Eric Musgrove Jumps Maestro

The emotional decision to offer his ‘life’s work’ Karasi Park for sale heralds the end of an era for Australia’s most successful jumping trainer.

In racing parlance, legendary Victorian jumps trainer Eric Musgrove can probably see the finish line, but he hasn’t cleared the last hurdle yet in his extraordinary career.

At 73, it was with something of a heavy heart that Eric recently decided to list Karasi Park, his magnificent 217-acre training establishment at Coronet Bay, for sale as part of a plan to scale back the size of his operation.

Retirement is not really a word that sits comfortably in Eric’s vocabulary, and the master horseman cannot imagine a life without some level of involvement with thoroughbred racing.

“My intention is to reduce my numbers from thirty horses back to about ten for the next twelve months and then see what happens after that,” Eric says.

“I still enjoy training and it’s not the sort of thing you can just give away. It’s a lifestyle and something that gets you up in the morning.”

Eric says the decision to part with Karasi Park, which he created from scratch after purchasing the property 20 years ago, was not an easy one to reach.

“It’s been my life’s work really,” he states.

“I’m hoping whoever buys it allows me to rent back some boxes here so I can stay on with a smaller team. Although I’m prepared and have alternatives if that doesn’t turn out to be the case, if the day does come that I have to go it will be very hard to leave this all behind. But it’s too big for me now and would better suit an owner or syndicate with large numbers of horses, or possibly one of the large-scale training operations.”

Karasi Park holds so many special memories for Eric, from all the great horses and wonderful people who have come through the gates of the property over the past two decades and contributed to his unsurpassed success as a jumps trainer in this country.

Eric expresses his heartfelt appreciation to wife Inez, who has been a constant source of support in both the business and at home. Stable foreperson and trackwork rider Belinda Simpson has also been a huge asset at Eric’s side throughout his training journey.

All trainers need owners for their horses in order to be successful and Eric has been blessed with many loyal supporters over the years with whom he’s shared some of his finest moments in racing, including Tony Hodgson, Pearse Morgan, David Bowman and Peter Cousins.

Amongst the many equine stars who have graced Eric’s stables, none has left a bigger mark than the gallant horse whose name his property honours – Karasi – who achieved the unsurpassed feat of winning the prestigious Grand Nakayama Jump in Japan in three successive years from 2005 to 2007. Sadly, Karasi passed away in September this year at the ripe old age of 30 and has been buried on the property.

“He was a wonderful horse and really did change our lives,” Eric acknowledges.

Karasi was bred in Ireland in 1995 and started his racing career in England before being imported to Australia. Trainer David Hall prepared him to win the 2001 Geelong Cup and run a very creditable fourth in the Melbourne Cup that year. His form in flat racing began to decline over the next couple of years and he came into Eric’s care in 2003.

Switching Karasi firstly to hurdle racing and later steeplechasing, Eric patiently coaxed the gelding back into winning form. In 2005, he was invited to compete in the world’s richest jumps race, the Grand Nakayama Jump in Japan over 4,250 metres, carrying prizemoney of $1 million to the winner.

Eric flew to Tokyo in August 2004, seven months prior to the race, to view the Nakayama course and assess whether Karasi would handle it.

“I thought he’d be competitive, so we made that his target for 2005 and got him ready with some flat runs at home,” Eric recalls.

After making the trip to Japan, Karasi showed he was in good fettle by running third in a lead-up race over 3,350 metres three weeks before the Nakayama Grand Jump. This final tune-up topped him off perfectly for his main assignment.

Not only did Karasi go on to win the 2005 Nakayama Grand Jump, he gained legendary status by repeating the dose in 2006 and 2007.

“He became a hero in Japan through those three years,” Eric says.

Jockey Brett Scott rode Karasi in all three wins and Belinda Simpson travelled with the horse on each occasion, helping Eric with the horse’s preparation during the month away from home.

“It was a team effort,” Eric emphasises.

“Scotty’s rides were faultless, and we wouldn’t have won without him. He suited the horse perfectly. Belinda probably put more into it than anyone and her contribution cannot be understated. Inez also ran the stable at home during the periods when I was overseas with Karasi in each of the three years. She saddled up the winner of a feature race at the Oakbank Carnival in South Australia while I was away in Japan in one of the years.”

An attempt to win a fourth Grand Nakayama Jump with Karasi unfortunately didn’t get to the line.

“We went back again in 2008, but he got a bit of inflammation in the back of a tendon from trackwork,” Eric remembers.

