You hear plenty of familiar names around the Magic Millions sales grounds.

It seems like it was headed by either Gai and Adrian � and you didn�t need to add Waterhouse and Bott, or thanks Maher/Eustace when another was knocked down to Ciaron Maher Bloodstock. Annabel, as in Neasham, was on the charts with a bullet.

Or then there was �Vinnie�, as the King of The Ring, I Am invincible is known. The $1.9m sales topper, five of the top 13 lots, 44 selling for $23m at an average of over $541,000. That�s Vinnie.

But do you know Peter or Ray? They are the real story behind Vinnie as much as Harry and Arthur, the Mitchell Brothers from Yarraman Park, who have a knack of finding and making a stallion, some from many who would consider bread and butter backgrounds, try Magic Albert or Hinchinbrook, sadly now deceased.

And that was to be the case with I Am Invincible, but some 660 winners and 73 Stakes performers later, Vinnie is elite gravy with the latest Group 1 superstar being Home Affairs.

But it wouldn�t have happened without a certain trainer, Vinnie�s fifth and final one, Peter Morgan, a self-reporting average jockey but widely respected natural horseman, or original owner Ray Gall, the former bookie who lived next to George Freeman (add-in colourful racing identity if you must), who stayed in after rejecting calls to geld him, has since knocked back Gerry Harvey�s $35m offer for his half share, and knows he wins the lottery every year when the breeding season starts.

Gall and Morgan had never met until trainer John Hawkes, who was handling the �high maintenance� entire at the time, as Morgan says, �didn�t want him back� and Galls concurs �he wanted to geld him then pulled the pin.�

Morgan was pre-training for Hawkes at the time, using his innovative water-walker at Whittlesea. It was the first of its kind, self-styled by Morgan at a cost of around $500,000 and now common practice and de rigueur.

He�s an ideas man Morgan. Old school, old fashioned and practical.

�He was a heavy horse and Ray wouldn�t geld him,� said Morgan. (Isn�t that a stroke of genius.)

�He asked me if I wanted to train him.� (Isn�t that a stroke of luck.)

But it was more than that � Morgan used to trim Vinnie�s front feet every two weeks. �He was a big horse with small feet, I just looked after him and made the most of him, never thinking where it would end up,� he said.

Morgan got runs on the board with Vinnie, but never at the elite level that stallion masters and breeders desire but Vinnie was different.

Kiwi stud offers for I Am invincible off the track didn�t eventuate when Morgan contacted old friends, the Mitchells and suggested they come look at him. They did and within 30 seconds a deal was done, Gall keeping half at a valuation of $1m. And the rest as they say��

�I thought they�d fill his books up as a bread-and-butter type sire, never ever thought he�d be the horse he has become,� Morgan said.

�It�s amazing really, Ray has been kissed on the �.�

So, the unheralded Vinnie stood for $11,000 his first year, within four years was $27,5000 then $55,000, then 1100,000, then $192,500 now $220,000.

Not a Group 1 winner, his best was a second to Takeover Target in the Group 1 Goodwood (when race conditions were changed from handicap to set weights and penalties), but his best win on paper win was the Group 3 Mackay Stakes in Adelaide and a Listed Sir John Monash Stakes, each for Morgan.

It�s hardly surprising that both say I Am Invincible has been a life changer for the pair of them.

For Morgan, who has battled prostate cancer, bowel cancer, he still has a spot on his kidney and his pancreas but says �even the bad days are good� and remains a buoyant player on his own terms in the industry.

Like when he had to sell his breeding right in Vinnie after �doing my dough� on the stock exchange. �He saved my life. I was able to get out of trouble and buy a house.�

As for Gall: �He changed my lifestyle. Now I only buy horses and property.�

He is in the Magic Millions 3YO Guineas winner King Of Sparta (by I Am Invincible naturally) and just bought a new pad at Cronulla along with an apartment at Main Beach (in a block where the Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and former trainer Doctor Geoff Chapman live) on the Gold Coast but insists Gerry Harvey is still trying to flog him a unit after missing out on buying his half share in Vinnie.

KING OF SPARTA RULES THE @mmsnippets 3YO GUINEAS ????@SnowdenRacing1 are having an amazing @mmsnippets Raceday! pic.twitter.com/wVIFBmZK6Y

� 7HorseRacing ???? (@7horseracing) January 15, 2022

�I still let Gerry in with three or four late noms,� said Gall, who notes he had been the underbidder on the likes of Subzero, Kinjite and Brazen Beau in the past.

