Trots Centre: Charlene's mares helping her take flight

Charlene Gusman’s modest team of mares are producing big results and creating great opportunities for the owner-breeder-trainer-driver-mum.

Lola Montez, who contests tonight’s Jet Roofing Pace, which streams on Trots Vision at 7.01pm, has become something of the stable star for Gusman, with the four-year-old’s first campaign producing three wins and placings in all but one of her 12 starts.

“Lola does a great job, she is a great little earner,” Gusman said. “All three of the mares have been good earners.

“Last year I was able to take the kids to Thailand for two weeks and New Zealand for two weeks and the horses helped to give them that opportunity that they otherwise wouldn’t have had.”

But the financial benefits are just one small part of the return Gusman gets on her trots investment.

“It’s therapy. It really is therapy,” she said. “You have your stresses from life and work, but when you go and get to the stable you can forget about it.

“And when you breed and train them and they perform you get a real buzz out of it. I’m at a good place in life and have been able to put things in order.”

A big part of the pictures is daughter Caitlyn, 18, who in March acquired her stablehand license, and son Bailey, 15, who is bouncing back from a significant accident.

They may well follow in the footsteps of mum, who “always had ponies” and attended Maryborough and St Arnaud trials on Sundays in her earlier years.

“Then I went to Bendigo training school when I was 15,” she said. “From there I got my licence and drove as a junior.”

Her driving took a back seat as she raised her two kids until 2011, and said she balanced the trots with “always having a job, so I could support the kids and make sure they got through school”.

“The kids are growing up a lot more and I am really enjoying working the three horses,” she said. “I do like to work a normal job and juggle the three horses in between. It is very rewarding to have horses.”

Her working life actually laid the foundation for her current on-track success, having purchased Shes Norma Jeane with Stuart and Beryl Melville, who she’d met when they were customers of her’s at Romsey’s Salt And Pepper restaurant, where she worked.

With the then Art Major two-year-old fresh off a second placing in the South Australian Oaks hopes were high, and while Shes Norma Jeane would win a further three times and place regularly, she’d arguably leave a greater legacy as a broodmare than racehorse.

“She retired young after a fall, so I bred from her and started again,” Gusman said.

First would be All My Savings (by Four Starzzz Shark), a winner of five of her 71 starts, who would be on sold, and more recently have been Shesalwaysdreaming (by We Will See) and Lola Montez (by American Ideal), with the latter two still racing for Gusman.

“She was a bit disappointing,” said Gusman of Shesalwaysdreaming’s sixth placing at Melton on Sunday, revealing the mare would soon leave her racing career behind.

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“She will go to the breeding barn this year. I offered my 18-year-old (Caitlyn) money or the horse and she chose the horse and will have her as a broodmare.”

And then there’s Lola Montez, unraced until age four but with 12 starts since March 5 that have produced three wins, six seconds and two thirds.

“She was always little,” Gusman said. “As a two-year-old she had stifles cut and was out for three or four months. She had two or three trials last year and qualified but didn’t progress. I kept giving her time to grow.

“This time in she has put it all together and just really tries. She’s still little, but she’s done a great job. She’s surprised me. She really tries and that’s a big bonus.”

Lola Montez will have a challenge on her hands maintaining her terrific top three record tonight, when Gusman guides her from gate six in the Jet Roofing Pace.

“(Tonight)’s race will be quite hard,” she said. “She’ll have to go back and sit quiet.

“There will be plenty running early with Royal Obsession up there, Blazin Cracker has run a couple of good races on the pace. I will look for a trail up and she can come home with a dash late.”

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