CHAPTER & VERSE

WRITTEN BY TREVOR MARSHALLSEA

Horses can give us indefinable joy, elation impossible to describe. They may just as easily bring untold heartache, but can also come along at just the right moment to pull us through times of bottomless sorrow, when words are next to useless.

The QTIS Open of 2019 sparked some of the most unforgettable and moving scenes in Magic Millions history, a million-dollar race that spilled just as many swirling emotions from the winning connections.

Let’s go back through it, chapter and verse.

***

ON THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9, 2014, A BROWN COLT MADE AN UNREMARKABLE ENTRY INTO THE WORLD AT RAHEEN STUD, THE FARM NEAR WARWICK THE NOLAN FAMILY HAD SINCE THE 1950s WORKED INTO ONE OF QUEENSLAND’S MOST FAMOUS NURSERIES.

He was from the third crop of Rothesay, the former Gerald Ryan-trained Group 2 Queensland Guineas winner standing at nearby Lyndhurst Stud, out of the Perugino mare McFly, who’d won five races for David Hayes including at Moonee Valley.

Rothesay would later find fame through his most famous offspring Rothfire, but at this stage was very much an unknown quantity, his first few runners having only debuted days earlier.

Chapter & Verse Presentaton 12-01-2019

“McFly was a nice mare who could throw a decent type of foal,” says Raheen patriarch Basil Nolan. “We had shares in Rothesay, and the mare matched up well on physicals, so she was the obvious sort to send to him. Even though Rothesay hadn’t won a Group One, he was a good racehorse and we though he had a chance at stud.”

Nolan had plotted the mating, as usual, with son Basil Jr, who’d stayed in Brisbane for a few months after high school – “probably because he wanted to play footy” – before his fairly inevitable return to the farm. Later came the addition of Basil Jr’s wife Natalie, niece of Show A Heart’s trainer Barry Miller, with the couple welcoming four children in Basil (the third), Lily, James and William.

The Rothesay colt’s birth in 2014 was, as usual, a Nolan family affair, with family matriarch Di in attendance.

“Diane does pretty much all of the foaling,” Natalie says. “She’s pretty amazing with that, and with looking after sick foals and getting them on their mothers. She’s just about a qualified vet, the amount of experience she has.”

The colt grew, bigger than his parents, until eventually he had a new name: Lot 217, at the Gold Coast March Yearling Sale of 2016. Waiting was another Queensland bushie, Desleigh Forster, late of Ilfracombe and now a trainer at Eagle Farm for the best part of a decade. She’d met the Nolans through another product of western Queensland, Peter Moody, under whom she’d learnt her craft at Caulfield.

“We’ve had a long association with Desleigh,” Nolan says. “She’s bought a lot of horses from us, trained a lot for us, and had a lot of success.”

It wasn’t merely a business relationship. Forster and Basil Jr, roughly the same age, became good mates, often on the phone as Forster drove home from a race meeting, “speaking about horses or life in general really”, the trainer says.

“Bas had told me this yearling was alright, and when I saw him I did think he was a nice horse,” says Forster, who kept 15 in work. “Rothesay was only a new sire at the time but I thought he’d do well. I liked the breeding, and he was quite cheap.”

Cheap? Forster got him for $28,000, a price about which the easy relationship between vendor and buyer affords some ribbing.

“Extremely cheap, I keep telling her!” Nolan laughs. “She got unders for sure.

“But she’d bought a lot of horses from us, and you like seeing your horses go to good stables.”

Eleven owners would race the horse including Doug Forbes – like Nolan Snr a former bookie – and former Brisbane Turf Club chairman Mary Collier. The pair also had part-owned Adebisi, Forster’s best till then, who’d won Caulfield’s G3 Rubiton Stakes.

Mary Collier, Mark Du Plessis & Desleigh Forster

“As owners we’d always tried to think of a name related to the breeding, but on this one – Rothesay and McFly – it was pretty hard,” Collier says.

Eventually, they settled on a name which sounded like a quotation from the Bible, as in John 3:16, though some teenagers’ mothers from the ‘80s might have felt there was nothing holy about it.

“A few of us were big Bruce Springsteen fans,” Collier says. “We borrowed the name from one of his albums: Chapter And Verse.”

