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It is a mark of David Russo's passion that only the unsuspecting and good mate Michael Hawkes will be standing next to him if Entirely Platinum wins the Epsom Handicap at Randwick on Saturday.
If, not when, Russo wins a group 1 there is certainly going to be an outpouring joy. Six placings – five seconds by a head or less – have given Russo that group 1 feeling only to ripped back to reality.
"You learn you can't expect to win any race but you can always hope," Russo said.
Entirely Platinum has twice raised Russo's hopes in group 1s in Melbourne this spring but it was his half-brother Polish Knight, also part-owned by Russo, which gave Hawkes' wife Clare a first-hand feel of Russo's passion.
It was a right hand on the jaw as Polish Knight charged to the front in the 2012 AJC Derby, only to be grabbed by Ethiopia.
"I thought it had won," Russo remembers. "I got a bit excited."
"He was going off and he just punched me by accident," Clare Hawkes said. "I make sure I'm nowhere near him during a race now, I put Michael between him and me. They're good mates and can work it out if he hits him."
It would have been interesting to see how Russo responded to his couple of winners in the gig at Lithgow and Richmond, when he was a trotting trainer-driver as a young bloke. The fruit and veg man from the markets progressed from there to owning winners at Harold Park then took a deep breath and moved into the thoroughbred world.
He decided to try and have a horse trained by John Hawkes. These were the days of Crown Lodge when Hawkes trained for the Inghams and Russo remembers what he had to do to get a horse in the stable.
"John didn't take too many outside horses and I had to fill out a form with its breeding and wait to see if I was accepted – fortunately it was," Russo said.
It started an association with the Hawkes stable and led to a friendship with Michael. It has become so strong that Hawkes was his best man, whispering to him at the end of the wedding ceremony: "there's your group 1".
But Russo would like a group 1 success on the track. It's a shared goal for him and Hawkes that could be fulfilled by Entirely Platinum on Saturday.
"We are just great mates and it would be special to see David get a group 1 because he is so passionate about racing. It doesn't matter if it is Nowra, Kembla or Randwick in a group 1 he gets excited when his horses run," Hawkes said.
"Group 1s, he gets particularly nervous and I just have to sit there [and] try to calm him down before the race."
By own admission Russo would love to win a big one. "I don't know what I will do," he said. "It is what everyone dreams of."
Russo owns a share in Entirely Platinum after owning a series of horses, including Stratford, which raced in his maroon and yellow colours. He used to source his own stock but leaves it up to John Hawkes and sons Michael and Wayne these days.
"I go to all the sales and just walking around with John you are learning. I'm looking for different things in horses now because of him," Russo said. "He tells me what I should be in and I take shares in them.
"Instead owning the lot of a cheaper ones, I'm in a horse like Entirely Platinum, which cost around $460,000 in New Zealand. Racing in a group is much more fun when you get better horses and get days like this [on Saturday]."
The form reads well for Entirely Platinum, which was beaten an eyelash in the Memsie Stakes before doing a lot of work before he was collared late in the Makybe Diva Stakes when third behind Fawkner and Rising Romance.
"He is still an underrated horse that has natural speed," Hawkes said. "He could have won either of those group 1s in Melbourne with a little luck. This race has always been his target and he gets here in form. I think he still a little under the radar and he is going to roll even from the draw and put himself there in the race."
Russo can't wait for Saturday.
"I have a runner in the Epsom, it's worth $1 million, you think I'm not excited," he said. "We have been so close so many times in these group 1 races.
"He has run a couple of great races in Melbourne and comes to Sydney with a chance of winning. I think he is capable of winning and [I'm] hoping."
