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By Greg Prichard

Bill Butler loves a good Cinderella story, so when he won a slot in The Kosciuszko and liked the way Golden Point’s trainer Stirling Osland talked about the horse, he happily teamed up with them for the $2 million race at Royal Randwick on October 15.

“I tried for a couple of others first, but the obvious top horses like It’s Me went pretty quickly,“ said Butler.

Golden Point with trainer Stirling Osland after winning at Rosehill Gardens. Image by Bradley Photographers

“I thought it looked a pretty open race after about the first four you would look at anyway, so I spoke to a mate in Melbourne who’s right into his racing and he was throwing a few horses at me.

“But the more I looked into it, Golden Point kept standing out to me.

"He had good form and I was looking for a bit of a progressive horse and I like a bit of a rags-to-riches story, a battler winning.

“I know they’re all country trainers, but there are some with much bigger stables than others. I thought, ‘I’ll give Stirling Osland a ring’, and when I spoke to him he seemed like a good country bloke.

“I started getting pretty keen and I reached out to the owners from there. Then I spoke to my mate again and he said, ‘Go for it, lock him in’. So I did.”

Among the 13 horses so far chosen in what will be a 14-horse field, the Armidale-trained Golden Point is at $26 with TAB.

Part of that may be to do with the fact that – unlike nearly all of the others in the race - the lightly-raced five-year-old gelding has no Country Championships or Kosciuszko form and certainly no Listed or Group race form like a few of them.

But he has some great TAB Highway Handicap form from early this year against horses like Commando Hunt, which is in The Kosciuszko field, and Shelby SixtySix, which subsequently won a Group One race.

And the only reason he didn’t compete in the Country Championships was that he wasn’t eligible after arriving at Osland’s stable from Victoria, where he was previously trained, after the deadline had passed.

First-up this campaign, Golden Point beat Anethole into third place in a 1200m race at Tamworth on August 29. Anethole, trained by Cody Morgan, hasn’t got a run in The Kosciuszko at this stage but is an $11 chance in the betting.

“My bloke didn’t have the best lead-in to that race either,” Osland said. “We’d missed two trials that were washed out, so we had to try to make up the work at home.

“He looked pretty good in winning and probably had a lot of improvement in him as well. His coat was still not quite right.

Kosciuszko slot winner Bill Butler and son Huxley.

“He’s definitely overs in the betting for The Kosciuszko. Just because he hasn’t run in a Country Championships or a Kosciuszko before doesn’t mean he’s not a Kosciuszko horse.”

Butler, who lives on a property at Parkesbourne, near Goulburn, and is establishing a side business rearing greyhounds whilst taking long-service leave from his job as a public servant, agreed wholeheartedly with Osland.

“I certainly think he’s over the odds,” Butler said. “You might second-guess yourself a bit occasionally when you see the market, but I come back to the horse’s form and I’m happy to have him running for me.

“I love racing and I’ve always bought tickets in The Kosciuszko slot draw. I had a win on the punt and bought $500 worth on the TAB App, but I forgot about the slot draw because I was busy with a few other things at the time.

“Then I got an email from Racing NSW and I thought, ‘What’s this about? Maybe it’s about the tickets’. I found out I’d won a slot and I went, ‘Far out, righto, beautiful’.

“I follow it all and I listen to the Big Sports Breakfast every morning and enjoy all of that. I’m really looking forward to going to The Kosciuszko. My wife Kaylah and I are going to make a weekend of it. She’s already looking for a new dress.

“I think finishing anywhere in the top five or six would be awesome. To win it, that would be amazing.”

Golden Point was entered for a race at Canterbury on Wednesday, but Osland scratched him after it drew wide. He will have his final lead-up run at Hawkesbury on Thursday.