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David McColm – Buying Far Too Easy Wasn’t All That Hard
By John Curtis
DAVID McColm will have his son Archie to thank if Far Too Easy climbs to the top of the mountain in The Kosciuszko at Royal Randwick.
The young racing fanatic, who will turn 14 in November, was instrumental in his Murwillumbah trainer father purchasing the now four-year-old for $45,000 at a Gold Coast yearling sale in 2020.
Eleven career starts later and with six wins to his credit and having earned nearly $430,000, Far Too Easy is one of the strong chances in Randwick’s $2m feature for country-trained horses on October 15.
“Archie not only loves his racing, but has a special liking for the top-class racehorse Alligator Blood (this year’s Stradbroke Handicap winner),” McColm explained.
“He was adamant I should look at yearlings by his sire All Too Hard when I went to that Gold Coast sale.
“I looked at five youngsters and didn’t like any of them.
“Then I looked at this colt from an unraced Hussonet mare (Mnemonic).
“He was a bit small but a nice horse, and I liked him purely on type and got him cheaper than our budget of $60,000.
“Naming him didn’t take long. Far Too Easy is the reverse of All Too Hard, and it sounded good.”
Far Too Easy was gelded early, and McColm described him as “a bit of a deceiver”.
“He showed no energy, and never got hyped up,” he said. “He would just stand in the yard.
“I was a bit hesitant how he might shape up on the track to be honest when I sent him to Toowoomba to be broken in.”
McColm’s fears were allayed when the breaker rang him to say Far Too Easy was a cracker.
“I knew then he would be okay, and gave him an early preparation when he came back and he did everything so perfectly.”
Fittingly, McColm and his wife Judy race Far Too Easy in partnership with close friends Don and Mary Wardlaw.
David McColm with his “The Kosciuszko” contender Far Too Easy.
It was the Wardlaws who raced the McColm trained Spirit Of Oregon, who won 10 races and collected more than $200,000 prizemoney back in the 1990s.
“I first met Don and Mary when I was breaking in horses in Brisbane for trainer Ken Lee,” McColm said.
“We really hit it off, and they gave me a few horses to train. We’ve been great friends for 35 years.”
It was also Don Wardlaw who a few years ago influenced McColm to resume his training career after a lengthy hiatus, caused by a sudden and serious illness.
“I had a mini stroke having breakfast one morning in 2010,” he said.
“It was a bleed on the brain, and an NRMI revealed it was from a cavernoma, which I was born with but never knew anything about it until this happened.
“Whilst the cavernoma thankfully was benign, it took me a long time to fully recover. I was out of action for two years.”
McColm recalls Wardlaw recommending he should resurrect his training career during a chat whilst having a cold ale.
“I had never relinquished my licence, and Don was keen for us to get serious and have another crack, concentrating on spending good money on yearlings.
“The first horse we bought was Our Rebel (a $65,000 yearling in 2019, and the now Dissident five-year-old has won four of his 12 starts), Far Too Easy was next and then Flying Mikki (the Mikki Isle three-year-old who cost $70,000 as a yearling last year and was an impressive debut winner at Doomben on August 10).”
Though a Queenslander by birth (a Toowoomba product), McColm’s racing career began across the border in New South Wales.
“Dad managed cattle properties, and we moved around a bit,” he explained.
“I helped out mustering cattle, and that’s how I got involved and interested in horses.
“When I finished Grade 10 at school, I didn’t want to go on and Dad agreed provided I got a job.
“I saw an advertisement for an apprentice jockey at Werris Creek (north of Quirindi and south-west of Tamworth), and got it.”
McColm was apprenticed to Reg Powell, whose parents had a 4000-acre property.
“There was a training track on the property; it was a wonderful set-up,” McColm said.”
“Whenever Reg wanted to take his horses to a racecourse to gallop, we could go to either Quirindi or Tamworth.”
McColm spent two and a half years with Powell riding around the bush, and recalls his first winning ride was at Grafton; coincidentally where Far Too Easy qualified for the Country Championships Final at Randwick in April by winning the Northern Rivers heat.
He then moved back to Queensland, and spent another couple of years with trainer Kevin Kedge at Bundamba (Ipswich), again riding mainly at bush meetings.
But his career in the saddle was never going to reach longevity. “I was too tall; it was a struggle,” McColm said.
With his riding days over and, through meeting a contact, he applied and secured a job with Amalgamated Pest Control and learnt the ropes.
He took up training on the side, initially at Doomben and later at Beaudesert and enjoyed good success.
A marriage break-up halted McColm’s training career, and once again he hopped back the other side of the border, this time to Murwillumbah.
Whilst never despairing of training again sometime down the track, he bought five acres and started his own pest control business, putting his previous experience to good use.
He recently sold the business as he got serious with training; Far Too Easy playing an important role in lifting him back into the spotlight.
McColm has eight horses in work at present, and hopes to increase that to around 10 or 12 – but no more.
“My aim is to have a boutique stable, concentrating on quality and not quantity,” he said.
“I have a really good staff with former jockey Craig Franklin (whose son Jasper is a promising apprentice, based with Coffs Harbour trainer Brett Dodson) my foreman.
“We have a good set-up at Murwillumbah close to the track, and I’m really happy with how things are going.”
That wasn’t the case earlier in the year when disastrous floods struck the Northern Rivers area. Murwillumbah racecourse went underwater, and it was touch and go with McColm’s horses for a while.
“We live only 50m from the stables, but I had to row across in a boat because that was the only way I could get there,” McColm explained.
“The horses (including Far Too Easy) were well and truly knee deep in water. It was scary, but fortunately we were able to get them out.”
Not being able to work Far Too Easy because the track was out of action forced McColm to shift camp to Scone to prepare his gelding for the Country Championships Final at Randwick.
McColm met new friends at Scone and was rapt with the tremendous help he received leading into Far Too Easy’s close fourth to Wagga’s Another One in the big race.
McColm’s stable star had his final lead-up to The Kosciuszko when successful at the Gold Coast metropolitan meeting on September 17 at his second run this campaign.
“If The Kosciuszko was 1400m, I would have given him another run, but I need to have him fresh and ready for the 1200m,” McColm said.
“I’m hoping to make arrangements to stable him at Newcastle, and take the horse to Randwick on the day of the race.
“I’m a country boy, and the hustle and bustle of Sydney doesn’t really suit me.”
McColm is yet to confirm a Kosciuszko rider for Far Too Easy when he chases the $1m first prize, but said both James Orman (who won on him last time at the Gold Coast) and Ash Morgan (the gelding’s successful partner in the Northern Rivers race earlier in the year) were in contention.
Both McColm and Far Too Easy have certainly beaten the odds. There would be no more deserving success if The Kosciuszko comes their way!
. HOOFNOTE: Should that happen, McColm’s myriad of emotions will no doubt include thoughts of former Victorian jockey Chris Caserta, who tragically drowned whilst having a late night swim at Surfers Paradise beach last December.
Caserta helped launch Far Too Easy’s career, riding him at his first three starts last year, winning on him at Grafton in June and July before finishing fourth at the gelding’s metropolitan debut at Doomben in early August.
“We got the phone call the next morning to say Chris was missing,” McColm said. “It was heart-breaking. Such a tragedy for a young man to lose his life that way as he was trying so hard to make a fresh start to his career.”