�Apparently there was a story on the front page of the Australian that I had knocked back $35m from Gerry and Ray Hadley got on the radio and said something like �who is this idiot�. Well, I�ve got $40m to $50m out of him so far and still got the horse.�

But back-up a touch, well a lot really until we get to this part of the story.

�When I left school, I bought a trotter off Parramatta Livestock,� said Gall. �I think I was 17 but you had to be 21 to race them, so I learned how to drive and started breaking in a few.�

Gall had a printing business at the time, not like the printing money business that is now I Am Invincible, but he had well known punter and former Brisbane bookie Dougie Forbes working for him.

Married young, Gall turned to bookmaking. �My wife�s uncle was a bookie at Harold Park, I started off at Kembla Grange and got to Randwick when Robbie Waterhouse got rubbed out over the Fine Cotton business.

�George Freeman used to live behind me at Sylvania Waters and we did a bit of business together back then. But I was pretty prudent, what I did learn was to never sell an asset, I was boxing clever, if I laid a bet for $5000 I would put $4000 back.

Then it was on to breeding, you might remember Countess Pedrille or Mamzelle Pedrille in Gall�s orange and white star colours, but it was the mother of I Am Invincible, Canarelle that turned out to be his best result.

�I sold it because I had too many horses, but I remember Trevor Lobb telling me to go and have a look at the foal she produced by Invincible Spirit,� Gall said.

So he did and bought it for $62,500. And that was I Am Invincible, who started racing with Toby Edmonds, winning his first start at Warwick Farm before being placed in the Kindergarten Stakes, but subsequently went through Matthew Smith, Clarry Conners (without starts) before landing with Hawkes Racing.

�He had bad front feet, you couldn�t gallop him, no-one knows how good he was.�

Morgan did. �He was a beautiful horse, a magnificent looker. But he was always sore in the feet, he was on the water walker five days a week.�

The water walker was a throw back to his days with C S Hayes at Lindsay Park. �We used to rush them in the water back then and I came up with this idea,� he said.

He was working for Lionel Krongold at Talwood Park in Victoria at the time, he remembers seeing something like a muddy channel and thought he could do better and did, building one with clear water and filters �doing the job properly.�

Not bad for a bloke who was born in Broken Hill and grew up living in a tent in Menindee to its southeast. �I left school when I was 13-and-a-half, I couldn�t read or write, taught myself to read, I had to.�

But there were horses, he rode in gymkhanas as a kid before being put on a train to Adelaide and landing at Semaphore where C S Hayes was at Surefoot Lodge pre-Lindsay Park being born.

�There was eight of us in a room, we had double bunks, all jockeys, Johnny Stocker was there then, on the bottom bunk.�

�I wasn�t much of a jockey, probably rode around 100 winners, but for C S I just rode to instructions, he never asked me to hold one up, just told me how to ride it, I woke up after a while,� he said.

But he gave that away and went working as a brickie�s labourer, steel fixer (jobs were plentiful at the time, if you were a steel fixer it was easy, plenty of work) but it taught him how to make things.

There isn�t enough room to add in Morgan�s education that stands him where he is in the industry. There was a stint at Tarwyn Park (where Heroic stood) in the Bylong Valley, living in a house with no running water or toilet but a wooden stove. (He built a toilet and septic tank). But where he learned about follicle testing and rudimentary veterinary work

Then there was a stud with his father, successful trainer Ron, called Paumah, now Lakewood, built on trading horses to Singapore (Paumah is Malay for horse), where Curravilla and Raffindale stood, before going bust and finding a job with David Moodie�s Contract Racing as stud manager then trading (Blazing Sword) and training in Thailand, yes they had a vibrant circuit there.

But always looking and buying yearlings for himself and clients, including Gall still today.

As with any buyer there is a regret.

�I wanted to buy two horses for a client one year. I bought one, Star Rolling, who won at Group 2 level, pretty good, the other, he wouldn�t buy, was Zoustar. I wouldn�t be here today if he�d bought that.

�But I enjoy looking at yearlings, the only rule is there aren�t any, it�s hard to explain what you are looking for, conformation, a kind eye, make sure they aren�t ratty, good hips, that�s all fine but none of that always works. I had two Vinnie�s from his first year, both of them won and went in the wind so work that out.�

As for Gall, he knows how lucky he has been. Like his now good mate Morgan, they are both seemingly invincible.

Bruce Clark Racenet