Trainer Charlie Appleby: The Sheikh’s man on a mission

Charlie Appleby is the stable boy who became the boss.

Twenty years ago Appleby started working with Godolphin, the international horse racing stable of Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, when his duties would have been riding unruly colts and the tedious chore of mucking out stables.

In September, Appleby was at Melbourne’s Crown Casino, standing under the bright lights set up by a Godolphin TV crew, perfectly positioned in front of the Godolphin marketing signs, wearing his distinctive Godolphin blue jacket, his hair brushed neatly by a Godolphin marketing person and facing a barrage of questions from an inquisitive Melbourne press gang.

It was something akin to a presser with an AFL coach, but in this case the coach was a trainer of horses, as Appleby was representing Godolphin as the head trainer of Sheikh Mohammed’s massive Newmarket-based English training operation. The once stable hand is now giving the orders.

A tick over 24 hours later, Appleby was greeting the Godolphin-owned galloper Jungle Cat and a beaming Irish jockey James Doyle after they had won one of Melbourne’s premier spring sprint races, the Sir Rupert Clarke Stakes at Caulfield.

Appleby, 43, was born in south-east England, on a farm near Plymouth where his parents Andrew and Patricia kept a string of ponies and Arab horses, on which the young Appleby honed his skill as a horseman. By the time he was 12, Appleby was riding jumpers and working for local trainers Angela Knight and Jackie Retter, and at 16 he did a course at the British Racing School in Newmarket.

Appleby was a more than handy amateur rider. It was during a time working for trainer Susan Piggott, the wife of legendary jockey Lester Piggott, that Appleby realised his ambition to make racing, and training, his vocation. Riding out each day beside the retired Piggott taught him a lot, he says, although the reclusive Piggott “didn’t say much”.

The introduction to Godolphin came in 1998 through his next boss, David Loder, who was training Sheikh Mohammed’s most famous horse of the time, Dubai Millennium. The rest, as they say, is history.

Winning the Sir Rupert Clarke was only the start of this spring’s Australian dalliance for Appleby and Godolphin.  After all, Appleby is here to win what has eluded Sheikh Mohammed for 30 years – the $7.3 million Lexus Melbourne Cup (3200 metres) at Flemington.

Until this year, Sheikh Mohammed, who owned his first winner in 1977, had three desperately unfulfilled ambitions in racing — to win England’s famous Epsom Derby, America’s historic Kentucky Derby and Australia’s iconic Melbourne Cup.

Appleby was able to do tick off one of those for his boss when the colt Masar won the Derby in June. Now the Melbourne Cup awaits.

Sheikh Mohammed’s first attempt at winning the Melbourne Cup was in 1988, when Authaal, trained by legendary Australian trainer Colin Hayes, finished 19th behind Empire Rose in the Cup at Flemington. The following year, the Sheikh-owned Kudz finished third behind Lee Freedman’s pair Tawrrific and Super Impose. Barely has a year gone by since that he hasn’t tried to win the Cup, only to be left with the consolation of three seconds and two thirds.

Appleby had his only Melbourne Cup runner for Godolphin in 2016 — Oceanographer, who  finished 12th  behind Almandin — although that year he also found a formula to plunder the second and third-tier country cups with old English stayers such as Qewy (Geelong Cup) and Francis Of Assisi (Bendigo Cup) that were destined for jumping careers.

This time it is different. He is armed with what he considers a “high-class” stayer, Cross Counter, that gives him and his boss the best chance to win the Melbourne Cup.

Cross Counter, who like last year’s winner Rekindling, is a three-year-old by northern hemisphere time (the northern hemisphere breeding seasons starts in February, the southern hemisphere season starts in September). He has won four of his seven starts and earned his trip to Australia by winning the Gordon Stakes (2400 metres) at Goodwood in August.

Appleby also travelled Hamada and Emotionless to Australia, but typical of racing’s twists of fate, both horses were injured in training and are unable to run in the Cup. Hamada’s injury was so severe, he was euthanised.

At the Crown press conference, Appleby, like his horses, didn’t miss a beat. Sometimes, he says, he has to pinch himself to think he is in such a position. Winning the Melbourne Cup will be an exaltation he can’t imagine.