When Eyes To Eye lines up in the Casino Beef Week Cup on Friday, it will mean more than just another race for trainer Ethan Ensby.
“Beef Week Cup is first on the agenda for us,” the Ballina-based conditioner said.
He will be the first to say that Group 1 glory is the ultimate goal for any trainer, but Ensby’s sights are set firmly on the Beef Week Cup.
As a passionate Casino product himself, a win there would mean so much to the trainer.
“We are Casino born and bred. For Casino people, Beef Week is a big thing,” he said.
Eyes To Eye joined the stable in May last year from the Richard & Will Freedman yard having recorded one win from nine starts.
While with Ensby, the gelding by Tivaci has won twice from 11 starts — both in wet conditions, including a dominant five-length performance on a Heavy 10 on Lismore.
“We found out by accident that he loves a wet track,” he said.
“Because that day he won at Lismore in his first win for us, I actually contemplated scratching him but he actually loved it.
“When we saw that there were not going to be many horses in the race, we thought we may as well have a throw at the stumps with a few gear changes that (the Freedmans) had told me may be the key with him but they hadn’t tried but when they had the conditions were not in his favour.
“So, we made those changes as per their recommendations and what we had seen from the horse and got the job done.
“With that last start, I think the 25-day break between runs on the bog track just brought him a little bit unstuck.
“So, we’re happy enough with him and he will head to Beef Week Cup Day on Friday.”
Lismore R4 replay – July 29, 2023
Winner: Eyes To Eye
For Ensby, the goal was 100 winners in his first five years as a trainer.
After receiving his trainer’s licence just months before his 20th birthday, he had his first winner in 2015 with Floral Nomad on the Gold Coast.
Eight years later, Ensby has 83 career wins with $1.6 million in prize money.
Following the devastating impact of floods and a pandemic on the entire industry, the young trainer is now regaining traction.
“Coming into this I didn’t want to do things half-arsed,” Ensby said.
“I set a goal to at least train 100 winners in the first five years but, unfortunately, we basically lost three of the last eight years.
“Last year we had the floods that really hit us and was an absolute nightmare.
“I had a 24-horse stable when COVID hit and lost half of them within three weeks.
“We had to offload a few of the horses that were predominantly going to be having to race in Brisbane because we couldn’t get across the border.
“After that past three-year period you just couldn’t go out and restock with any sort of confidence because everyone was worrying as to what was going to happen next.
“Obviously because we lost a lot of good horses, we were left with a bunch of horses that were only so-so.
“Your name drops off the face of the earth when you’re not training winners every week.
“It’s been a really tough couple of years actually, you know, without going too over the top about it, but it has been quite a tough last few years.
“Luckily we are getting a bit of traction again now, so hopefully it keeps rolling.”
Ensby is proud of his training record to date, but he is eager to add some metropolitan wins to his CV.
“I’ve trained a winner on every northern New South Wales track except for Coffs Harbour and Kempsey. From Port Macquarie to the border, I’ve trained a winner on every track,” he said.
“Then if you take in South East Queensland I’ve trained a winner on almost every track between the border and Sunshine Coast and out to Toowoomba, except for Doomben, Esk and Kilcoy.
“To be honest, out of those three I would rather aim to get the winner at Doomben first.”
To achieve these goals, Ensby is armed with some talented types including a few real up-and-comers who are showing promise.
The stable star is Maximum Vortex, who has two wins from as many starts for his career.
The Kuroshio gelding won dominantly at Grafton by 5.5 lengths on debut before backing up 12 days later at the same track to win by two lengths.
“Our biggest owner bred him and he was sent to a trainer at Deagon to break him in and that trainer was going to keep him,” Ensby said.
“The owner had a little bit of a disagreement with the trainer and he was sent to us.
“He was an absolute mess when he came to us!
“I just think he was not ready to do what he was being asked to do and I don’t think I was told the truth when he was sent down to us.
“To be quite honest, I never thought he was going to make it to the racetrack. When he first came down, I said that I was not sure about him.
“But he seems like a nice enough horse and is still young, so if we keep giving him the time, we can hopefully bring him through.
“He went so well on debut that we backed him up and he won but he won that on sheer ability.
“In his second run he didn’t come out of second gear but he did have to work a little harder than he did in his maiden run.
