When you have only been training for a couple of years, when you have only had about a dozen winners and you have never even had a runner at Flemington, it's hardly surprising if you can't sleep for excitement for the best part of a week before.
For Alexander Rae having a runner in Cup week was not just a big deal – it was potentially life changing.
Craig Williams aboard Cochada.Credit:AAP
How many 23-year-olds get to saddle up a strongly-fancied favourite in a race worth more than $100,000 on a feature afternoon like Oaks Day with that galloper to be ridden by the champion jockey Craig Williams?
The youngster might not have slept "for three or four days" but he certainly wasn't sleepy after the running of the Melbourne Cup Carnival Country Final, the last event in a series of races run at country tracks, the decider at headquarters confined to horses that are trained outside the metropolitan area.
Thus Oaks Day crowds saw a full field – hardly surprising when the prizemoney on offer was several multiples of the amounts these sort of horses usually race for – with several trainers who are only rare visitors to Flemington seen in the racebook.
Rae was the young up-and-comer in the field, and his horse, Cochada, was of similar ilk having only had four previous starts.
The young man – son of a former VRC and VATC (which is what the Melbourne Racing Club was once called) handicapper Rodney Rae – had plotted this race as his long-term target and showed himself, despite his youth, to be an astute judge. Cochada, backed from $6 to $4.60, came from seventh at the 400 metres to win by two lengths from top weight Superhard, with Stealthy Lucas third.
"From day one we earmarked him as quite a talented horse. We ran at Sandown on our first start, things didn't go quite to plan, then he got himself beat his second start, then he won quite impressively at Sale and we said this race is probably a nice target for him," Rae said.
"He's a progressive horse with a future and we thought that if we qualify we get here on the minimum weight … it's good when everything falls into place.
"It's massive, it's fantastic. I have only got a small team, and there's a few trainers in that race in the same position. To give us an opportunity to race for such lucrative prizemoney is fantastic.
"I have been absolutely terrified. I haven't slept for about four days.''
Rae got his license in December 2016 and, he said, "that's 11 winners now".
"I have nine to 10 in work, and we like to cap it at that, we really keep our finger on the pulse," he said.
So was it his dad's involvement in racing that got him hooked? Only partly.
"I always loved racing, I remember coming to Flemington when I was 10, 11, 12," he said.
"I was here with my great grandma every single week, and as soon as I was old enough to start work, I was working every school holiday, every week, and as soon as I left school I was working full time."
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