It was harness racing’s feel-good story of the week when Colada Rose won the Hustler 104 Pace at Redcliffe Harness Racing Club last Thursday.
The win gave trainer Max Olive his first as a trainer since 1987 when Buckle Parade was successful at the old Queen Street Paceway at the Gold Coast.
Originally owned by Ken Parker, the bay mare was leased to good friend Olive after Parker suffered from health issues which prevented him from training.
Olive has had Colada Rose for four weeks now, the win putting a smile on his face that was hard to move.
“Yeah, it was great to get the win and she ran a pretty good mile rate as well,” said Olive.
Slicing three seconds off her previous best mile rate, Colada Rose has never been in better form as she grabbed her second career win in 73 starts under the urgings of driver Amy Rees.
“She’s going really, really well, and Amy’s our number one girl, she’s our number one driver and she did a good job,” said Olive.
The depth of this feel-good story starts a couple years ago, when Parker drove the filly to a win in 2014 at Redcliffe.
Parker was 82 years of age at the time and understandably caused a stir with his brilliant win, the first since 2008 for the on-and-off trainer, who could be the oldest driver to steer home a victory in Australian harness history.
“It will take a month to take the smile off my face. I’ll have to have an operation to get rid of it,” Parker said at the time.
And it was the same last week, when Olive, a friend of Parker’s for some 50 years, let him know the good news of another win at Redcliffe.
“I’ve known Kenny for 50 years, he used to shoe a couple of horses for me and we’ve been friends ever since,” said Olive.
“He was watching Sky1 and it was on Sky2, so he actually missed Colada Rose’s race
“He’s seen it on the phone since and thought it was a fantastic run, I think we might have put a couple of years on him,” Olive joked.
Racing Queensland
The race can be seen below. It was Thursday the 18th race 7 on the replays.