Our questions are answered by the Welsh-born trainer who landed her second Melbourne Cup victory in November with 90-1 longshot Knight’s Choice
Just as she did in 2001 with Ethereal, when she became the first woman to train the winner of the Melbourne Cup, Sheila Laxon bucked the trend when triumphing again with 90-1 chance Knight’s Choice in the famous Flemington two-miler in November.
Australia’s historic race had seemed to have become out of reach of the likes of Laxon and training partner John Symons, who not only run a stable of fewer than 30 horses but are based in less fashionable Queensland.
“It’s fantastic for the Cups story that you can come out of nowhere and beat the superstars and just do it your way,” says Laxon. “It’s become a bit of a precedent that if you want to win the Melbourne Cup you have to source British horses to be competitive, so him winning the Cup brought new life to the Cup for everybody.”
As she was quick to correct broadcaster Francesca Cumani on the day, Laxon is Welsh and proud of her roots, though she was still young when her family moved from Pontypridd, Glamorgan, to Kent in England.
As a junior, Laxon represented Britain at show jumping but took an unconventional route into horse racing, via farming, driving HGV lorries and buses and working on a hovercraft. She eventually set up her own pre-training yard, rode out for John Dunlop and worked as a racing secretary.
Ambitious to race-ride, she moved to Cyprus then New Zealand, where she obtained an amateur’s licence, winning on four of her first nine rides. She continued to compete in the saddle after marrying NZ trainer Laurie Laxon, who trained Empire Rose to win the 1988 Melbourne Cup but was seriously injured in a fall and took over the main training licence when her husband moved to Singapore in 1999.
Her first Melbourne Cup winner Ethereal won five times altogether at G1 level, after which Laxon moved to Australia, only to be sidelined for 18 months by another serious fall on the gallops, spending six months in a wheelchair.
She resumed training in 2006 before officially teaming up with Symons when partnerships became allowed, moving to the Sunshine Coast in 2015.
Which racing figure past or present do you most admire?
That has to be Lester Piggott. I was living with Richard Muddle, who was a jockey for John Dunlop, and we associated quite a bit. I just admired Lester’s style and his ability to get horses to fly. He was just incredible. I did meet and spoke to him for quite a long time when he used to come over to Melbourne. It was really good to meet someone I had admired from afar.
Which is your favourite venue, and race, anywhere in the world?
It must be Flemington – and not just because I have won two Melbourne Cups. A lot of the tracks in Australia are quite tight and you have to ride each track in a certain way to be competitive whereas at Flemington the best horse normally wins. It's a very important factor if you are training horses to be able to run at a track where it doesn’t matter if they get back, it doesn’t matter if they need a long time to wind up.
So the Melbourne Cup is my favourite race. I’ve had two starters, two winners. Staying horses need to sprint so you need to be able to make a sprinter into a stayer to be competitive in those races. The run of Knight’s Choice was amazing because they don’t usually come from that far back but because he is bred to sprint and travelled easy, he was able to muster that long sprint up the straight.
Who is your favourite racehorse and why?
Probably Ethereal because I broke her in. I never thought she was going to do what she did but we just had the best rapport ever. She was the boss and I was her slave! She was such a character, so confident, the queen of the turf.
She was an amazing horse and knew what she was out there to do. Some of her wins were just by a nose – but she was never going to get beaten. Her BMW win was probably her best because she was last about 200 metres from home and it’s hard to believe how she got up to win.
But that was how tenacious she was. Her courage and competitiveness was supreme. I’ve never known a horse like her. She never got beaten in any race over 2,000 metres. She was the only horse to win the Queensland Oaks, Caulfield Cup, Melbourne Cup and BMW in that span of time and her owner Peter Vela wanted to take her to Europe for the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.
Everyone was concerned that if anything went wrong they would never forgive themselves, so I understood why it was decided to retire her. Having seen what Makybe Diva did the next three years, I just wonder now if they think they could have gone back to the well. Nevertheless I admit it was a bit of a relief because the pressure was on me to keep performing.
What is your fondest memory in racing?
Looking at my son John’s face when Ethereal won the Melbourne Cup in 2001. He was about 17 at the time. There were tears in his eyes and he looked down and said, ‘Mum. you’ve done it.’
He was absolutely incredulous that his Mum should have done that, and the pride and everything else that I had suddenly become important. As a Mummy that was really fantastic. He went to King’s School in Auckland where they blew up a beautiful photo of Ethereal’s win and displayed it at their final leaving party.
If you could change one thing in racing, what would it be?
I loved what racing was like 20 years ago and I don’t like what is happening now with new welfare rules and all that. It’s getting too scientific.
Horses were kicked out of the Melbourne Cup this year, including the horse Aidan O’Brien brought down [Jan Brueghel]. I think that’s getting too pedantic. If they had those rules when Empire Rose and Ethereal were running, we might have been kicked out. Those horses retired as sound as ever.
Empire Rose ran in four Melbourne Cups. I’m not saying they would have found something but it’s more likely and I think that is sad for the future trainers who have to contend with all those things and not be allowed to train the horse as they believe it needs to be trained.
The vet looked at Ethereal when I said I liked her as a two-year-old and he said: ‘Sheila, you will never get her to the races’. In his opinion her offset knee precluded her from being a racehorse. So I addressed it by training her my way. It would have been horrible to have her kicked out of the Melbourne Cup because I knew what I was doing to get her to the race fit enough.
It’s sad, as I see it, that the sport is getting too precious and it’s not left to trainers to make their own decisions about their horses’ welfare. We would never put our horses’ health at risk by racing them.
Sheila Laxon was speaking to Jon Lees
• View the entire What They're Thinking series
Brian Hernandez Jr: We were quietly confident Mystik Dan would be able to pull it off
Kevin Attard: I didn’t think the Breeders’ Cup would be in the realm of possibility
Jerry Bailey: I’d like to see a national commissioner for US racing – with some teeth
Christina Blacker: I wish I could go back and relive Zenyatta again and bottle up that experience
View the latest TRC Global Rankings for horses / jockeys / trainers / sires