On the surface the winning column of Katie McCloy’s training record showed one start for one win, but digging beneath the surface is a story laden with decades of hard work and a guardian angel watching over.
The night Talknplay took out the Hunter Rural four-year-old and older maiden pace at Shepparton on August 27 - it was obvious this was more than just a regular win.
The screams and cheers that came from the grandstand signified something momentous had occurred.
“It’s pretty easy,” McCloy laughed. “It has taken me a long time.
“It was pretty special, that’s why you can hear me screaming for about 30 minutes after the race.”
The Longlea horsewoman lost her dad, prominent Victorian owner-breeder Norman (Norm) McCloy who unexpectedly passed away last year.
“For me it was a personal journey, because I lost my dad suddenly last year,” she said.
The Goulburn Valley track holds a special place in the heart of McCloy and her family.
“Every time I am at that track (Shepparton) I feel like he is with me, I believe he was with me that day - 100 per cent,” she said.
“I had a little feather following my feet around at Glenn Douglas’s place in the morning (of the race) and I took it with me that night and put it in my hat."
McCloy also wore a very special piece that meant the world to her late father.
“I wore my dad’s jacket, a little brown jug jacket, that he wore to every trial and race day,” she said.
The 41-year-old knows her dad would have been the first one on the phone the instant the gelding by Shadow Play crossed the line.
“He would have rung me as soon as his hair hit the line. The first phone call would have been my dad,” she laughed. “He would have said ‘how was that kid’ that was exactly what he would have said, and he would have made me play the replay 100 times.
“I went to his grave after it and we sat there and we played it and I said ‘we did it dad.’
“My son was there on a school night and this meant more to me than just racing, this was more than racing for me this was a part of my dad.”
The Longlea reinswoman has had to work extra-hard to get her gelding Talknplay to the races.
“We have had him since he was a two-year-old and he ended up breaking down and had a virus,” she said.
“He had a bad start to his racing career and I have nursed him back and we just built him back up very, very slowly.”
McCloy had a few words for driver Lisa Miles ahead of the son of Need To Talk’s debut race day appearance.
“Before she got on him I said ‘he just hasn’t had many races yet and he is probably a little bit unfit race-wise, but if you can get him out of the gate and get him on the fence, you’re as good as anything else’,” she said.
The 41-year-old had a case of mistaken identity as her four-year-old gelding turned for home.
“At the bend I was actually looking at the wrong horse, I thought he was dropping out (of the race),” she said.
“I was still cheering because I’m like ‘I am so proud of this horse’ and it wasn’t till the end where I thought, oh my god, we are in front.
“I was just over the moon.”
McCloy has had to prove the naysayers wrong throughout her career before finally standing on the top step of the podium.
“I have had people tell me ‘I can’t do it’ and ‘your just a girl‘ and all of those things,” she said.
“I knew I could do it.
“To everyone who said I couldn’t, well I did.”
The Longlea reinswoman had plans of representing the green and gold before turning her hand to training.
“I actually was a show horse girl and I had an Olympic dream and my mum and dad had my horses taken off me at the age of 15, because my allergies got the best of me,” McCloy said.
“I was really anaphylactic and mum and dad sold off the horses because it was not worth my health.”
McCloy was persuaded back into training by a fellow Longlea horseman.
“John McDermott called me and asked ‘if I would like to jog up a few horses’ and I thought I haven’t jogged a horse for 20 years," she said.
“I felt like I lost a bit of my horsemanship at the start, but with anything you get back into It and after that I liked the driving caper and the racing side of things.
“Horses have been my life and I just love them and they have been my life I talk to them, I kiss them they are my heart and soul.”