Dusty’s delight: Horse with superstar connections steals the Blue Diamond show

The publicity-shy triple premiership player had turned out to support his friend, part-owner and former AFL star Michael Gardiner. The Brownlow medallist is also godfather of one of Gardiner’s children.

“It’s unlike Dustin to come out with a big crowd,” Gardiner said after the race. “He must have sensed something.

“He senses the big occasions, that bloke. So maybe it was a good omen that he was coming along today. Yellow and black colours, too.”

While Martin declined to speak, an ecstatic Gardiner was on a high. This was a victory, he said, about mates and family.

Gardiner has been close friends with trainer Clinton McDonald for more than 20 years. The winning filly, Streisand, wore his grandfather’s colours.

“My grandfather raced horses for many years,” Gardiner said. “He had a Newmarket Handicap winner – Heron Bridge back in ’84.

“I always tell the boys to put the horses in the colours, because they’re group 1-winning colours.

“So, you know, it’s extra special for the family to see the colours with another group 1.”

While Gardiner turns to McDonald to train his horses, the pair always turn to Ben and Jamie Melham to ride them.

“The Melhams ride our horses,” Gardiner said. “They always do a very good job, and we’re always happy to have either one of them on and there’s no exception to that.”

Winning the Blue Diamond has been a McDonald family tradition.

“My grandfather won it with Manikato. My father won it with Courtza, and I’ve won it twice,” McDonald said.

“So it’s a great feather in the cap for my staff, my track riders, [bloodstock agent] Shane McGrath and myself.

“To be able to buy two fillies at, I think, $38,000 (for 2024 winner Hayasugi) and $100,000 (for Streisand), and win the second best two-year-old race in Australia, it means a lot.”

McDonald said the victory had been a welcome reward after a tough 12 months.

“It has been ordinary,” he said. “Mum died last year, and I got sick [with broken ribs and a punctured lung], and that was a terrible six weeks.

“The staff have done a good job keeping everything running, my daughter [Ali] and my son [Harry] and everyone at home, and my wife [Virginia] was amazing looking after me. So there’s been a lot involved to get to this point.”

For the Melhams, they have another group 1 trophy on their mantle piece, Ben adding to the Blue Diamond that Jamie won in 2024 on Hayasugi for McDonald.

But what was her husband’s first Diamond could easily have been her second.

The champion hoop rode Streisand to victory at her last start, but opted to ride Guest House on Saturday, handing the ride to Ben.

“We thought she’d win the other day, Jamie gave her a lovely ride,” Ben said.

“Anyway, if I can’t ride them, I’m happy to see her riding them and vice versa, so just great to get a group 1 winner for Clinton. We work well as a team and the loyal owners.”

McDonald hugged Gardiner after the race, and praised Martin for his support.

“There’s nothing better, you know, to be with your mates,” he said.

Saturday’s was the biggest Blue Diamond crowd in 20 years, with more than 13,000 race fans flocking to the course.

Clinton McDonald fell down steps and almost died. Now he aims to win $2m

Trainer Clinton McDonald still has moments when he finds it difficult to breathe.

He likens the symptoms after a busy morning around his Cranbourne stables to dealing with early onset emphysema.

The tiredness, he says, is the lingering aftermath of a heavy fall during last year’s Melbourne Cup carnival. He slipped down three steps, broke four ribs and punctured a lung, spending five days in ICU.

McDonald says he feared he was going to die, surrounded by doctors and nurses in a hospital room as his heart faltered under the strain. He says he contemplated the end when the concerned medics pulled out a defibrillator.

But four months on, McDonald is far from feeling sorry for himself. Quite the opposite. His says the accident has re-affirmed his long-held belief that you have to live for the moment.

That next big moment arrives at 4pm on Saturday when his two-year-old filly Streisand starts fifth favourite in the $2 million Blue Diamond Stakes at Caulfield.

If Streisand can capture the 1200-metre race, handing McDonald his second Blue Diamond in three years, following Hayasugi’s victory in 2024, the trainer says he will appreciate the moment. He just won’t celebrate with a cigarette.

“I haven’t smoked since the accident,” he says.

“It’s crazy to think that something so simple could have caused so much damage. I was in hospital for a long time and had a lot of issues, and complications, really, that they had to sort of get on top of.

“People don’t realise how bad it was from something so small. I slipped down… stairs just at my front office.

“I was just going in to get some papers for a steward, and both of my feet just went from underneath me and I went up in the air, and I just came crashing down on my side.”

McDonald says he suffered compound fractures to four ribs, two of which were broken in two places. One of those broken bones pierced his lung.

“I was in ICU for five days, five or six days, and then about four days later, I discharged myself, thinking I was OK,” he says.

“I went home, and my lungs started filling up with blood and fluid, so I had to go back, and then they had to operate, get all the stuff out because I couldn’t breathe. And then I ended up with a staph infection.

“The first week I was there, I thought I was going to die. I had a heart issue. It was just really weird.”

While McDonald, 50, was laid up and fighting to recover, his 30-year-old daughter and assistant trainer Ali Kennedy-McDonald was looking after the stables.

She had a frustrating start, running second with Tales Of Time in the Maribyrnong Plate on Melbourne Cup day, and a second four days later with Streisand in the Inglis Banner on Champions Day.

“I was dying to get a winner, and they kept running short-half head seconds,” McDonald says.

Streisand, so named because she is out of a mare called Zouper Star, bounced back from her narrow spring defeat to become a force during this Melbourne autumn carnival.

She finished fifth in the Blue Diamond preview over 1000m on January 24, running the fastest last 200m for the meeting, before winning the Blue Diamond prelude for fillies over 1100m on February 7.

“Obviously, it was planned for this to be her grand final,” McDonald says. “It’s been a faultless preparation.”

The trainer says the Magnus filly, to be ridden by Ben Melham, is “very similar” to his 2024 Diamond winner.

“Hayasugi never won by a big margin. She was very workmanlike, very professional. This filly is exactly the same,” he says. “And we’ve added blinkers on Saturday, just to give us that extra spark.

“We are confident going in, we think she’s a top three finisher, for sure, on what she has shown us.”

While his stable has enjoyed a good run, heading to Caulfield on Saturday with two leading chances – Rosberg and Streisand – McDonald, too, says he feels “back to normal”.

“It took me a while,” he says. “I still run out of breath a bit. I don’t think my lung has fully recovered, but I’d say it’s probably 85 per cent – something like that.

“I just get tired really quick because my lung was only sort of half working on my left side.”

McDonald says the accident taught him that “tomorrow is never promised”.

“I just think you’ve got to appreciate things more – when you get a win or get a nice horse, or whatever, just enjoy it because you never know what’s around the corner,” he said.

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