The inside story of Gary Hall Sr's extraordinary rise to harness racing greatness

Gary Hall Sr’s organic pathway to harness racing greatness is a tale for the ages.

From an almost accidental young fan with no background in the code - but who would soon develop a passion for the punt - to top-level driver and ultimately champion trainer, Hall Sr’s ascension to the sport’s pinnacle of the code was confirmed recently when he was honoured with Harness Racing Australia’s Distinguished Service Award.

The award acknowledging “important achievement, substantive effort, enterprise, endeavour, creativity and professional excellence on a National or State basis over a long period of time” perfectly encapsulates Hall Sr’s contribution and prompted his own pause for reflection.

In the past four decades, he has amassed 3560 career training wins - the most ever by a WA trainer and nearly 1000 more than his closest rival. His record includes a staggering 61 Group 1 wins.

“I wasn’t expecting it … it came as a total shock,” Hall Sr told Racing WA. “In the early days, I was just hoping to win a race.”

Hall Sr’s early foundations for his sterling career in harness racing date back to his childhood days when he would sneak a ride or two on the local bread and milk cart horse around his Mount Lawley home.

“It was then that I fell in love with horses,” he said. “I loved the smell of them and I loved him.”

But it was during one of his regular bicycle rides up to his local pinball parlour where he met a mate who was counting a fistful of money he had won on the trots that first put the sport on his radar. It led to his own first wager of five shillings soon after, which he vividly remembered being on a Don Harper-trained horse and he collected “three pound, 17 and six”.

After building up a small bank in the ensuing weeks, he decided to join his mate among the 20,000 people at Gloucester Park, evading a security guard who was patrolling the perimeter of the venue to jump the fence in his fleecy pyjamas and dressing gown. Two 10-pound bets with on-course bookmakers on a horse named Prince Land at 66/1 landed a veritable fortune and the young Hall Sr’s course in the sport was firmly set.

“When they were 50 yards out, he was about seventh with no chance of winning, but the field just opened up and he went through and won,” he recalled.

“I had 1320 pounds stuffed in my gown and I went home and went to sleep on the front veranda. Mum came out in the morning and found me with all the money and went and got Dad and they thought I’d stolen it all.

“So, I had to come clean and then they ended up coming to the trots with me.”

Hall Sr’s horsemanship journey then started in the stables of local identity Arthur “Buck” Jones and soon after, he bought his first pacer named Mucka Boy. He had never driven a horse in fast-work when he engaged in his first trial at Gloucester Park and it was an experience he would never forget.

“I was absolutely shi..ing myself,” he laughed.

Hall Sr basically used Mucka Boy to teach himself to train, jogging him around fire breaks. They were humble beginnings that would underpin an extraordinary career.

He has won three Inter Dominion championships a record 13 WA Pacing Cups, nine Fremantle Cups and six WA Derbys. He has also trained five million-dollar earners – WA cult hero Im Themightyquinn ($4,567,546), Chicago Bull ($2,417,890), The Falcon Strike ($1,224,094), Beaudiene Boaz ($1,256,587) and My Hard Copy ($1,271592).

He rated Im Themightyquinn’s slashing last-to-first 2012 Inter Dominion victory at Gloucester Park, a year after winning the same title after Smoken Up was disqualified because of a positive swab, as his crowning moment in the sport.

“Honestly, the crowd that night … it was the first time I’d ever really felt loved by the people,” he said. “Everyone wanted a piece of Im Themightyquinn, the WA public love a champion they can look up to.”

Inducted into the WA Racing Hall of Fame in 2014, Hall Sr admitted he had been a much better trainer than a driver, believing his on-track guidance of his horses had been badly affected by a desperation to win for the money.

“If you look at my record driving in a lot of WA Pacing Cups and Fremantle Cups, there were a lot of seconds,” he said. “I couldn’t win them because I used to get itchy. I had four kids I needed to feed and I needed to win more than anything and I couldn’t get it done.”

Hall Sr joins several other WA harness racing luminaries to have earned HRA’s Distinguished Service Award including inaugural recipient Fred Kersley Jr in 1993, Ray Holloway, Chris Lewis, Chris Pye, Gary Papadopoulos, Mick Lombardo, Ross Pyke, the Kersley and Tindale families, Garry Scott, Rob Bovell, Milton James, Lou Austin and current Gloucester Park president John Burt.

He said he was humbled to be honoured among that group, particularly alongside his long-time idol, Kersley. He said he had named his son Gary Hall Jr because he wanted him to be just like Kersley, who also shares his father’s name.

“Fred came up to me a few weeks ago and said, ‘You’re the best trainer ever in WA’,” he explained.

“He said he’d won two WA Pacing Cups and had struggled like hell to win them and pointed out that I’ve won 13. When I started at the trots, he was just my idol, particularly in the way he used to train horses.

“I used to go down there and stand and watch from start to finish when he would put one in the cart. I’d watch how he’d stand back and have a look and he’d always take about five minutes just looking over the horse and checking everything out.

“His attention to detail was second-to-none and I just dreamed about being as good as him. It’s the reason I named Junior, Junior, hoping he would be a great driver one day and hoping I could be a great trainer … and that’s how it’s played out.”

He said the partnership with his son had triggered a dramatic momentum shift in his fortunes.

“I don’t think I could have done what I’ve done without Junior,” he said.

“Once he came along, I realised how much better than me he was and once I started putting him on, my whole life changed. He probably owes a lot of his success to me, but I owe most of my success to him, too.

“He’s a superstar driver. Horses just go well for him and he makes something out of nothing.”

Hall Jr is set to feature in the prestigious World Drivers’ Championship, which will be held in New Zealand for the first time from November 2 to 11.

Gloucester Park president John Burt said acknowledged Hall Sr’s HRA award, saying he had forged a significant place in WA’s harness racing history.

“Gary’s contribution to the industry is immeasurable … statistics do not do him justice,” Burt said.

“His partnership with Gary Jr and Im Themightyquinn captured the imagination of harness fans everywhere and a large part of that was because of Senior. He keeps on threatening to retire, let’s hope it’s not for a while longer.”

Hall Sr believed the upcoming Nullarbor slot race at Gloucester Park on April 25 would be “one of the best races ever seen in WA”. He hoped harness racing in WA, which he described as an important family-based industry, would thrive well into the future

“It hasn’t got the high profile like the gallops, but it’s so exciting to watch and there is just something about it,” he said. “I just love it and I’ll probably keep doing it until I die.”

Steve Butler