11 November 2014
After varied careers Glen Tippet turned to harness racing and made Franco Tiger a Grand Circuit Winner
By Bill Ellis
During the years he was pursuing a career as a teacher in the Victorian education system there was never any suggestion or any hint of the vocation Glen Tippet was destined to follow.
Nor was it evident when he soon after gained employment as Victorian State Manager of the car carrying division of the large freight organisation TNT.
“I did my three years training and started my teaching career at a school in Footscray, an inner western suburb of Melbourne, but I soon discovered it just wasn’t for me and I didn’t last long,” he recalls.
How long?
“One week,” he says with a laugh.
During the next phase of his life though, circumstances conspired to dramatically alter his career path and set him on the course to developing a high profile as a harness racing trainer.
His younger brother, Ken (now an accomplished trainer-driver) had always been interested in horses through various activities such as pony clubs and was the first to venture into harness racing by spending his time at weekends assisting in stables.
Tippet relates how he used to have to drive his brother (then too young to have a motor vehicle driver’s licence) to and from the stables and one day being confronted by a sibling distraught after being hauled over the coals for being responsible for one of the horses in the stables being injured.
“The trainer was having a real good whinge about Ken hurting this mare so in order to shut him up, stop his whinging I gave him $150 for her and had a shot at training her myself,” he said.
“She never won a race for me but she managed to get a couple of places before I sold her for $1,500 to a breeder who was keen on her pedigree.”
Reckoning getting $1,500 for a mare which cost him $500 and never won a race was a good business proposition, he says the harness racing bug had bitten.
With funds he managed to accumulate during his time employed at TNT he bought all the gear he needed, including a car and a horse float, then spent the next 18 months in a prominent stable “learning a bit more about the business” before embarking on a career as a professional harness racing trainer-driver.
He can’t remember how many winners he drove but admits it was not many.
“I drove for a while and used to fancy myself a bit, I think everybody does, but came to realise my opinion of myself as a driver and that of everybody else were on two different levels,” Tippet said.
Enjoying considerably more success as a trainer, he says he always derived satisfaction preparing a horse to win any race “be it a maiden at Boort or Echuca or wherever” but multiple Group One successes with Franco Tiger was the stand out.
Tippet says he was frustrated and wondering if he was doing something wrong or being guilty of over estimating the horse’s potential when he first started parading Franco Tiger on the Grand Circuit but now realises those early times lay the foundation for his future success.
Both he and Franco Tiger were on a learning curve with the trainer gleaning hints on the art of campaigning on the Grand Circuit while staying with the leading trainers during his interstate forays and the horse becoming conditioned to the high pressure competition.
“He had those couple of years on the Grand Circuit having cosy runs coming out of the gate, taking cheap sits all time but then Brian Gath teamed up with him,” Tippet says.
“Being as dynamic as he is, Brian got very aggressive and the horse had the background to be able to cope with it.
“Brian changed his racing style and it changed his bank balance, too!”
During his first two terms on the track Franco Tiger had been steered by some of the best in the business (including record breaking premier reinsmen Gavin Lang, Brian Hancock and Kevin Thomas) on the way to banking $324,784 after 26 wins and 17 placed efforts from 58 starts.
His income per start earnings increased dramatically though, when he linked with Brian Gath during a stellar third term in which he banked $530,133 through 10 wins and 13 places from 26 trips to the track with four of those wins being on the Australasian Grand Circuit - the Queensland Pacing Championship (Albion Park, 31 October ’92), Australian Pacing Championship (Bankstown, 14 November ’92), Miracle Mile (Harold Park, 27 November ’92) and the South Australia Cup (Globe Derby Park, 9 January ’93).
Tippet, for most of his career, prepared his team on a 12 hectare property he and his brother bought at Melton “when it was a mere satellite suburb and you could buy land for not too much money” but has been for the last seven years been living at East Maitland in the Hunter Valley.
While with a smaller team and not attracting as high a profile as in previous years, he nevertheless produced 45 winners in the six years he held a NSW licence.
“I had actually sort of got out of harness racing before I moved up to the Hunter Valley but got back into it with a couple after a couple of boys I knew from my times with Brian Hancock down the south coast,” he said.
“With business interests in the Hunter Valley, they asked me to take a couple for them soon after I moved to the area and I was back into it.”
What precipitated his move to NSW?
“Marriage!” he said, “It’s a real Mills and Boon story, actually.”
The narrative had its genesis when Tippet, then in his late teens, met and became engaged to a girl before the relationship disintegrated a couple of years later and they went their separate ways.
While he remained single, his ex-fiancée married and moved to the Hunter Valley then Tippet says: “About seven or eight years ago she me rang out of the blue.
“It was the first time we had been in contact for 35 years, we got back together, married and we were living in the Hunter Valley before moving back to where it all began.”
Tippet and his wife met while competing in sailing regattas as teenagers at Paynesville, a tourist/holiday resort town in the Gippsland region of Victoria.
“After going back to Paynesville at Christmas time for the last few years, we bought a house, I have retired and we are going to, as they say, live happily ever after.”