Mr Nonchalant extends his extraordinary Grand National record

Champion jumps trainer Mark Oulaghan and New Zealand’s record-breaking Olympic kayaker Dame Lisa Carrington offer a challenge for anyone tasked with describing their stupendous feats.
How do you find something original to say about either great of their specific discipline? Even after Carrington had taken her gold medal tally to eight last weekend, media covering the Paris Olympics were blessed with one of the most personable subjects they could wish for, someone who appears to be an absolute delight to engage with.
Don’t take this the wrong way, but Mark Oulaghan is a quite different kettle of fish. That doesn’t make him any less of a person, and after last week’s Grand National heroics at Riccarton with his star pair West Coast and Berry The Cash, doubling down on the respect he has garnered over many years, he’s got to be seen as one of New Zealand racing’s best conditioners.
He and I are also mates, but that doesn’t mean he was all gushy when, after being cruelly denied by fog from enjoying Riccarton on Saturday, I finally got to catch up with him back at his Awapuni stables on Tuesday.
The conversation went something like “Yeah, it was pretty good I suppose, you don’t see them do that too often.” (Like, no other trainer has a Grand National record to compare with Oulaghan’s nine steeplechase and six hurdles and West Coast is the first ever to claim a hat-trick).
And “Yeah they seem to have come through it okay; they’re back home and out in the paddock, so we’ll probably look at the Northerns now I guess.”
Nonchalant doesn’t get close to describing the Oulaghan approach, but when all is said and done, along with everything else about this ultra-conservative character, that should be celebrated.
It’s the core reason why Oulaghan is so successful, not just as a master conditioner and tactician with jumpers, but also as a Group One-winning flat trainer in his own right.
Those deriving benefit from the Oulaghan skillset, including the oft-quoted former leading jumps jockey Tommy Hazlett and West Coast’s regular pilot Shaun Fannin, are glowing in their praise of the cool operator, knowing full well that their best moments have come with his horses.
Add to that the Williamson family of South Canterbury, in particular West Coast’s ownership quartet of Ron, Jennifer, Henry and Gabby Williamson. They were there in force on Saturday, all three generations of seniors, sons and grandsons, and they led the partying afterwards.
“Yeah it was good to see Ron make it this time after he was in hospital and couldn’t last year,” Oulaghan said. “I went home straight after the two horses won last year, but I wasn’t going to miss celebrating with Ron and his family this time.”
No table dancing at the Commodore Hotel mind, just the warm satisfaction of mission accomplished and raising a glass or three with like-minded friends.
“It was some party alright, I just wish you could have been there too,” Ron Williamson said when I spoke with him after he and Jennifer had arrived back in Twizel. “I won’t tell you what the bill was when we checked out on Sunday morning, but it was worth every cent, to have so many friends and family there to celebrate.”
No matter, everyone who knows this staunch 86-year-old, someone who lives for racing, who was crippled as a young man in a fall from a horse and now lives mostly in a wheelchair, we’re all thrilled that in his golden years he is the owner of one of this country’s greatest ever jumpers.
“It was wonderful to see Mark so relaxed on Saturday, even before those two horses went out and did what they did,” he continued. “And Shaun, he’s such a good rider that lad. I was watching the race with my old vet mate Bill Bishop and with a round to go he said to me ‘He’s only cantering Ron’.
“Shaun had him tucked in travelling in a lovely spot, I knew he had the Oulaghan polish and it was just wonderful to see it all come together.”
Ron couldn’t let our conversation end without making known his feelings about last week’s release by NZTR of a consultation paper on the future of jumps racing.
“I think they’ve opened a bloody can of worms,” said the recipient of the governing body’s Contribution to Racing Award in 2009. “You look at Saturday and all the other big moments in jumps racing lately, there’s nothing to compare at this time of the year.
“One thing about it, everyone’s talking about jumps racing now and pointing out everything that’s good about it. I signed a petition that was doing the rounds on Saturday – there were two pages of signatures on the one I signed – and I’ll be letting them know what I think.
“The thing that really disappointed me was that on one of the South Island’s biggest days of the year, I didn’t see a single person from NZTR there. You would have thought someone would have attended to show they might just be interested. Maybe they did, but I certainly didn’t see anyone.
“It didn’t spoil the day, we all had a wonderful time, and now I wouldn’t mind doing it again. I’ve said to Henry that he and Mark can have a talk about what the horse does from here.
“I’ll leave it them but I’d love to see him go to the Great Northern again, and if he was to come back to Riccarton next year – wouldn’t that be something?”