Reeves’ Winning Return From Retirement
I See fire and Colin Reeves after their win at Northam. Photo- Photography by Jodie Hallows
After an almost eight-year hiatus from the winner’s circle and over three years since he drove in an official race, Colin Reeves accepted the drive on I See Fire on Friday night at Northam, claiming the win in race 8 on the card.
After receiving a call from his son Hayden on Tuesday night asking if he wanted to drive the four-year-old at Northam, Colin made the trip from Busselton to help his son take three horses to the meeting at with just the one drive on his books. Starting at $5.50 on the TAB Touch fixed odds market, I See Fire got away well from barrier four, going on to lead all the way in the maiden event for the Reeves duo, coming out on top over stablemates Zalias Champion and Kamendable Galaxy in 2:06:2 over the 2190m.
The win was a first for the pair, with harness stalwart Alan Parker confirming that Friday night’s win was the first winner Colin had driven Hayden Reeves.
Before Friday night’s win, Reeves’ previous driving victory was on board his own horse Aussie Jet at Albany on Friday January 30, 2015, with the then 63-year-old relocating to the Great Southern for the season.
With his first driving win on board his own horse Rosie Ryan at Albany on the 29th of December 1975, Reeves has a history of almost 50 years in the industry with the former butcher by trade making the move from Kalgoorlie to Denmark where he started riding at the age of 15. It was soon after that he started riding for his older brother Ted who was a trainer at the time, who had brought his horses to the family farm in Denmark when the Albany Trotting Club opened.
A newspaper clipping of Colin Reeves out of the cart on True Steel at Gloucester Park. Image Supplied.
Colin has been no stranger to success, with the now 70-year-old having had 528 driving wins, including 59 wins in metropolitan graded events, but Reeves confirmed that the win with Lindas Only in the 2007 Country Pacing Derby Final was definitely the highlight of his racing career. Lindas Only who was trained by Susan Reeves, is still seen around the tracks in his current role as race day stable companion.
Reeves has won around 13 heats of the Country Derby over the years, including two at Northam, where he was asked to drive Waitaki Velvet by a colleague at the Denmark Abattoir, who was a part-owner in the horse.
“The condition was if I won the race I would get so much, or if I run a place I would get so much, but if I don’t run anywhere, I don’t get anything, but when I turned up the trainer gave me this big envelope and I thought he must be going to give me some money before the race, make me feel a bit better, but I had four pages of instructions on how to drive the horse with a map of the track on where to take off and everything,”
“We went out and we won the race, but the trainer was abusing me after the race because I didn’t take off when I was supposed to, but what he didn’t realise was that Country Derby’s are like the coolest head out there wins the race because everyone out there has three minutes to prove they have the fastest three-year-old in the country,”
“So, I got my $400 for driving the horse and went home.”
With only ever a small team in work at any time, it was quite the feat for Reeves when he took out leading driver and trainer during the 1993/94 season at Albany given that he only had two horses racing at the time; Chevy Lobell winning five races and only failing to salute the judge once that season, and Another Bay with three wins and three placings.
“I’ve done what I wanted. I never aspired to be a city trainer or win a Fremantle Cup or anything like that. I love harness horses and I just do it for the love of the horses,”
“Even going to Northam on Friday night, at the back of your mind you think this would be really cool if you could win this, but totally unrealistic, I thought we would run a place, but I was really over the moon when we got up.”
Ashleigh Paikos
*Special mention to Alan Parker for his help with the statistics and his knowledge.