Red Smith, the fabled American sportswriter, covered everything from
the Kentucky Derby to US baseball legend Babe Ruth, heavyweight boxing
champions to chumps, but his writing of obituaries were shared with an
intimate knowledge of the subject that was unique, touching and
award-winning.
So, his collection, “To Absent Friends”, starts
with this as an introduction, with Red delivering a eulogy to his
friend, the golf impresario of the time, Fred Corcoran.
“Dying is no big deal,” he began. “The least of us will manage that. Living is the trick.”
Insert
Chris Caserta here, and all those social media posts, the infectious
smiling pictures you have seen since the tragedy of Chris’ passing last
week, aged just 26.
Chris Caserta didn’t even have to conjure that trick of living. It was in his face, in your face, in our face.
“To
be honest with you, we don’t even have one photo of my son, without
that smile.” This is Chris Caserta’s grieving father Rob talking on
behalf of a very close-knit Italian family from Keilor in Melbourne.
Chris’s mother Lucy, his twin brother Matt and sister Amanda and
youngest brother Thomas, have endured the impossible this week in
extraordinary circumstances. That smile was just contagious, just Chris,
that was his nature.
“That was Chris, outgoing, a little bit
cheeky. Every post I’ve seen, every picture we’ve looked at over the
last few days, there was that smile and that’s how he will be
remembered, and that’s fantastic,” Rob said.
“He has left an
amazing legacy. I’ve been overwhelmed. We all have. At times we’ve been
very tearful. The only thing that has surprised me is the amount of
people he touched.”
But try and imagine this, the tragedy of
losing the effervescent Chris and the insufferable uncertainty of
closure, all compounded at the same time as his twin brother Matt’s wife
Monika delivered Rob a first grandson, and Chris a nephew, on the day
he went missing.
“Chris” has now been added to the baby’s name. Leonardo Matteo
Caserta is now Leonardo Matteo Christopher Caserta. Who knows if one day
he will become a jockey too.
“We aren’t a racing family,” Rob, who works in the fish business — not catching them, wholesaling them — said.
“But we have been made to feel so much a part of it; the racing
industry has been fantastic, the Water Police also. We have been kept
informed in times which are so tough because we couldn’t get to
Queensland to be part of it. There were so many stories going around,
but we knew what was going on, as hard as it was,” Rob Caserta said.
“That time was the hardest thing, but now, with the Jockeys
Association and the likes of (chief executive) Matt Hyland, we can work
on getting his body back to Melbourne for a funeral after the autopsy.
But that was so important for all of us. We couldn’t have asked for more
support,” Caserta said. “We just want to be able to organise a proper
funeral now.”
Rob Caserta last spoke to his son on Wednesday, the
day before he went for that night-time swim that went so wrong. He will
miss those endless chats. “We would chat two to three times every day,
just like last Wednesday,” Rob said.
“He’d ring after trackwork
in the morning, then later before the races, and of course then after
the races. We just spoke, whether it was horses or something else — he
was so excited for the future,” Rob said.
“As I’ve said, I’m not a
racing person. He had mentors like James Winks and friends and managers
for that, but we spoke more about how he felt generally and his goals.
Even last week he was emotional about missing the family and Matt having
a baby.
“That is what I am going to miss, just talking to him.
I’d work all through the week so I could have Saturday off and put my
feet up and watch Sky. I really don’t know what I am going to do now,
missing that. I used to love watching him and then talking to him.”
Rob Caserta is naturally spinning through raw emotions as we talk and
reveals. “Look it’s tough, but we have great family around, but
sometimes I go into the other rooms and just break down. To say there
are ups and downs right now is an understatement.
“We had been
planning on going to see him when the Queensland borders opened
(mid-December). I didn’t want him to come down because he was happy and
making a go of it. I just wanted him to keep happy and on a roll.”
And
this after a short lifetime of hard work, suspensions, injuries and an
unexpected path to the saddle, to get him settled in south-east
Queensland, a winner of only 154 career races, but promising of so many
more and keeping that exuberance forever a part of the Caserta DNA.
When
the social media trolls trolled, Chris Caserta became Giuseppe Leonardo
a mix derived from his mother and fathers grandparents, Leonardo on the
mother’s side and Giuseppe on his father’s side.
“Whether it
was bad punters or drunks, he would say: “Dad I’ve had enough of this,
I’m going to change my name’, and we came up with that, he loved it,”
Caserta said.
Young Chris was never a racing prospect — the martial arts, taekwondo was his go, as it was for twin brother Matt.
There were state championships, national achievements, Olympic
coaching and lifelong disciplines taught — from eight through their
early teens until former jockey John Didham suggested the enthusiastic
little fellow with good balance would fit the jockey challenge.
“He came to us (with Matty Pumpa) at Racing Victoria with all the
swagger under the sun,” said Matt Hyland. “Year two, he was cheeky, cool
as you could be, as if he had already made it, full of confidence. That
was Chris Caserta.”
For completion of his education, there was
time with Mick Cerchi then Brett Cavanough, Jason Petch, Tony McEvoy and
John Sadler; then to Queensland. Chris Waller was the first to send Rob
Caserta a message as Chris had been riding for him.
You know the
suspension he endured for prohibited substances and the long-term break
with a broken leg are well known, but the indefatigable Caserta was
well, indefatigable. Enduring, forever Chris.
Until the tides of time took him.
Until then, he lived life, a Caserta life, like only he could and did. And one that infected so many.
That’s how he should be remembered.
I’m
going to miss you little bro ?????? Thank you for all of the amazing
memories and laughs we shared. You touched every single person you met
along the way ?? pic.twitter.com/2QclEjn8Fw
— Stacey Rawiller (@SRawiller) December 2, 2021