Oscar Wilde’s Lady Bracknell famously said of an orphaned Ernest Worthing that to lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune but to lose both looks like carelessness.
I bet you didn’t expect that opening line in a piece of content on a racing website.
Stay with me.
This author might be a bit of a Wilde fan boy but Justin Brooks certainly isn’t. He’s never read The Importance of Being Earnest but he can appreciate how the tongue-in-cheek Wilde wit might apply to his latest predicament.
He laughs when telling his story, perhaps only to stop himself from crying.
Brooks isn’t careless. Just unlucky.
Not once, but twice has he turned down a share in a horse that would go on to become a champion.
For a racing lover, to miss out on the chance to race one life-changing horse is a hard pill to swallow. To do it a second time is a living nightmare.
In early 2021, the Adelaide-based restauranteur considered buying a small share in a young horse bought out of New Zealand by Wayne Ormond. It wasn’t a straight ‘no’ in response to the offer but after weeks of inaction, the horse was fully sold.
Brooks can’t remember exactly why he passed on the opportunity – the spectre of COVID on his business at the time, a bad week on the punt and a preference to race fillies were all factors in his decision – but the short of it is that he’s since had to watch on while Mr Brightside has stamped himself as one of Australia’s premier middle-distance gallopers.
With each Group 1 win – there have been 10 of them, as well as an All Star Mile – Brooks has had to revisit the decision that has cost him tens of thousands of dollars and a lifetime of happy memories.
There were similar questions being asked after this year’s Caulfield and Melbourne Cups, albeit Brooks wasn’t on his own this time.
He is part of a punters club made up of an eclectic group of South Australian racing fans and they too all passed on the chance to race the Cups hero Half Yours after he was purchased by the McEvoy stable for $305,000 via Inglis Digital.
“We’ve got a punters club that we formed with a group of misfits – some of them have a bit of a profile and others are down and outers like myself,” Brooks said.
“We got back from a trip to the Cox Plate last year and our funds got dispersed – I don’t think we’d had an overly successful weekend away.”
“About two weeks later an email came around that half of the group didn’t read and probably only two or three of us really looked at.”
“The email was from the ‘captain’ of the punters club Gavan Fox who forwarded an email from Tony McEvoy’s stable suggesting that they’d found something that they were quite excited about.”
“It was Half Yours who they’d just bought on Inglis Digital.”
“Gavan put it to us that the punters club should form a syndicate and take a share in the horse but there wasn’t a single response.”
“It probably would’ve only taken one or two of us to fold and the group would’ve taken a small share but there were zero that put their hand up at the time.”
“Gavan ended up taking up a share himself.”
Brooks thought little of it until the horse made headlines when winning the Caloundra Cup during the winter.
In the back of his mind, he feared what might happen, although few could’ve imagined Half Yours’ meteoric rise in 2025.
“It wasn’t until the horse won the Caloundra Cup that I twigged which horse it was,” he said.
“I went back through my emails and sure enough, that was the one.”
“After he won the Caulfield Cup, most of the guys in the punters club WhatsApp group were up and about, congratulating Gavan and they hadn’t even worked out that this was the horse in the email and they could’ve bought a share too.”
“But the reality is that there were probably hundreds of people that got forwarded that email from Rayan Moore from the McEvoy stable so I don’t think we’d be alone in passing on the offer.”
“But it’s funny to look at it in the scheme of the Mr Brightside stuff because he’s the gift that just keep giving to the point that he’s probably going to come back in the autumn and win another Group 1.”
While it’s hard to get the ‘what could’ve been’ thoughts out of his head, Brooks prefers to look forward and is hellbent on finding his pin-up horse.
It could come as soon as Saturday when a talented galloper he has a share in, SA sprinter Watchme Win, tackles the $1 million Meteorite at Cranbourne.
Already a dual Stakes winner, the progressive five-year-old has won almost $350,000 in prizemoney and may yet prove to be a Group 1 horse for Andrew Gluyas and his fellow owners.
Watchme Win is rated $16 with bet365 for The Meteorite.
