GOING AT A Widgee Turf DIFFERENT PACE
By Mick Sharkie
Retirement has never looked better for Group 3 winner Widgee Turf, taken in by legendary horse family the Egans to live out his life in the high country of Victoria. In the Victorian high country, a good horse is worth its weight in gold and always has been. Horses are a part of high-country culture, they are part of everyday life. The landscape is as tough as it is beautiful, steep and unforgiving, hot in the summer and freezing in winter; this is working horse country, and The Man from Snowy River would feel right at home. It’s fitting then that Group 3 winner Widgee Turf has found his way to the high country in retirement. The son of Turffontein was a hard-nosed competitor on the racetrack with a huge will to win – they don’t come much tougher than Widgee Turf. On a farm on the outskirts of Mansfield, the unofficial capital of Victoria’s high country, Widgee Turf and a group of other ex-racehorses are being introduced to a very different pace of life by a family synonymous with racing and with high-country horses. Billy Egan grew up in Mansfield. His father Brendan and mother Sarah always had horses around the place, thoroughbreds, stockhorses, ponies, as did his uncle Gerald, a trainer of racehorses but perhaps better known as a trainer of young jockeys – he was also a stuntman in The Man From Snowy River film.
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