By Jordan Gerrans
The nature and attitude of Shawn Grimsey’s star pacer mirrors his racing name.
While Teddy Disco was named so after rugby league player James Tedesco, Grimsey’s wife Michelle thinks there is a little more to it than that.
He is a favourite around their Tamborine stables.
“He is like a big teddy bear, he is as cruisey as,” Michelle, who helps with the team of horses, said.
The Group 1 champion – Teddy Disco – heads south this week on a hopeful Chariots Of Fire campaign.
The Grimsey-trained pacer has drawn wide in the Group 3 Paleface Adios Stakes at Menangle on Saturday evening as he chases a potential Chariots Of Fire start.
He is already a Group 1 winner back in his home state – grabbing the 2021 Redcliffe Yearling Sales Series 2YO Final.
But, as the Grimseys explain, the stable did not even think he would make it to the track in the early stages of his career.
The four-year-old was bred by Shawn’s father Barry and as Michelle recalls, it was tough going.
“As a yearling, we could not put bridles on him and he would not do track work,” she remembers.
“Once he had his first education, something switched in him and he turned into an instant race horse.
“We struck the jackpot with him as he is cruisey as.”
He only went to that education run to be a travelling companion with another from the team.
Teddy Disco has exceeded any expectations they would have had on him at that stage, winning $225,779 in career stakes so far.
Like Shawn and his father Barry, Michelle’s father also introduced her to the harness racing industry.
Rod Wingrave has a few starters each year in recent times and collected his last winner back in 2015.
Barry has been in the game for many years and Three Jewels – Teddy Disco’s mother - is a mare the Grimsey clan have bred with for some time.
“Three Jewels has been a wonderful mare – the best I’ve bred from,” Barry said almost a year ago.
Barry always stuck by Three Jewels, even if his son did not quite have the same faith at some stages.
“It is always a bigger thrill when the horse is family owned,” Shawn said.
“We bought his mother at the yearling sales quite a few years ago now and she had a fair few foals.
“I sort of gave up on her but Dad pressed on with her for a couple more and Teddy was the second last one.
“It has worked out all right.”
"All right" is putting it mildly.
Teddy Disco is a 13-time winner from just 27 starts.
He has chased southern feature racing earlier in his career but on his most recent occasion, he ran into a champion in the making – Leap To Fame.
Teddy Disco finished a respectable third in the Final of the NSW Breeders Challenge at Group 1 level in late October of last year behind the emerging superstar Leap To Fame.