SOMETIMES racing seems so simple. Trainer buys horse online from Victoria with his wife, takes it to Cairns, wins her first race, comes back to Ipswich, wins another.  

Of course, racing is far from simple most of the time but Beaudesert trainer Glen Baker is proof an easygoing approach to life is a pretty good bet.

Baker and his wife Justine bought Dawn Colours online about eight months ago. He said buying horses that way could be tricky but this time it came up trumps.

Dawn Colours had been trained in Victoria by Daniel Bowman of Begood Toya Mother fame.       Baker, who mainly trains horses he and his wife own, was happy to deal with him.

“My wife spoke to him on the telephone and he was very honest with her,” Baker said.

“He said she was a nice mare - sound, correct, did everything right. And when she landed here she was exactly as he said. She was a nice mare to deal with and everything else.

“A lot of times you doubt things in the industry but every now and then you’ve got to trust somebody somewhere along the line.

“It is a bit of a risk but we like to muck around with little tried horses like that and smaller fish are sweet.”

In September, the Bakers packed up and went to Cairns where they entered Dawn Colours in a maiden event that she won comfortably.

“It was sort of a working holiday type thing,” he said.

“I’ve got a taxi business up in Cairns. I just lease out my licence and don’t have to do nothing.”

Owning taxi licenses used to be a pretty good lurk, almost a licence to print money if you could stump up the outlay.

“It used to be,” Baker said. “Mainly the introduction of Uber and of course Covid and the downturn of tourism.  I think they were over half a mill at one point.

“The income coming in is a little bit less now but apart from that it’s been pretty good.”

He laughs: “You roll with the punches.”

Glen and Justine live on five acres at Beaudesert. Their horses roam in paddocks and shelter in stables.

“We’re just down the road from Embrook where Tony Gollan takes all his horses with Letitia Langbecker. We’re only two minutes to the racetrack and it’s good,” Glen said.

“I do all my farrier work myself so it works out pretty good.”

Dawn Colours won her second race at Ipswich last Friday in The Barn Family Restaurant Handicap (1350m), leading all the way under the expert guidance of jockey Larry Cassidy.

Dawn Colours ($4) beat Boom Rocker ($19) by a short neck with Swahili Mai ($7.50) a further neck away in third.

“Larry rode her on the Sunshine Coast a couple of runs back and he said he liked her, he liked the way she went but because of his commitments to bigger stables, in the city, it’s very hard to get him back in again,” Baker said.

“I started her in town the other day and it was a pretty hot fillies and mares race and I left it to start her here [at Ipswich] and Larry rang up right away for the ride so I said: ‘Yeah. Glad to have you back on.’

“The good riders have got a good clock in their head and they don’t miss too often.”

As we talk in the stables after the race, Dawn Colours walks on by on her way back from the swab stall.

“She’s a nice little mare. She’s pretty easy to do anything with,” her trainer said.

“She’s probably looking for a spell now because she’s been up to Cairns and back.

“I may give her one more run before I spell her. But I think she’s looking for a good eight weeks. I think she’ll be a nice mare next time in.”

In time, he hopes she will make a nice broodmare.