The fixed-odds operators were wary after Chance Bye had been backed from $25 into $4 on debut in the Inglis Nursery. That came after a 12-length win in an 800m Kembla Grange jump-out. Second start she was smashed in betting by the locals again, this time starting odds-on in the Inglis Classic.
Tubman’s delivery was dry and he had the timing of a stand-up comic. He was a great match for Chance Bye; both of them delightfully unrefined and direct. Despite Chance Bye’s positive attributes – the aforementioned big backside and strut – she had such poor conformation that regular jockey Kathy O’Hara once quipped, “she looks like her legs were painted on backwards.” Paddock watchers knocked her, calling her “a bag of bones”, and bookmakers wanted to take her on, but she ran like a mini with a V8 engine and cost the Sydney bagmen plenty.
Chance Bye is a play on ‘chance buy’, a name already registered, and a reference to Tubman’s fateful trip to the 2009 Inglis Classic Yearling Sale in Sydney. Tubman hadn’t planned to attend but had nothing better to do and was happy to keep a mate company on the two hour drive into the big smoke.
As a trainer, Tubman was a scrapper, surviving on a handful of tried horses and budget yearling buys, and one of his best was a Gai Waterhouse discard he had won two races with named Geiger Spirit.
Geiger Spirit was a half-sister to Chance Bye’s dam Rouge Femme. It caught Tubman’s eye in the catalogue and when he saw the diminutive filly was passed-in, he offered $15,000 and was going home with a horse. He just needed somebody to pay for it. He called Jack Knight, an old mate and ‘concrete recycler’ from Sydney who had made his money crushing old bitumen to sell as road base.
Knight was in. Along with Tubman’s ever-present ‘stable foreman’ Glen Murphy, they made a tremendous team. After Chance Bye’s explosive debut, his phone ran hot with jockey agents, all of them looking to steal the new Slipper pre-post favourite away from O’Hara, but she was now a rusted-on part of “Team Tubman”, too.
“They can call all they want, but they are wasting their time, Kathy is the jockey,” Tubman said. “The horse runs for her and she will be riding her anytime she goes around.”