Legend B. J. Smith Finally Retires - Balmerino seems a lifetime ago!

[Chief Stipe]

Trainer Brian ‘BJ' Smith retires after legendary career

www.racenet.com.au

Https://bitofayarn.com

Charismatic trainer Brian ‘BJ' Smith has been all over the world but he still reckons Brisbane's stables are the best.

The Brisbane racing community will farewell Smith when he officially retires at the end of this month, just a few days shy of his 84th birthday.

He will still take care of two or three horses for his wife Emma but when his trainer's licence expires on July 31, you'll more than likely find Smith swinging a club at Nudgee golf course in Brisbane's northern suburbs rather than working at the stables.

"I'm nearly 84 and I've been everywhere around the world a couple of times but I just don't want to do it anymore," Smith told Racenet at a Brisbane Racing Club luncheon held in his honour at Doomben on Saturday.

"I want to enjoy a bit of life where I don't have to wake up and worry about what work I need to do."

The BRC function also paid tribute to Jim Roberts, a Brisbane track manager who will soon retire after 38 years of service.

Top trainers such as Kelly Schweida, Chris and Corey Munce, Barry Lockwood and Tony Gollan all took time out from their busy Saturday schedule to drop in at the lunch for Smith, a quick-witted character who started his training career in his native New Zealand more than 50 years ago before eventually moving to the Sunshine State.

He has been all over the globe but still rates Brisbane's stables as being like a five-star hotel for horses, with Sydney co-trainers Richard and Will Freedman trusting Smith to look after their prized gallopers during countless Queensland winter carnivals.

"I haven't seen better," Smith said about Brisbane's equine facilities.

"I've stabled a lot of horses for the Freedmans over the years and they all come up and win.

"They just settle in overnight, they think it's a farmyard."

Champion New Zealand racehorse Balmerino, ridden by Graeme Boyd on the beach at Coffs Harbour in 1977 as he was being prepared for an overseas campaign. Picture: Supplied

Smith had some classy gallopers at the peak of his powers, including Balmerino, Circles Of Gold and Bikkie Tin Blues.

Balmerino came to Australia in 1976 as New Zealand's champion three-year-old and the following year he ran second to Alleged in the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

"It wasn't a fair dinkum race, my horse should've won," Smith said about Balmerino, who competed in New Zealand, Australia, England, the US, France and Italy.

"He won 12 months of the year, nowadays trainers set their horses for a race.

"But he won every month of the calendar year as a three-year-old in New Zealand, Sydney and up here (in Brisbane). Fourteen wins in 12 months

In total, Balmerino delivered 22 victories and 13 placings from 47 starts before he had a successful breeding career in New Zealand. The champion galloper died in 1996.

"I was lucky enough to get his son Kessem," Smith said.

"He didn't get his chance to show how good he was because he got hit in the eye by a plate after he won the Hong Kong Cup (in 1990)."

Smith, who once had an audience with the Pope at the Vatican in the early 1960s, vividly remembers visiting the famous Champs-Elysees in Paris with a mate years before he became a trainer.

"It felt like I got a bolt of lightning down my spine, I couldn't move," he recalled.

"I said to my mate ‘I must have had a vision, I must be coming back to win that race' (the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe).

"That was in my head when I got Balmerino to the race as a trainer years later. I'm not religious but I believe in fate."