Family matters powering Holt’s Townsville Cup tilt

By Andrew Smith

Mornings are fairly chaotic for Georgie Holt - and that doesn’t include trackwork at Cluden Park.

The leading Townsville trainer and her husband, jockey Aidan Holt, juggle taking care of their two young children with the 16 horses they have in work.

Fresh off securing back-to-back Townsville trainer’s premierships, Holt will be looking to claim her first Townsville Cup with Mooloolaba in tomorrow’s feature event.

The 33-year-old has two sons – Kai, 5 and Archie, 2 – and jokes that taking care of animals is the easier part of managing motherhood and a successful stable.

“Probably the horses because I can lock them up, it’s not frowned upon and they don’t answer back!” Holt said with a laugh.

“It gets a bit tough at time between the pair of them, the kids and the horses - it’s a fine line between what’s harder.

“Obviously Aidan’s such an active father so that’s a huge help to me - we just have to work together as a team at the track and at home and it pays off.

“We’ve got two little boys that are both very energetic and feisty and we have a babysitter that comes every morning and looks after them while we’re here at the track.

“Then I generally rush home, pack the lunches, get them off to school and then we go back to the stables and finish off what we need to do.”

Videos of the kids helping out at the stables are a constant hit on the family’s social media.

Holt herself grew up around the racing industry with parents Tony and Deidre owning several horses in Mackay and the Sunshine Coast.

The family-oriented environment is something she is keen to foster.

“They’re just as much into racing as we are, I guess they haven’t really had a choice but they really love being part of it - if they could come to trackwork every day they would,” Holt said.

“It’s certainly a juggling act and it’s not easy especially when we’ve got to travel, generally one of us stays back and sorts everything out and does the school pick up.

“It is tricky, but it’s very rewarding at the same time.”

Entering her eighth year of training this week, the 2023/24 season again proved fruitful for Holt.

The stable racked up 42 wins and 63 placings across North Queensland, including 31 victories at Cluden Park.

Holt believes taking on more two-year-olds has been one of the keys to success throughout the campaign.

“We’ve had our best season yet again and that’s just what we strive to do - to be better than what we were last season and I think we’ve been lucky enough to have a lot better horses come through this season,” she said.

“We’ve got a great support group of owners that are just happy to keep moving their horses from down south up to us or buying into our yearlings.

“We didn’t take any two-year-olds in our early days of training, so now that we’ve sort of found our feet and taken on a few, we’ve done really well this season.

“Just being consistent with our winners each week through the season has paid off so just focusing and making sure we are getting all those one percent things ticked off has paid off.

The family is in the process of building 12 more stables to cater for the growth of their operation.

With so much success on the provincial circuit, the next obvious step would be a city move for the emerging trainer.

It’s a lofty ambition that is firmly at the forefront of Holt’s mind.

“The future for us is tricky – we’ve got two little boys so they obviously need to be our highest priority,” Holt said.

“We looked into possibly moving south last year when we had a track closure here and we couldn’t work the horses - we thought this is probably our opportunity to go but it just wasn’t that simple.

“We had a really hard time finding stables, that was a long process and by then our little fella was starting prep so it was then too late to just pack up and go - I wanted to do the right thing by him and get him settled into school.

“The sky’s the limit I guess you could say - we’ve ticked off the premiership here a couple of times and that’s all well and good, we’re really happy with that and we’re stoked with our achievements.

“But having to go down south it’s just obviously such a huge pool of quality trainers down there, it would be a big risk to take but I would like to eventually have a crack.”

Before then, there is the goal of cracking a maiden Cup win on her home turf at Cluden Park tomorrow.

The best result Holt has achieved in the $150,000 event was fourth in last year’s running with Siren Rocks.

Kiwi star Mooloolaba will fly the flag for the stable with Ron Stewart in the saddle for the 2000m trip.

The gelding had won five straight on the Townsville track before a short spell heading into the Northern Queensland Winter Racing Carnival.

“He’s probably a little bit out of his depth - he’s up against some hard horses but I think being on his home track he should go well,” Holt said.

“We’ve kept him away from the track a little bit, he’s been doing a little bit of work on our home track, going down to the beach and things just to keep him bright so he’s happy and I’m happy with him coming into Saturday.

“It would be huge, there’d be nothing more special than winning the Townsville Cup.

“We try and run all of our horses here as much as we can, and would be quite special to have our family and friends around us.

“We’ve been lucky enough to win a few of our bigger races with our careers and over the last few months but I think winning a Townsville Cup just takes it to the next level.”

Mooloolaba has drawn barrier three and was fourth on the line of betting at $6 as of Friday afternoon.

It will be a tough ask to usurp gun galloper Namazu who is aiming for a three-peat in the race, something that hasn’t been achieved since the legendary Party King in 2000, 2001 and 2002.

The Ricky Vale-trained gelding is the $3.30 favourite, set to jump from barrier 12 with Ashley Butler on board.

Warp Speed and Fortified are also being backed to push for honours.

“I’m a little bit surprised, there’s probably not as many tough contenders as I was expecting,” Holt said.

“Obviously you’ve got the likes of Namazu who is going to be very, very difficult to beat - he goes well on this track and he’s quite a handy horse.

“He’s obviously a huge factor that we need to weigh in to how we go as well, and how we run the horse, but it’s definitely not the toughest field that I’ve seen come around in Townsville.”

Holt is also looking to claim her first Cleveland Bay Handicap, after coming agonizingly close with Langhro who finished second to the Tony Comerford-trained Deadly Choices in 2020.

Hurtle will line up in the time-honoured event, coming off the back of a fifth-placed finish in last Sunday’s Lighting Open Handicap.

“It wasn’t something that was initially set in our sights for him but I just think why not have a crack at it while he can and he’s racing really well,” Holt said.

“He had a good run in the Lightning on Saturday, he drew wide, a tricky barrier especially from a thousand metres, it’s a start here that you really need to draw a gate.

“I was really happy with the horse’s run in himself - he hit the line really strongly, he was making a bit of ground in the end.”

Magic Conqueror is also entered as an emergency for the Cleveland Bay in what would be his first start for Holt since heading north from the Kelly Schweida stable at Eagle Farm.