ARISTOTLE, so they say, reckoned that the more you know, the more you realise you don’t know. We don’t know whether he was talking about horses, but he may have been.
Horses have a way of making mugs out of us mere humans. But it’s also essential to the beauty of our relationship: there’s always more to learn; so much more they can teach us.
Budding Ipswich trainer and Haigslea local, Jesse Townsend grew up with horses.
They are his living and his lifeblood.
His family lived at Calvert, so he went to school at nearby Rosewood. After he finished high school, about 15 years ago, he became a farrier.
He also became an Australian champion in rodeo.
“I did rodeos every weekend from the time I was eight years old till I was 25; from Victoria to Mount Isa. Team roping and calf roping,” Townsend said.
“My stepdad used to ride bareback horses and I was always around it as a kid, just progressed through.
“And then we slowly transitioned out of rodeo into racing.”
Jesse and his partner and two little ones moved from Rosewood to Haigslea and live on the same road as Oakwood Farm spelling property.
He had always wanted to learn how to train racehorses but couldn’t just walk away from shoeing horses and learn the craft over time from big stables.
Instead, he bought a horse and sent it to Ipswich trainer John Hubbard, rode trackwork for Hubbard for about eight months, and learned from the godfather of Ipswich trainers.
“Then I got my license and I’ve just been winging it from there,” Jesse said.
“It’s definitely one of those humbling games where if you think you’re going good, it’ll pull you back down.
“I’m still very, very early and still learning. Like, I haven’t even learned half of what I want to know.
“But things are starting to fall into place a bit more, which is good, and numbers are flowing in, more horses.”
Jesse keeps his growing stable across the road from the Ipswich racetrack.
“We just walk across every morning. It’s great; quiet. There’s not a whole lot of people here, which will change eventually, but I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else,” he said.
“We’ve got seven in there at the moment. Another two coming next week.”
At Ipswich racetrack earlier this month, Townsend’s progression was on display as his recent acquisition, Papal War, won his first race.
Formerly trained in a big stable, Papal Wars is a challenge but Jesse has the right temperament for him – calm and patient.
Half an hour after the recent race, Papal Wars was too keyed up to do a wee for the post-race swab test. Jesse takes him away by himself, but the gelding was still a bundle of stress.
Papal Wars, who has the stable name Poppy, was wearing red earmuffs but was still very aware of every noise, especially from other horses in the stable area.
Staff end up taking a blood sample. Poppy seems happy enough about that. He stands as quiet as a lamb, then settles down. A bit.
Jesse admitted he was trying not to think of the beer he might be drinking to celebrate the win.
Next to him, Poppy was overthinking everything.
“Yeah, he never stops,” Jesse says sympathetically.
“He’s quite quirky and nervous. You’ve just got to play the game with him. If he wants to do something, you’ve got to let him do it.
“I think he’s just anxious. So, we’re trying to do our best by calming him down.
“He’s a gem at the stable. He’s so good to handle, easy to do anything with.
“It’s only race day that he perks up.”
Jesse rides him in all his trackwork. He’s good to ride, he says, but is very strong and keen.
A six-year-old gelding having his 16th start on the day, Papal Wars was bought at Inglis online for $2,750 by Jesse’s new client Nick Riley.
“He said: ‘Oh, he might be a little bit of a handful at the races.’ I was like, Oh, we’ll see how we go,” Jesse said.
“I think it’ll come with more racing and more maturity, but then again, it might not change. It might be just him.”
