Ben Currie has been a long time away.
Almost three years in fact.
Given what he has been through in that time, a lot of people would have given up.
Not the man they call the Toowoomba Tornado though, or the Tornado for short.
The Tornado’s a winner, and winners win.
Currie has made mistakes in the past – big ones – but he has admitted them to himself and others, and he faced his faults and worked assiduously to get back to doing the only thing he knows, and the thing he loves.
Training racehorses.
He is not there yet, and won’t be for a while; he has to prove himself first.
To the QRIC, to us, and most of all, to himself.
Before Currie becomes a trainer again he has to serve a clean spell as a stablehand, and then one as a stable foreman, and if he comes through at the end of those tunnels bathed in light, then he can apply to get his trainer’s license back.
Given his past transgressions when he was a young man who took on too much and did it wrong, that’s fair enough too.
Ben Currie is just a stablehand right now.
But even in that lowly role, he’s a winner.
The two horses he strapped at Toowoomba yesterday got the biscuits.
They were the Tornado’s first two winners back.
And good on him too.
It’s a hard road chasing rainbows and dreams.
But gee it is a worthwhile jog.