Mick Kent Interview

There’s a saying that you should never trust men in bowties or people who wear dark glasses on cloudy days.

Mick Kent is a bit of a hermit who rarely draws attention to himself, so there’s little risk of him popping up anywhere in a bowtie.

But Kent does wear dark glasses on gloomy days. (He says the sun burns his eyes, others reckon he likes to hide, or is arrogant).

Fortunately, Kent CAN be trusted, not just as a successful and imaginative trainer but as one of racing’s most astute “thinkers.”

Kent never does pre-race interviews, declaring them a mozz, and rarely sits still for long enough to be contained to a radio studio for an hour.

But the Cranbourne trainer was lassoed into the RSN studio for Open Mike this morning where he spoke expansively on a range of subjects.

Here are some snippets.

On the announcement this morning that David Hayes would return to Hong Kong to train, Kent, who spent a decade training in South-East Asia himself, said it was “probably a marriage made in heaven.”

“He has a good team of horses down here he can pull from and a lot of clients want to buy yearlings and make a profit selling them to Hong Kong. I think it’s a really smart idea.”

Of his seven years in Singapore (and later two in Macau), Kent said “I got there very green.”

“I just wanted everything to win. It just doesn’t work that way up there. You become a betting advisor.”

“When you say the horse can win, they (owners) want it to win obviously. You had to be pretty right.”

Kent said the art of setting up a horse for a punt up there meant that quite often “some of your lowest class horses are your best horses.”

Kent first stumbled across the “science” of training while in Singapore, via an expert in lactic recovery. The first guinea pig was a horse imported to Singapore from Aidan O’Brien.

Ridden in traditional style, the horse proved disappointing, even though its lactic recovery figures on the treadmill had been through the roof.

“I was lying in bed and had one of those Eureka moments. I sacked (Mick) Dittman, put Shane Scriven on, on the dirt, nine furlongs. I told him when you get past the first corner, as soon as the pace slackens, off you go. He won by eight. Next start at 2000m he won by about 10.

“I thought “geez, I don’t know anything about training horses.”

Kent later found a cardiologist who rated the heart scores of horses, a key to performance. “You’re not going to be elite unless you’ve got a V8 engine,” he said.

Of buying horses locally, Kent said “it still frightens me, the cost of a horse, for how many are any good. It’s a bad equation.”

Kent spoke of “speed genes” and a failed attempt to breed and prepare locally bred stock to win the Melbourne Cup.  Dubbed the “ANZAC Fightback”, the concept attracted enthusiasm but not investors.

Of breeding, owning and training local stayers, Kent said: “I think people have given up a bit.”

“I’m sure we have the blood, it’s just the approach (that’s lacking),” he said.

Kent continued his passionate push to save Sandown, saying he wondered if it was truly in the Melbourne Racing Club’s charter to sell it.

“I wonder about the legacy,” he said.

He spoke of the biggest bet he’d ever had – a Flemington winner at 25-1 – and also ventured into the delicate topic of female riders and the greater risks they face, at least statistically.

By Matt Stewart