“He wasn’t lame, but we weren’t prepared to take a risk and decided not to run him. Instead, we brought him home and retired him.”

Karasi finished his remarkable career with 16 wins and earned almost $3.8 million in prizemoney.

Eric has a deep love of horses which began with an involvement with pony club as a boy. He first took out a training licence in 1981 following a highly successful showjumping career which saw him represent Australia many times on the international stage all around the world.

Before obtaining his licence, Eric spent time with trainer Ian McKinlay and learned the art of breaking in and pre-training horses. After successfully applying for his own licence, Eric was initially based at the Victorian Equestrian Centre at Upper Beaconsfield and trained out of the old Pakenham racecourse.

“I stayed there for a few years and then relocated to Cranbourne for the better training facilities. I would have had about forty or fifty horses in those days,” he says.

Cranbourne remained Eric’s base until he bought Karasi Park twenty years ago.

“I didn’t move here until seventeen years ago as it took three years to get everything set up. It was just a paddock when I purchased it,” he explains.

The undulating Coronet Bay property is accessed from Bluff Road and stretches all the way down to the beach, providing spectacular views out over Westernport Bay.

Amongst the many facilities Eric installed at Karasi Park for his training operation are a 2,000-metre circular track and another 900-metre straight track with elevation. The property has 49 stable boxes, along with dozens of spelling and exercise yards, a swimming pool and horse walker.

“The only time we need to leave the property is for trialling and racing,” Eric notes.

Through the course of the 44 years in which Eric has held a licence, he built on his early success in flat racing to become the most successful jumps trainer in Australian racing history. He has won every feature jumping race in the nation, and most of them on multiple occasions.

“I became mostly associated with the jumps, but in the early days particularly I did win a lot of flat races as well,” he observes.

Rather than purchasing expensive yearlings and hoping to syndicate them to owners, Eric’s model for success throughout his career has been buying tried horses at a much lower price point. He has continually demonstrated an uncanny knack for finding horses who have been able to transition successfully from flat racing to jumps racing.

“In my experience I’ve found only about one in a hundred horses don’t like jumping, which might surprise some people,” Eric comments.

“I look for horses that are sound and honest, who have the stamina for longer distances. In recent years we’ve seen a lot of European horses being brought out to Australia for the big staying races that haven’t quite measured up to that standard. Many of those horses are now going jumping,” he adds.

In the first half of his career, Eric had a great rivalry with another jumps training doyen, the late Jim Houlahan. The pair dominated the jumps scene year after year until age forced Houlahan into retirement in his early 90s in 2005.

Karasi Park

“Jim and I shared a strong mutual respect. We got on very well,” Eric says.

“He was an incredible trainer and fearless punter. Jim never had a big team but always got amazing results. I would always watch what he did closely.”

When Eric and Jim’s healthy rivalry was at its peak, jumps racing was an established feature at all four metropolitan racecourses in Melbourne as well as on the Victorian provincial/county circuit and at many venues interstate.

Nowadays in Victoria, jumps racing is confined to a six-month season from March to the end of August and Sandown is the only metropolitan course hosting hurdle and steeplechase events. The remainder of the jumps calendar is programmed at provincial and country centres, most prominently Warrnambool, Casterton, Coleraine, Hamilton, Ballarat, Pakenham and Sale.

Eric is saddened that the gloss has come off jumps racing in comparison to its heyday, but he acknowledges that society and times have changed.

“There were a lot more horsemen around in previous generations and more people earned a living around horses. Technology has altered that a lot,” he observes.

“There has also been a shift in public sentiment towards jumps racing over time, but ironically it’s never been safer at any point than what it is now.”

Alterations to the designs of the obstacles and the materials used have improved the safety aspects, and the qualifying standards for horses to compete in jumps races have also been made more stringent.

“There’s lots of positives. It’s a great winter sport and the people involved are very passionate about it,” Eric says.

“Some of the leading trainers in flat racing like Ciaron Maher and Gai Waterhouse are big supporters of jumps racing.”

As he prepares to part with Karasi Park, Eric reflects on how he first came to find the property 20 years ago.

“Back then I was renting a hundred acres just up the road for keeping cattle and came down for a look at them one day and saw this place,” he recalls.

“There has barely a tree on the property when we bought it. We’ve done everything to it – put up all the fences, set up the facilities, built the dams and put in the drainage. We’ve had great use out of it, but it is equipped to handle a hundred horses and I’m realistic enough to know that the time has come to place it in someone else’s hands.”

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