NRL mega star Billy Slater chose the ball game but not so Paul Snowden. For the latter was born into the thoroughbred racing game.
Paul Snowden may have been a rugby league representative while displaying a talent in the Canterbury and Cronulla junior leagues but racing was always going to be the winner.
“Something had to give,” Snowden said on Friday.
“I gave it a shot, seen if it was doable, it had to be one or the other and this one won out.”
The 33-year-old hasn’t missed league one iota. Hasn’t had the time to worry about it really. Juggling stablework, riding trackwork, including super horses like Lonhro, while training for football just didn’t work out.
Slater may have been a trackwork rider at Gai Waterhouse’s but he chose rugby league where stardom awaited.
“Dad used to give me the afternoons off so I could go to football but it just never worked out,” Snowden said.
Dad being Peter Snowden. The man that stands down as head trainer for Darley Stud’s Australian operation at the completion of tomorrow’s Hawkesbury Gold Cup meeting in which the son is hopeful of sending out his first starter.
And Paul Snowden was a vital cog in the massive Darley Stud team which under his father’s guidance over the last six years netted some $76 million in prizemoney. Earnt from winning 1260 races of which 28 were at group 1 level.
Paul Snowden ran the Melbourne operation based at Flemington. It was where he unearthed Sepoy which went on to become the champion juvenile of his generation winning the Blue Diamond-Golden Slipper double.
Early on Snowden even got to trot up the Triple Crown winner Octagonal. Then there was the untapped Unworldly which smashed a leg at trackwork one morning when the racing universe was at her mercy.
“It was like someone had died in the family,” Snowden recalled. “She was so kind, everyone loved her.”
Racing can be cruel but when it pulses through you veins you cannot leave it. That’s why Snowden and father Peter have entered a training partnership and will be operating out of Randwick.
“Racing is in the blood,” Paul Snowden said.
“If I wasn’t kicking a football around growing up in Scone I’d be down at dad’s stable, riding my pony up and down and upsetting the racehorses.
“He’d be abusing me, throwing stones at me.”
Now they’ll unite.
“It is very humbling the support we have had from owners, from everyone,” Paul Snowden said.
“We’ve got around 160 horses already, I’ve been at Randwick for the past two months and we’ve had about 30 two-year-olds through the system and we’ve got about 60 on the books.”
Apart from tending the thoroughbreds Snowden has been working out of two stable blocks while ushering in new staff. This week he’ll gain access to fellow trainer John O’Shea’s Randwick stables.
Of course, O’Shea has taken on the job Peter Snowden vacated at Darley.
“Everywhere you look there is a job to be done,” Paul Snowden said.
“It is a work in progress and I’m glad I was here a couple of months ago.”
There has been little down time for Snowden is now living at Maroubra and reckons “I haven’t even been down to the beach and it is at the end of the road”.
“If we do it properly the first time we won’t have to do it again,” was the comment which may have well come from the father.
“We are well and truly on the way.”
Paul Snowden is set to scratch Papillon Rouge from the opener at Hawkesbury “for it is not her right race” and “she can run next Saturday”.
That leaves Commanding Wit in the Darley Crown which Peter Snowden has won four times. Commanding Wit is the second emergency in the race which the father has five runners in.
“He has done the right thing and pulled one out for me,” Paul Snowden said with a laugh.
“My owners are keen to run her in it, this was a race they’ve targeted and it has all been geared to this.
“Hopefully she gets to run, I’m confident she’ll run well.”
By Craig Young
