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Rumours Just That

To paraphrase and continue the misquoting of Mark Twain, the reports of Jim Smith’s retirement have been greatly exaggerated.

Rumour has spread around Morphettville and beyond that the veteran trainer was about to hang up the halter but he says he has a lot of unfinished business before he considers the move. One of Morphettville’s and SA racing’s most respected conditioners, Smith has picked up a lot of the state’s best races over the years and achieved a career highlight when he combined with Clare Lindop to land the 2006 (then Group 1) Adelaide Cup with Exalted Time.

Smith has been training for exactly 50 years but these days, he is looking to a new breed of up and coming gallopers to continue the tradition and aim towards more feature wins. He has trimmed the stable to four - Midnight Storm, Strong Play, Moonies Choice and three-year-old Foretic - and thinks they all have wins in them.

“I’ve got a couple there that don’t go too bad so I’m certainly not thinking about retiring yet,” he says. “Midnight Storm is putting it together and will pay his way and, while I’ve had plenty of trouble with Moonies Choice, I’m not giving up on him because I know he has real ability.”

Smith prides himself on the ability to place a horse to advantage and believes he can do that with the current crop. He doesn’t for one minute believe they are going to automatically become as good as some of the stable stars of the past but that’s understandable when you look at the calibre of horses he has had through the stable - Exalted Time, Exalted Lad, Exalted Ego, Scrupulous and Paddington End. The list, as Smith says, goes on and on.

Smith hit the ground running when he took out his trainer’s licence way back in 1966. He picked up the Christmas Handicap in his first season with the very talented Narrugi and won what would now be his first Group 1 race when Valide took out the 1968 South Australian Oaks.

“The philosophy is simple. First of all, you have to assess the horse’s ability. That’s number one. Then you have to place it to its advantage. It’s no good trying to win the Adelaide Cup or any other good race with a scrubber. I don’t mind where I travel to find the right race but the important thing is that it has to be the right race.”

Smith’s honour roll reads like a list of SA’s best races. They include two Adelaide Cups, three Birthday Cups, three Wylie Handicaps, City of Marion Stakes, Grand National Hurdle and Steeple, Harry D Young Hurdle, Dermody Stakes, two Onkaparinga Cups and both Murray Bridge and Strathalbyn Cups. He’s been very keen on the Broken Hill features and won the St Patrick’s Day Cup there five times and he’s picked up numerous Melbourne races along the way - including the 2008 Cadbury Roses at Flemington with Exalted Keetah.

Smith has learned to take the good with the bad but says Exalted Keetah’s fall from grace was among his more disappointing times. The filly looked like being quite exceptional, he remembers, but after losing form and dropping right out in the Group 1 Robert Sangster Stakes, lost her form and only won one more race.

“I’ve had many good horses who just kept getting better and thrived on racing if they were in the right races,” he recalls. “Exalted Time was a very good horse. They had doubts he would get the two miles of the Adelaide Cup but I never had any doubt about it. He resumed with a win over 1800m that campaign and got into the Cup with a light weight and Clare (Lindop) rode him a treat in front.

“Scrupulous was a wonderful galloper too. He won at the 3200m of the Adelaide Cup beating a very good field back in 1995 and went on to win a Murray Bridge Cup over 1600m. I’ve also had some very good sprinters and Paddington End comes to mind as one who really excelled over the 1000m at Cheltenham.”

Smith had a great run with the Exalted horses. They all carried tan extension of the name of owner and breeder Jim O’Connor’s early sire Exalt, a son of Arc De Triomphe winner Exbury. The outstanding bloodlines produced a lot of winners with the “exalted” prefix, with a couple of them turning out to be exceptional SA gallopers.

“I’ve had a heap of them, I couldn’t count them all,” Smith says about the Exalted horses. “Exalted Time gave me one of the highlights of my career in the Adelaide Cup but I’ve always rated Exalted Lad as a brilliant horse and one of the best I’ve trained.”

The current crop have a long way to go to emulate the deeds of the best of the Exalted stock but Jim Smith thinks he has some talent with which to work - and he certainly knows how to place them.

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