Ken Casellas | Photo: PACEPIX
Octogenarian owner Barrie Devereux has fond memories of his first winner 59 years ago, when Silver Fields was successful at Williams, and he is delighted with the burst of wonderful form of nine-year-old Regal Cheval, who has notched three metro-class wins from his past seven starts.
“I reckon I have won about 200 races,” said the 83-year-old Devereux after Gary Hall Jnr had driven $8.30 chance Regal Cheval to a thrilling head victory over The Miki Taker ($4.60) and the $3 favourite Hector in the $23,000 Aaron Bain Racing And Summit Bloodstock Pace at Gloucester Park on Friday night.
While Devereux has enjoyed a lifetime involvement in harness racing, he is probably best known as The Chicken Man, who many years ago started his business as a breeder of chickens with just a dozen chooks.
He quickly developed his business into a farm at Maddington with a quarter of a million chickens before he branched out with 40,000 chooks at a farm in Broome in 1993.
Don Harper, father of current trainer-reinsman Lindsay Harper and grandfather of successful reinsmen Donald and Kyle Harper, drove Silver Court in a Qualifying Stakes at Gloucester Park on June 22, 1967 to give Devereux his first city winner.
“Then I had the biggest night in harness racing when Arden Meadow won the WA Derby in 1986,” he said. “Like A Tiger was another of my best pacers who won 18 races and was the Horse of the Year in the early 1990s.”
Devereux was interested in the Victorian-bred Regal Cheval and bought him for $10,000 in April 2021 after the gelding had won ten races in Victoria.
Regal Cheval has been a capable and honest performer for Devereux, with his 83 starts in Western Australia producing six wins, 18 placings and $120,550 in prizemoney, taking his career earnings to $190,558 from 16 wins, 37 placings from 138 starts.
On Friday night Regal Cheval revealed his typical sparkling gate speed from the No. 4 barrier to dash straight to the front. He held out early challenges for the lead from Lucca ($34) and Star Casino ($5.50) and paced strongly in front after a fast lead time of 36.2sec.
“It was excellent that he withstood the pressure from Lucca and held on to win,” said Hall. “Lucca was pulling in the breeze but that didn’t bother Regal Cheval, who was looking around in the infield.”