A few minor issues meant Chapter And Verse didn’t race till he was three, but he soon showed ability. Debuting in November 2017, the now-gelding finished fast to share third in a 1200m Ipswich maiden, then comfortably won at Beaudesert. A spell preceded a five-run campaign comprising another Beaudesert win and four placings, including two seconds at Doomben: the first behind future G1 winner The Bostonian, the second on the last metropolitan day of the season. As he went for a spell Forster was entertaining thoughts of the QTIS riches on offer the following January.

“His racing pattern was against him a bit, because he’d get too far back before finishing on, although a few bad barriers didn’t help,” she says. “But I always knew he had ability, and I hoped he’d get up for the Magic Millions races.”

As ever the post-race dissertations with the equally impressed Basil Jr continued. Until one day, they stopped.

The Nolan family’s life course was suddenly, awfully, altered, on November 6, 2018. Melbourne Cup night.

The breeding fraternity in Queensland and beyond was stunned the next day as news broke of Basil Jr’s death, at just 45, after a late-night accident at Raheen with a hay baling machine. The much-loved son, husband, father, and fixture of horse sales for years left behind Natalie and their four children, then aged seven to 15.

“I’d been to the Melbourne Cup and was getting on a plane at 5.30 in the morning when Desleigh called me with the news,” Collier says. “You just couldn’t believe it. Everyone was in shock.”

The devastated Nolan family, aided by the support of so many in breeding and racing, were left to try to gather themselves, to make sense of the tragedy which had so violently upturned their world, as they prepared for the funeral.

But as all in the game know, horses don’t stop. Five days before that heart-rending farewell, Chapter And Verse resumed on the Saturday at the Sunshine Coast. For the first time when first-up, in his first attempt down at 1000m, and with Mark Du Plessis having his first ride on the now-four-year-old, he won, defying a betting drift (to $13) to charge home from last on the turn and score by a neck.

Di, Basil Snr, James & Basil Nolan

Even Forster, as no-nonsense as they make them out west, recalls: “He might’ve had a bit of help that day.”

The Nolans had help, too, at the funeral in Warwick. “The people who turned up from racing …” says Basil Snr, choking back tears at the memory. “It was just unbelievable. It’s such a strong fraternity.”

***

The weeks edged by, the sun rose and set over the Darling Downs. Amidst their grief the Nolans still had a farm to run, horses to raise. Forster continued to guide the ever-honest Chapter And Verse, who turned in a second-up fifth before two placings in town as the curtain fell on a tumultuous 2018.

And by then, everything was set. The gelding would start in the QTIS Open on January 12 - $602,500 to the winner. Before that Saturday, the Nolans had to negotiate the first three days of the yearling sale.

“It was really tough,” says Natalie. “It was a bit of a blur to be honest. It just was so different for us all. Basil’s parents and us, we’d just relied on Basil in that arena. That was his passion, horse sales. He loved the thrill of the sale. So we sort of all got there, and we really felt his absence then.”

“There were lots of people coming up and offering condolences. It was a pretty hard sale,” says Basil Snr. “But the industry is just so wonderful, you know? Everyone’s so sympathetic to each other. Everyone at the sale was marvellous. And they’ve been marvellous ever since.”

Raceday came. Chapter And Verse again drew wide, in 12 of 16 for the 1300m event. They say you shouldn’t tempt the racing gods, especially when victory would mean this much, but Forster knew her horse.

“We were very confident,” she says. “The horse was good. He’d been working well and racing well. I felt really good about it.”

Natalie envisaged the day, and opted to watch from her family’s Broadbeach apartment, with Lily and William and Basil Jnr’s best mate, Warwick butcher Wayne Carey and his wife, also named Natalie.

“I didn’t go. Everything was still a bit raw. I think I was in a bit of shock at the time,” Natalie Nolan says. “I was hoping the horse would win, but I had no expectations.”

Basil Snr and Di were in the saddling enclosure with their eldest grandchildren, Basil and James.

“It was our first big day back at the races after the accident,” Basil Snr says. “A million-dollar race. Pretty amazing stuff. We were just hoping something great would happen.”

Collier was hosting a function for Racing Queensland.

“That took some nerves away, but you can’t help but get nervous and anxious and excited all at once, particularly when the horses come into the yard, Desleigh starts talking to Mark Du Plessis, and the adrenaline starts pumping,” she says. “Still, Desleigh, while she’s always a positive person, I’d never seen her as bullish as she was. She was supremely confident.”

Accordingly, Chapter And Verse tightened slightly to start a $5.50 equal favourite along with Chris Munce’s Skate To Paris. Tony Gollan’s Tokariki Lad had also firmed, to $7.50.

