"It's better to have tried and failed than not tried at all": Pagan

8 months ago

Denis Pagan hopes picking the brains of some of the country's finest horsemen will equip him with the tools required to become a successful trainer.

At 71, the two-time premiership coach is having a crack at training because of his long-standing love of horses and racing.

Pagan, who is currently applying for his pre-trainers licence, is under no illusions about the enormity of the task, but says, "it's better to have tried and failed than not tried at all".

"I may not cut the mustard. I've got four horses, I'll probably buy one more, and I only want to train my own horses at this stage," Pagan told SEN's KB And The Doc.

"I just want to have a crack at it. I've always had a hidden desire to train horses one day.

"I was going up looking at some horses with (trainer) Troy Corstens and he said, 'You've got to give it a crack, son'. And I thought to myself, 'You know what, he's right, I want to do that'. If I can do it, terrific.

"I've been going down to Flemington five mornings a week for the past 10 months, working in the stables, tacking horses, saddling them, washing them, then going out into the middle and listening to people like David and Ben Hayes, Peter Snowden and Tony McEvoy.

"There's some real pearls of wisdom out there and if you can't learn listening to those blokes, you'd be a simpleton. I'm trying to do as much as I possibly can to get it right."

Pagan, who enjoyed premiership glory with North Melbourne in 1996 and 1999, likened the art of training to that of footy coaching.

"I reckon coaching football is not an exact science, and I reckon training racehorses is exactly the same thing; I think they're both art forms, you’ve got to know what to do at the right time and when it needs to be done. Sometimes you've got to think outside the square," he said.

"I don't want to me a Melbourne Cup-winning trainer, I just want to have a runner at Flemington."

Pagan has bred and raced horses with varying success for a number of years, with Throw The King – a Listed placegetter – his best-performed runner.

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