“He really took us by surprise on both of those runs and still until this day he is yet to be fully tested.
“I am so happy with how he has come back and he looks an absolute picture.
“He could be something very special and everything he has done so far has been on raw ability.”
Grafton R6 replay – April 30, 2023
Winner: Maximum Vortex
Another Tivaci-sired gelding trained by Ensby is Fortivaci, who has two wins and a third from his last four starts including a 1.7-length win to crack his maiden at Grafton ($19) and a tight 0.4-length win at his Ballina home track ($19).
His last start was a sixth-placing at Ballina on a Heavy 8, finishing four lengths behind the winner, that has seen him head to the paddock.
“He’ll come back this weekend, all things being equal,” Ensby said.
“He came to us and I bought him thinking that he would aim up at the Class 1 and maiden plates around 2200m because they were very, very weak.
“We’ve since found out that he doesn’t really relish a trip.
“My sports scientist and my missus who rides work both said, ‘get rid of it, sack it as it’s no good, it’s a donkey’.
“I wasn’t convinced that we’d got to the bottom of him yet.
“We ran a lot of bloods and he had a lot of issues and we were able to iron those out.
“Obviously he got beaten by around 66 lengths at Murwillumbah in November last year but he pulled up with a massive muscle tear.
“The muscle enzymes are supposed to be in the hundreds and at that point his were at 18,000.
“So, it took a long time to bring those back down, but once we did we found out that he’s a horse that ties up really badly.
“We changed his feed to accommodate that and he’s really relished from it.
“It was a surprise that he won and won with as much authority as we did at Grafton that day, but I’ve always thought that the horse was better than what he was showing.
“That’s why I never gave up on him and I could have quite easily gave up on him.
“I ended up getting stuck with 80% of him, but I really can’t afford that much in horses in the stable.
“I’ve got little shares in just about everything because my philosophy is if I buy something, I stay in it, because I won’t expect my owners to buy something that I wouldn’t want to be the owner of myself.
“It would have been very easy for me to pull the pin on him very quickly, but the owners stuck to it and said ‘no, if that’s what you think, we’ll push on’.”
Ballina R6 replay – March 30, 2023
Winner: Fortivaci
Draft Day is a Tivaci x Miss Lioness gelding that joined the Ensby stable recently from the Corstens yard after winning three times from 11 starts.
“We’ve picked him out and he’s a very nice horse and obviously he’s the third Tivaci we’ve got in the stable,” the trainer said.
“When he came to us, he was never going to race or race competitively the way he looked.
His last few starts have been quite ordinary but I think there is a lot more improvement in the horse and I think his form down there is well enough to stack up here.
“I think the drop back in grade, different scenery and just in the few days we had him in the stables until we made a decision on what we were doing with him, you could see a massive improvement.”
The stable also includes some unraced and untested types that have impressed Ensby in work.
“I think Hebon Shiki is probably one of the best young ones we’ve bought so far,” he said.
“I think she’s pretty smart, but she’s only small.
“We’ve sort of just gave her time and she was nearly ready to trial but she went shin sore.
“Everything we pointed her at she just did it like she’s done it a million times.
“She’s just an out and out professional and I think she will go pretty good.
“Dusk Over Dubai I’ve got a big opinion on as well.
“She’s a very nice little filly but I think she’s going to be better as a three- and four-year-old.
“Majestic Thunder although he hasn’t shown us a lot at home because we haven’t done a lot with him, he’s sort of broken in and he was a very weedy sort of a type and had a lot of development to do.
“I haven’t really got a gauge on him yet because we’ve only done a bit of work with him.
“But he has come back a much stronger horse. If you looked at a photo of him then and now, you’d think they were two different horses.
“I am very excited to get him back into work and see what he has got under the bonnet.”
Ensby has prepared 88 starters this season so far. Throughout his career he has had two Group 3 starters and five in Listed class.
The 28-year-old holds the Lismore Cup highly as a target, especially given some disappointing past attempts.
“It’s one race that really frustrates me because I get a group of horses ready to go to it and then the wheels fall off when the gates open,” he said.
“I’ve had numerous goes at it and nothing has gone to plan ever.
“Same would probably be the case for the Beef Week Cup, to be honest.
“So hopefully we can change that this Friday.”
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