Horse Racing

Chance Bye – An Australian Racing Fairytale

Michael Tubman was broke and out of a job when he took the gamble of a lifetime borrowing money to buy a race horse. Incredibly, a decision that could have landed Tubman in a whole lot of debt and trouble was the move that turned his dead-end life around. Filly-phenomenon Chance Bye has embarked on a winning streak that is truly the stuff dreams are made of.

$15,000 is not a huge price for a race horse; however, for an unemployed horse trainer surviving on social security and odd jobs it is a rather large sum. Although it could be argued that it was pure luck, a random stroke of fate that led Michael Tubman to purchase filly Chance Bye with money he did not have, it seems there was also a moment of deep professional intuition. Having trained horses with reasonable success for years, Tubman clearly knows a thing or two about horses. Chance Bye – a play on ‘chance buy’ – who according to trainer and co-owner Tubman is ‘built like a brick shithouse’, had something about her that made her irresistible to a man desperate for a break.

The funding of project Chance Bye was provided by Tubman’s long-time friend Jack Knight, a concrete recycler in his seventies, who had previously owned horses which Tubman took a crack at training. Knight provided the money sight unseen and later, after meeting Chance Bye, suggested joint ownership rather than full reimbursement of his loan. Still, for all the intuition and goodwill in the world, no one – not even Tubman and Knight – would have predicted the events that followed.

Thus far Chance Bye remains unbeaten, having earned her thrilled connections an excess of $340,000 in the process. The two-year-old has taken the win in Australia’s prestigious Silver Slipper race and is now set to enter the STC Golden Slipper Stakes, fixing to win Tubman and Knight a seven-figure purse. While the winner of the Silver Slipper Stakes gains automatic entry into the Golden Slipper race, it has been quite a while since a horse managed to win both races in the same season. Luskin Star achieved this feat in 1977 and punters around Australia and the rest of the world are in heated debate whether the flying filly can truly put her stamp on Australian racing. Trainer, co-owner and regular jockey Kathy O’Hara are all positive that their miracle has a shot – and it would be the perfect happily ever after to a stunning fairy tale.