses, pre-trainers and breakers were given the care and attention to detail she prides herself on.
“I think our heads hit the pillow at about 2am,” Mugavin said.
“We were back up for work at 4am.
“We finished work on Saturday morning and had a good sleep then enjoyed a few drinks together that night.
“We’ve always dreamed of being able to have our own property where we can have everything on the same property.
“Working between two bases with just the two of us gets a bit tricky every now and then, especially when you throw races into the mix.
“So it would be really nice to put that money away for savings on a property in a couple of years.”
The Mugavin name is hardly synonymous in racing circles.
But, as a product of Victoria’s racing-mad western districts, Mugavin was introduced to racing in her teens as a viable way to earn an income while indulging a passion for horses.
It was Symon Wilde that encouraged her to indulge that passion further afield before she committed to a career as a trainer.
She learned just as much in racing stables as she did on rough-and-tumble cattle stations in outback Australia.
“When I was working for Symon Wilde I spoke to him about my interest in getting my trainers’ license and what I needed to do to get there,” she said.
“The best advice he gave me was to go live my life before I settled down to start training because once you start, it’s very hard to get away.
“That inspired me to do a trip around Australia and pick up a bit more knowledge about the different ways people train horses in different disciplines.
“Going up and working on cattle stations, the horses have to be very fit and you pretty much have to do everything yourself from your own veterinary work to shoeing your own horses, ultimately so you can ride out on these musters.
“That’s where I learned a lot of the horsemanship side of things.
“I learned a bit of everything and it gave me a good grounding when I came back to Warrnambool and set up my own training facilities.”
Hart spotted Bright Legend online last August and thought she had the makings of a hurdler.
As a 50-rater, she won her first start for her new connections at Mt Gambier over 2000m and, after a short break, has clearly gone to a new level this preparation.
The Listed Roy Higgins Quality at Flemington – a race that carries a Melbourne Cup golden ticket – is next for the daughter of Churchill, although her hometown Cup during the May Carnival is also on Mugavin’s agenda.
“She’d never been tried over further than a mile and my fiancé Jordan picked her out because he looked at her as a prospect over further for us,” she said.
“She came to us in work so we persisted with her for that preparation to see where she was at.
“She won her first start for us over 2000m at Mt Gambier on a Heavy 10.
“We put her in the paddock because she was ready for a break and she needed to do a bit more filling out but she’s come back twice the horse this preparation.
“We’ve continually stepped her out in trip and she’s just flourished.
“She’s an out and out stayer and she’s got that really nice turn of foot at the end of her races.
“If Bright Legend hadn’t won that Stakes race then we’d be looking at jumping her this season.
“But we might keep her for (jumping) next year.
“The Roy Higgins fits into the program pretty well, it’s three weeks from the Torney Night Cup so we were already looking at it if she was competitive.
“I think that’s where we’ll head with her next.
“She’s a very tough horse in her races but she puts everything into them so she always pulls up a little bit scratchy so we’ll make sure she’s 100% right if she goes to that.
“Otherwise, we’ll look at the Warrnambool Cup over the May Carnival.
