Natalie Young is a multiple group 1-winning trainer with a bucket list.
She has ticked off Royal Ascot, the Kentucky Derby and even the Darwin Cup.
Natalie Young has two group 1 runners at Caulfield on Saturday – Vianarra and Craig.Credit: Racing Photos
Next on her radar is Japan. And if that doesn’t work, she will settle for Broome. She loves the little cups.
The main thing, though, is to keep busy.
“If having breast cancer teaches you anything, it is that life is short,” she says.
Young is sitting in Freddie’s Kitchen, a coffee shop in Carrum on the edge of Port Phillip Bay. She has just arrived from her morning shift at the Cranbourne stables she runs with partner and father of her two children, Trent Busuttin.
Wearing black activewear and a black zip-up vest, she has a thick Kiwi accent and her eyes are a piercing blue. This is Young’s favourite time of year. She calls the spring carnival racing’s version of the Olympics, and she is dreaming of more success.
“I really want to win a Guineas,” she says. “A Guineas, a Cox Plate and obviously a Melbourne Cup.”
Young trains with her partner Trent Busuttin at Cranbourne.Credit: Getty Images
Her first wish will be a monumental task. The stable’s three-year-old colt Vianarra, which has an all-female ownership group, is a rated a 200-1 outsider in the group 1 Caulfield Guineas this Saturday.
They have a greater chance of winning the group 1 Toorak Handicap later in the day with their oddly named UK import Craig, a “little dude” who is rated 9-1.
While neither runner will top the form experts’ selections, Young has a habit of defying the odds.
Her life was tipped on its head in 2021. She was staying on the Gold Coast and racing horses during a six-week stint away from home, and felt a lump in her breast. It still irks her that she waited until she returned to Victoria before organising a doctor’s appointment.
“I probably left it a little bit late,” she says. “Sometimes in six weeks it can double in size.
“Initially, I was not really going to tell the children, but then I thought, ‘that’s probably not a good idea’, because they might get a bit of a fright when they walk in and I’m looking like Sinead O’Connor.
Sierra Sue won the group 1 Futurity Stakes in 2022 for Busuttin and Young.Credit: Racing Photos
“I think you sort of need to let your family know so they can sort of help support you.
“They were OK with it. My son was actually really sweet. He came up to me and said he wanted to stop playing footy on a Sunday morning so I could rest.
“I thought that was quite sweet. I was like, ‘no, because I like watching you play footy’.”
Rather than retreat after the diagnosis, Young attacked her work – a tireless ethic she says she inherited from her mother, Corinna, a former private horse trainer in Matamata who recently passed away. Her father, Graeme, was a farrier.
Young dealt with radiation, had an operation and underwent chemotherapy. She lost her hair and her food tasted like metal because of the chemicals coursing through her body. And all the time she kept training horses.
“I wandered around looking like death warmed up,” she says, while sipping her coffee.
Cranbourne trainer Trent Busuttin.Credit: Racing Photos
“I probably scared my staff more than anything. But you just had to soldier through it, basically. It was good for me – I had to get up and keep moving.
“It is very easy when you’re sick to just not get out of bed. And that’s not … I’m not that kind of person.
“I was fortunate enough to have all the horses to focus on, yeah, and keep me positive.”
Winners helped. During that period, Busuttin and Young snared three group 1 victories – their plucky mare Sierra Sue won the Rupert Clarke and Futurity Stakes at Caulfield, while staying filly Glint Of Hope won the 2022 South Australian Oaks.
Young at Caulfield trackwork in the lead up to the 2024 Guineas.Credit: Getty Images
“Glint Of Hope was a highlight for me because my mum was with me in Adelaide,” she says.
Incredibly, as Young, 46, looks back on her battle with cancer, she simply refers to it as an “inconvenience”.
“I mean, at the time it was hard because you’re going through chemo, and you’re not feeling great,” she says. “But I was fortunate enough to have the horses where I was focused on being positive, having to get up every morning, keep moving, and go to work every morning.”
Despite her pragmatic approach, Young had to make concessions. She scaled back her race-day outings, but never lost her love of the occasion.
“I always like dressing up because when I’m in the stable, I’m in active wear, and I’m covered in horse shit most of the time,” she says.
“So it’s nice. It makes you feel like a woman, dressing up. The latest fashion is great, so you can have a bit of fun with it.”
Young had to make adjustments while undergoing treatment.
“You don’t have to worry about waxing your legs and stuff like that when you go through chemo,” she says.
“You can wear wigs, but it always makes you a little bit self-conscious because you’re a bit more paranoid.
“You have got to learn how to put on magnetic eyelashes and all that, which was a pain in the arse, but you deal with it. You have to – there’s no other choice.
“You can either curl up in a hole and not go out anywhere, or you just make the best of a bad situation.”
Busuttin and Young have always made the most of their opportunities.
They met as teenagers on a working holiday in Singapore during the late 1990s – she was a track rider who also took racing photos, and he was helping his trainer-father Paddy.
They returned to New Zealand during the 2000s, started a training partnership of their own, started a family, and then moved to Australia to chase bigger prizemoney in 2016.
It was an ambitious move. Young landed in Melbourne first, with two children under six – Ben and Zara – a nanny, two horses and two huskies. Busuttin followed a month later with another 20 horses.
“I had a girl, Megan, that came over with us, who’d never been a nanny, and had worked on a farm for my sister, who ended up living with us for two years, helping us out,” Young says.
They did not take long to acclimatise. They landed their first winner with their third runner – Old Town Road at Cranbourne – and the stable grew from strength to strength. They now have about 80 horses in work.
While they enjoy a “very equal partnership”, Young stands out on-track. She wears her emotions on her sleeve.
She barracked so hard during Melbourne Cup week last year that, by the end of it, she could barely speak – the stable had three winners from 12 runners across four days, including Muramasa in the group 3 Queen Elizabeth Stakes (over 2600 metres).
She was back in full voice at Flemington last Saturday. The stable celebrated two winners, including Derby hopeful Keeneland, and when asked post-race whether she had backed their surprise $75 winner Uncle Bryn, Young declared they would be drinking Dom Perignon that night.
There has been good reason to celebrate. Young has been cancer-free from the start of 2023. She was given the all-clear during her latest half-yearly check-up a couple of months ago.
“It is always a relief when they know there’s no cause for concern or anything,” she says. “You never know – it can come back. But it’s not something I dwell on. It’s not something I really think about.
“It’s a chapter in my life that I am probably proud of myself for actually being so strong, and kicking arse on the track.”
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