Paddy Carbery couldn’t believe his eyes when he turned to come back to the Ascot winner’s enclosure after the Quokka in April.
Emotions were racing through his veins after Jokers Grin had stormed over the top of Headwall to victory.
But then the one man he was thinking of was coming towards him on the Ascot track.
“I had to do this. This is what I dreamed I would do,” trainer Bernie Miller told Carbery.
“I just wanted to be with my two mates.”
But it’s what Miller said next that stayed with his jockey and best mate heading into Saturday’s Winterbottom Stakes.
“I dreamed it twice.”
There’s a good 20 years between Miller and Carbery in age, but there’s not a stronger bond in racing. The pair talk that often each day, that both their wives get annoyed.
Even Carbery’s mother knows how close they are.
“Something happened a few years ago in the family, and no one knew about it,” Carbery remembered. “She heard me talking to Bernie.”
“She said ‘do you tell Bernie everything?’, I just said ‘yeah’. I had never thought of it.”
“He is like my brother.”
The pair share a love of the horse and a trust that can’t be manufactured. Talk with one of them and the other’s voice comes through. Sometimes, they speak as one.
Jokers Grin is the horse at the moment that takes up most of the conversation. There are no nerves, but there’s excitement.
“I don’t sleep well most of the time, because I’m thinking about this horse or that horse and what to do next,” said Miller, who is famous for checking his horses at 1:30am in the morning.
“But I’m not sleeping at the moment, because of excitement.”
“I said it to Paddy the other day, it’s what a really good horse does to you.”
The pair have been here before with Jokers Grin’s mum Walk In Beauty, a winner of two for Miller and wife Helen, both with Carbery in saddle in 2013.
“She was good but had tendon problems,” Miller said.
The next line came from both of them: “She could have been a really good sprinter.”
Carbery finished the discussion on mum, “but we are lucky we had her or we wouldn’t have had Cup Night.”
The Millers shared the ownership of Cup Night, a brother to Jokers Grin, with the Carberys, including Paddy’s wife Jessica.
He would win nine, including a Scenic Blast Stakes and Ranconteur Stakes at Ascot and a Group 3 at Northam as a two-year-old.
He ran in a Railway Stakes, sixth behind Inspirational Girl, a Northerly Stakes and a Winterbottom.
“I never thought I would have a horse like Cup Night in my 60s,” Miller said. “I thought it couldn’t get better than that.”
“I certainly didn’t think I would ever get one like Jokers Grin.”
“Especially in my 70s.”
Miller has always liked the challenge of training and first took a licence out in the early 1970s. He had started in the harness world where his uncle had been, but soon bought a house and stables near Ascot and moved across to the thoroughbreds.
But work would get in the way of passion as a linesman and foreman for West Power for more than 30 years. He would have still liked to be around horses but the hours he had to work meant he couldn’t be in his routine with the horses.
He was finally back with the horses again in 2007, after finishing work, helping trainer Trevor Andrews, when one he owned had swollen legs as it was supposed to go to the races.
Andrews rang Miller and said: “come and get this horse and get your licence again, so you can fix it.”
Carbery was delighted because he had been riding it in the mornings.
“It was a pig of a thing,” Carbery said. “He told me what had happened and then added he told Bernie I would ride it for him.”
“I guess that’s how we become close.”
The count of winners together for Miller and Carbery is 62. Miller’s count is only 70 in total.
“Not a bad team,” Carbery adds.
It is why when the breaker had a high opinion of Jokers Grin, Carbery was called. By this time Beauty in Time had been given to Mark and David Gatti, who had trusted their first part of the family to Miller.
“Paddy just said you might have a real good one,” Miller recalled after Jokers Grin was cantered.
He would find defeat on debut – “we rode too close, he doesn’t like that,” Carbery and Miller echoed each other again.
But since, Jokers Grin has just improved with every run and jumped through the grades.
Miller doesn’t clock his horses, but he seen a horse turn into a beast in front of him this spring.
“I use my eyes and ears,” he says.
“This horse just floats across the ground. He used to hit it harder, but now he lengthens but it’s all power.”
”He’s a different horse to one that won the Quokka.”
Carbery feels his big stride, but it’s the turn of foot of Jokers Grin that puts him at the top.
He has been at the peak of Perth jockey ranks for years and had the chance to ride on some of the greats from the West.
“I rode Northerly after he had the tendon, so I didn’t get the best of him,” he said with consideration, “but I rode Amelia’s Jewel and he’s better than her.”
That would shock a few people, but Carbery doubled down.
“I’ve been on both of them and he’s better than her.”
Carbery has five Group 1 victories and has learned to enjoy every moment and prefers to live in the present rather than talk about what’s to come.
“I told the owners to enjoy every moment of this because you don’t know what will happen next,” Carbery said.
“It will take care of itself.”
Miller has only written out a program for 2025, it has so far been a win in the Prince Of Wales Stakes and a win in the Colonel Reeves Stakes, without Carbery because of concussion protocols, next is Saturday’s Winterbottom and then the Gold Rush.
“I showed them the four races and they were happy,” Miller said. “Let’s get through that and then we can work out next year.”
”I guess we might have to come over east.”
Those are dreams yet to be had. For now it’s the Winterbottom against two-time winner Overpass, who is coming off a fourth in The Everest.
“It would take something big to beat the Quokka and seeing Bernie on the track,” Carbery said.
It could happen on Saturday.
“I know what I’ll do,” Miller said. “It’s a Group 1 though, with my mates.”
