Bush Legends: Lou Luciani - the street-smart Collie kid with a ‘smell of success’

This is the story of a one-time Collie kid with a stinky school lunchbox who somehow conquered a fear of horses to rule WA racing. The son of an Italian migrant, Lou Luciani emerged from a ratbag childhood into a stunted career as a jockey and ultimately became the private racehorse trainer for prominent WA businessmen Sir Ernest Lee-Steere and Dallas Dempster. It took him to eight WA trainer’s premierships and two Perth Cup wins, and his longevity in the game will today give him the chance for a third victory in the great race. “I’ve had a lot of luck and been in the right place at the right time,” Luciani said. And an extraordinary ride it has been. Luciani’s family hails from the eastern Italian region of Le Marche, between the Apennine Mountains and the Adriatic Sea. His parents Mario and Linda moved to Beverley in WA’s Wheatbelt in 1952 and he was born there four years later. But they did not stay much longer as his mother was suffering post-natal depression and her doctor suggested a move to Collie where many other Italian families were living and it proved an inspired decision. “My parents were good, simple folks and it was probably the best life any kid could have,” he said. “Like most kids of migrants back in that era, we had nothing, but we wanted for nothing and Collie was the sort of place where you made your own fun. “We had tree houses, flying foxes and underground tunnels, getting buried underground and digging ourselves out. We were just being kids.” Luciani said watching his capable, hard-working father taught him plenty about the importance of his own ethic. He also learned many of his formative life’s lessons driving around the Collie streets in the back of a car driven by former Labor MP, Mick Murray. “By the time my eldest brother went off to uni and my next brother headed off to go shearing, their mates, including Mick, used to start looking after me from the time I was eight,” he explained. “It was a real upbringing, the s..t these guys would get up to. You’d be shooting ‘roos or rabbits, or we’d go to the Bunbury or Williams trots and I’d get in free because they thought they were my parents. “They’d be telling stories about some barmaid at the pub and other stories and my eyes would be wide open. There would be poaching and pinching, but it was all harmless fun and they were good people and genuine mentors.” Murray co-owns one of Luciani’s current gallopers, the aptly-named Hot Blooded. He said Luciani always showed the appetite to succeed. “We gave him a very high-class education,” Mr Murray laughed. “He’s got that bit of Collie blood and likes to jump a fence or two to catch a marron. He’s a person who holds his ground and knows when to give and take. “You don’t get to those positions without being sharp business-wise and being respectful and respected. To come through like he did was pleasing for our community.” Despite being academically talented, Luciani left home at the age of 14 to pursue a career as a jockey, a decision based on a fascination with the punt from the days when he would ride his bike to the TAB and ask an adult to place a 50c bet on a horse for him. But strangely, horses terrified him. “I loved them, but I was s..t-scared of them and had no confidence around them,” he said. “Then I started riding horses which had just been gelded and you’d learn to spring to the trot and I finally started to get the hang of it. I wasn’t much of a rider, but I was always a very good judge of how a horse was going. “A bloke once said to me the luckiest thing that ever happened was that I got heavy _ and it probably was because I was never going to make it as a jock.” Luciani, who became apprenticed to prominent Perth trainer Reg Treffone, recalled beating just one horse home in his first race ride in Narrogin. He recorded his first of about 600 wins aboard Treffone’s Aqua Show at Ascot eight months later at his 18th ride. “Nowadays they have 18 rides in their first month and whinge about it,” he said. Luciani remembered once wasting down from his natural riding weight of 52kg to 46kg, eating only salad for the week, running around Ascot wearing plastic bags and then wearing them in bed with the electric blanket on, and then on race day taking what he described as “the obligatory take-a-piss pill” with a sip of coffee. It was and still is for jockeys, a brutal lifestyle. Luciani lamented how modern racing lacked the “heart and soul” of yesteryear’s industry. But take him back to those days and there are yarns aplenty about racetrack stings and resulting money slings. In 1979, after a year honing his horse-training craft in England, Luciani took an offer from Lee-Steere, who was sharing a Stirling Highway office with Dempster, to head up his racing operations out of Limestone Park at Gingin. But the association ended abruptly after nearly three years following a freak fatal injury to a promising young galloper. “He said, ‘You’re nothing but a selfish little boy and you still haven’t apologised for killing my horse’,” Luciani recalled. “I just saw red and said, ‘If you don’t get off this place by the time I count to 10, I’ll drop you where you stand’.” But a savvy Dempster, before he successfully tendered for the Burswood Casino, saw opportunity in Luciani and sent him five of his fillies and the pair later agreed on a lucrative private arrangement which lasted a decade. It led to far headier times than in Luciani’s modest youth. “Dallas was sensational, we only ever had one blue,” he said, adding that Dempster was a big fan of a feed at Pizza Hut. “It was fairytale stuff and I’d have tickets to everything. The Hopman Cup would come to town and I’d be there in the box behind Steffi Graf eating strawberries, jam and cream, and salmon and capers for lunch _ and none of us even liked tennis. “We’d get a box at the footy all the time and all the shows and concerts ... anything. I’d even get Dallas’ parking spot when he was away. “We lived it and loved it and we were a good combination - Dallas was a clean-skin and I don’t know how street-smart he was as far as dealing with gangsters was concerned, while I was from the f...ing Bronx!” Luciani also had some well-publicised stoushes with former politician and WA Turf Club chairman Wilson Tuckey, one when he said he was ashamed of the club for not having any Italian flags, pizzas or spaghetti on course on Roma Cup day. It led to the annual day becoming what is now an Italian extravaganza. Reflecting on it reminded him of his school days when his mother would pack an acutely aromatic lunch box filled with frittata, mortadella and salami. “The Aussie kids would have their Vegemite sandwiches and laughing at us because our lunch box would smell like high heaven,” he said. “The same kids are now lining up at The Re Store paying $16 for a Mediterranean roll with the same stuff in it.” It is fitting Luciani’s hopes of a third Perth Cup win rest with his gelding Marocchino, named after a type of coffee created in the Italian city of Alessandria. It consists of a shot of espresso, cocoa powder and milk froth and Luciani is banking on his Marocchino, who he said was the “quirkiest” horse he had trained, having plenty of bubble in the big race, too. “He’s a weirdo, you can’t catch him,” he said. “Even his dam is blind in one eye. I’ve come from nothing, the horse has come from nothing and that’s what the industry is. If that horse can win it would be a bit special.” Mr Luciani’s children are also into racing for different reasons. His son Dion was a former successful jockey and now trainer, while his daughter Jessica loves “punting and glamming up”.