There was plenty of emotion and crying among members of a Kempsey family when watching their four-year-old gelding Ted’s Dream race in a $40,000 event at the Taree Gold Cup meeting last week.
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The galloper scraped home by a half-head but the tears were flowing before and after the win, so what precipitated the open show of emotion?
Head owner Mark Winkler was only too happy to share their moment which involved his mother, Shirley, sister Lynne and his niece Brigette.
Ted’s Dream was named after his father who saw its first couple of runs but passed away at 81 about two months ago without seeing it win.
The family erupted into tears.
Ted’s Dream’s trainer Peter Ball, 79, said the family is the “most luckiest owners I have known”.
“Every horse they have raced has won for them,” Ball said.
Mark said the family members were only “battlers”, but they followed their father’s love of racehorses and racing, and mostly bred their own runners on their 5-acre farm.
They included the dam of Ted’s Dream, 14-year-old Her Lyin’ Eyes (seven starts, for a win, two placings, $8900 prizemoney); 10-year-old mare Villamill (43: 7-8-5, $125,395); 13-year-old mare Broadway Gossip (35: 8-5-2, $73,000) and six-year-old gelding Art’s Got A Gun (47: 7-8-4, $115,000).
“We have been lucky as they have provided prizemoney to keep others.”
Ted barely missed a race and if they didn’t do any good—“It was never the horses fault.
“The win by Ted’s Dream had special meaning to us…dad loved them all.”
The family has three broodmares and one of them Villamill has just given birth to a filly by Mayhaab.
The other two “are about to drop.”
As for Ted’s Dream, he is expected to race again at the Manning Valley Race Club TAB meeting on Monday, September 3.
They may have to bring Brigette to the races.
She might be their lucky charm as the win was the result of her first visit to the races. Winning jockey Andrew Gibbons told the family that Ted’s Dream had “a bit of learning to do” but had “a good future.”
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