***

Under blazing Gold Coast sunshine, they jumped. This time, Du Plessis wouldn’t be stuck rearward, pushing up to settle midfield, a horse or two off the fence and soon travelling well. Even a long way from home, Collier says, it felt like “the stars had aligned”.

“We’d had horses win by a nose, or cop bad luck in the run,” she says, “but you just had the feeling from about the 800 metre mark that nothing was going to beat him.”

Skate To Paris was to Chapter And Verse’s inside but not moving as well turning for home. Tokoriki Lad was still 10th as De Plessis let loose, pushing into sixth at the 300m, and fairly bursting to the lead at the 180m.

“When he pulled him out at the top of the straight I thought he’s going to be hard to beat. Halfway down the straight, I thought we were home,” says Basil Snr, reporting the pandemonium had already begun to break out.

“The two kids were with us for the start of the race, but by this stage they weren’t. They’d just started darting all over the enclosure!”

Suddenly some anxiety arose. Tokoriki Lad and Jeff Lloyd had begun to surge down the outside. They drew within a length of Chapter And Verse, to threequarters, but then the post arrived.

Cue an unbridling of elation of a kind rarely seen. Footage soon shared on social media shows Forster, for want of better words, going berserk, while young Basil, James and others dart this way and that. With a cheer from the nostalgists, there’s even a hat thrown into the air.

“THAT FOOTAGE JUST SUMS IT UP,” COLLIER SAYS. “I WASN’T TOO FAR FROM DESLEIGH BUT YOU NEVER WANT TO BE TOO CLOSE BECAUSE HER CELEBRATIONS ARE WELL KNOWN. ALL OF US HAVE COPPED THE ODD HAPPY SLAP TO THE SHOULDER OR THE BACK SO WE USUALLY LET DESLEIGH BURN OFF THE ADRENALINE FIRST.

“But all those scenes – everyone in tears – they were just wonderful. It was an extraordinarily emotional day. The Nolans are an incredible and special family. It was a beautiful day, if bittersweet as well, but for them to be part of that success, and because QTIS is so important to the Queensland breeding industry, was very special.”

Basil Snr had earlier reflected on “a pretty hard sale”. With his mind now back on the post-race, there’s an amendment.

“Great memories really, of the sale and the race,” the septuagenarian says. “You aspire to winning a race on Magic Millions day and there’s only eight or nine who do. Coming at the time it did you’d have to say it was a perfect tonic.”

Forster, who perhaps has more a way with horses than words, offers: “It was good to have Bas and Di and the kids there. It was really good.”

***

After champagne was sipped from the trophy, owners and trainer celebrated at the Marriott Hotel bar called, by delicious coincidence, Chapter And Verse. Among the Nolans, the aftermath was a mixture.

“I knew Basil played a big hand in the horse,” Natalie says, “and I think every day he plays a big part in us all getting through the day, getting things done on the farm, and any success we have.

“I often think he’s not far away and he would’ve been so thrilled with that win. I was a bit upset, really, to think he wasn’t there to enjoy it.”

Forster, three years on, categorises the loss of her mate as a jolting reminder.

“Basil was a gentleman. Just an outright gentleman. Nothing was a problem for him,” she says. “Losing him shook everyone.

“It just puts life into perspective. You can be here one day and gone the next. Life’s too short, and people take life for granted too much. I know it’s a competitive sport with lots of money involved and we all like to win, but there’s more to life. Go to the races. And enjoy the people around you.”

Natalie, who’s involved with Raheen’s walk-ons to nearby studs, is thankful her children “have such wonderful grandparents” and for the “great staff” at the farm. Recent high school graduate Basil’s passion is Raheen, she says, and with James “obsessed” with pedigrees, and all four children involved with the farm, its future looks in good hands.

“The racing industry, in particular the breeding industry, have been so good to us, particularly the kids,” she says. “That first Magic Millions after the accident was tough, but I think we’ve all got a lot stronger. It’s probably made us more resilient. The kids have really stepped up. They work so hard on the farm to help us get there.”

Collier says to see how the family has regrouped from tragedy has been inspiring.

“On, I don’t know,” Natalie says. “I think, there’s people in horrible situations everywhere. I tell the kids we have so much to be grateful for and it’d be such a waste to throw everything away.

“And Basil would be thrilled at how well the kids have handled things. They can still get really upset, especially at Melbourne Cup time, but they understand what Raheen meant to their dad, and they want to see that continue.”