THE Townsville Cup is the race everyone strives to win. Sure, it
is high on the bucket list of every northern-based owner, trainer, jockey and strapper.
Mackay-based John Manzelman has won three of the past six cups – an extraordinary feat – and yet another trainer from the same Ooralea base, Paul Dwyer, won two with a horse named Snippety Snip in 2004 and ’06.
To the dismay of many, a year after his second triumph Paul walked away from the game that had earned him enviable reputation.
Just why did he throw it away when many expected him to follow the footsteps of his elder brother, Shaun, and move to the big smoke?
“It had nothing to do with what everyone thinks,” Paul now a highly successful businessman and renowned international traveller said.
“They all thought it was because of the Mackay Turf Club management and its operation at the time.
“But I look at life as a book and until the day I handed in my licence, every chapter in my book was horse racing. I wanted to do other things – and I did – and I am not sorry.”
While training in Mackay he also had a signwriting business and later graduated to graphic design. He supplies underground equipment for the mining industry. He also has a couple of daycare centres in Mackay and dabbles in travel documentaries
that feature his adventures on a motorbike across Europe, into the bowels of Africa, Ethiopia and jungles of south America – to areas that are not found on travel brochures and where there are certainly no racecourses.
But back to dual Townsville Cup winner Snippety Snip. He was originally trained by Shaun in Brisbane but failed to make the grade.
Shaun said he had believed he needed more time to mature and sent the gelding north. He won eight races (12 seconds and six thirds) for $233,000.
He not only provided young Dwyer with two Townsville Cups but also his last winner. Paul and Shaun are sons of Les Dwyer, a passionate racing man who reared his family in Mackay
before moving to Gympie many years ago. He is 87 and, according to Shaun, still maintains a strong interest in racing.
When Paul exited the game in 2009 he had figures of 41 per cent placings of his past 100 runners.
His win rate was a respectable 14pc.
But away he went. He met his South African wife and constant companion, Jan, on a kibbutz in Israel on his first trek overseas and lived in Durban in the late 80s where apartheid was still prevalent though the barriers were breaking.
Paul once witnessed one of his co-workers, an Englishman, flogging an African worker with a sjambok in a factory they worked. He intervened, took the sjambok off the pommy and
belted him with it.
He wasn’t to know the pom had a son who was a SA policeman. The dreaded coppers burst into Paul’s Durban home one night, handcuffed him, placed him in chains, bashed him – as they did in those days – then charged him with inciting a racial disturbance.
That was the beginning of the end of his stay in Durban. He came home and began horse training “just to help out Shaun who was having some domestics at that time”.
“I suppose you could say I was the reluctant horse trainer,” he says. Of course, Snippety Snip was the best he trained, though he was a partner in Shaun’s champion $1 million two-year-old, Runaway Gal.
Ironically Paul’s last win was Snippety Snip at Cluden in May 2009 when he led all the way in the mud with Trinity Bannon on board over 1400m at Cluden.
He was campaigning for his third Townsville Cup.
Paul, in fact, packed up on
Townsville Cup day that year. His last runner was Arrowin which was unplaced in a minor race with Jeffrey Felix up.
On the way home to Mackay that night he decided there was a more to life than early morning starts seven days a week and decided to invest in a motorbike. He bought one for Jan as well – and off they went to explore the world.
He fondly remembers – but doesn’t necessarily miss – the glamour and glitz of Cluden on a Townsville Cup day.
But says he prefers to tinker with his BMW bike than bandage or patch up a racehorse
“It’s just the way I am.”
And not even another Snippety Snip would lure him back, as he packed his bags for another holiday on the beautiful isle of Ko Samui.
