53 MOONEE VALLEY RACING CLUB 52 Rob Heathcote has some pretty fond memories of the Manikato Stakes, the race where his globetrotting bulldog Buffering claimed his very first Group 1 race. It is crazy in hindsight to think that it took Buffering until his six-year-old season to break his duck at the elite level. But when you’re chasing the likes of unbeaten legend Black Caviar and powerhouse Hay List, Group 1 wins will be understandably hard to come by. It’s been nine years since Buffering won the Manikato, but Heathcote still remembers that immense feeling of relief as his horse held off the late challenge of Hong Kong speedster Lucky Nine to set The Valley night alight. “It was an amazing night and he was typically brave. They’d run him down before, but they couldn’t that night and he finally got his reward,” said Heathcote. “The Manikato is a special race for me, it was the race that started Buffering’s Group 1 run and it’s a race I’d dearly love to win again.” And Heathcote isn’t just leaning on sentiment for the sake of it; when he says he wants to win the Manikato Stakes again, Heathcote really, really means it. So strong does the flame burn in fact, that Heathcote knocked back a slot in the $15 million Everest for his rebuilt star Rothfire in favour of a start in the Manikato. The call of The Valley lights and the chance to return Rothfire to the most unlikely of Group 1 triumphs is a mission that he simply refuses to stray from. “It’s crazy isn’t it? I fought to get the horse a start in the race for two years, then here we are, he’s back and racing well and I knock it back!” said Heathcote. “But the Manikato is the race I’m after. It’s the race we have built the preparation around. We’re not greed monsters. The Manikato at $1.2 million is a very good prize to chase, and if he wins the race, I can guarantee that I will be just as happy.” Heathcote may never train a horse as good as Buffering again. As a seven-time Group 1 winner and international star, it will take a darn good horse to knock the son of Mossman from top billing on the trainer’s honour roll, but once upon a time, Heathcote thought that Rothfire might be just as good – if not better. The winner of six of his seven starts as a twoyear-old, including the Group 1 JJ Atkins Stakes, Rothfire appeared to hold a one-way ticket to stardom. A dominant win in the Run To The Rose at Rosehill in the Spring of 2020 confirmed that booking before disaster struck within mere strides of a second Group 1. Sent out as a $1.55 favourite in the Group 1 Golden Rose, Rothfire suffered an injury that should have ended his career, and it is a race that still haunts Heathcote to this day. “I don’t think I will ever get over that race, not until the day that I die,” he said. “We had a plan, and I was very firm on it. I told (jockey) Jim Byrne ‘whatever you do, don’t lead, the only way you will lose this race is if you get caught in a speed battle.’ “When I saw the horse fire out of the gates and charge to the front, my heart just sank.” Rothfire and Byrne set blistering sectionals through the early stages of the race with Mamaragan keeping the favourite working overtime through the middle sections. Halfway down the Rosehill straight, Rothfire was a sitting duck. “He was still two lengths clear at the 200m, and that’s when it happened. They say you can see it clearly on the replay, he Rothfire ridden by Damian Lane after his victory in the Mitty’s McEwen Stakes in September shifts ground, but I can’t watch it again. He was trying so hard,” said Heathcote. Onlookers assumed that the early effort had simply taken its toll on Rothfire over the closing stages, but closer examination from vets after the race showed that the horse had sustained a serious fracture of the sesamoid bone in his front right fetlock. The shattered bone had seemingly also shattered Rothfire’s chances of living up to his immense potential. “They took two very sizeable chips out and I’ve still got them on my desk. The vets told me he was a million-to-one to ever race again. Horses just don’t come back from that sort of injury. It was basically a case of retirement.” But Heathcote wasn’t going to give up that easily. Care and patience can do wonders for a horse, and so he and his team mapped out a plan to test that million-to-one quote. “After the surgery to clean up the bone, we just took little steps forward. Slowly slowly, like we were walking on thin ice. And to be honest, we were,” said Heathcote. “As the horse recovered and gained confidence, we gained the confidence to ask a little more of him. We got him to the point where he was galloping sound and then trialling. Before we knew it, he was ready for the races again.” “Melanie Sharpe has been such an important part of this story. She rides him, she knows him inside out. She’s the one there after every gallop putting the ice boots on him, monitoring his leg. She’s crucial to this story and we wouldn’t have Rothfire back at the races without her.” A sound horse is one thing, but a competitive racehorse is another, and following two lacklustre performances in The Shorts and then the Premiere Stakes in the Spring of 2021, Heathcote aborted the return campaign.
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