Priscott has a lifelong involvement in racing and was introduced to the sport through his father, Bruce. Priscott got a taste of topflight success at an early age when strapping his father\u2019s smart stayer Il Tempo. <\/p>\n
\u201cHis father, Bruce, was a butcher and trainer,\u201d Williams said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey had that great horse Il Tempo before I knew Robert. He won two Wellington Cups and it should have been two Auckland Cups. <\/p>\n
\u201cRobert was his strapper when he went to Australia. He was a red-hot favourite for the Melbourne Cup and they think he did a suspensory before he raced over there. He went over in a boat in those days.\u201d <\/p>\n
Priscott followed in his father\u2019s footsteps and became a trainer, and he tasted plenty of early success. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I went to Waikato Stud, I got to really know him a lot through Graeme Sanders because my father had horses with Graeme Sanders,\u201d Williams said. <\/p>\n
\u201cRobert never had more than 30 horses, but he had some good ones, and Red Tempo was one of his early good horses.\u201d <\/p>\n
Red Tempo was victorious in the Gr.2 Great Northern Guineas (1600m) and Listed Ryder Stakes (1200m) in New Zealand before continuing his career in Australia where he won the Gr.1 Newmarket Handicap (1200m) and Gr.1 Futurity Stakes (1400m). <\/p>\n
\u201cHe won so many Group races for us with a small team,\u201d Williams said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe had so many good horses together in the Terry Jarvis (former The Oaks Stud owner) days. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe bought Buzz Lightyear and I had just started at The Oaks with Terry Jarvis. Buzz Lightyear won at Te Rapa in his first start. I talked Terry into buying him off Robert, who was always a seller. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe (Priscott) had another good two-year-old he had bought that year called Quorum. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe two of them went down for the Magic Millions (Listed, 1200m) at Trentham. We had this secret track gallop at Te Rapa on the Tuesday morning and Buzz Lightyear would have beaten Quorum by about eight lengths. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe went to Trentham feeling very good about life and Chris Munce rode Quorum and got up and won, and Buzz Lightyear didn\u2019t travel well, had a bad night, and ran a very plain race. <\/p>\n
\u201cRobert got Quorum sold after that. Terry Jarvis, who was my boss at the time, raced Buzz Lightyear and he was the best horse by a mile. He went on and won the 2000 Guineas (Gr.1, 1600m), Levin Classic (Gr.1, 1600m) and went to Australia and ran second or third behind Pins in the Caulfield Guineas (Gr.1, 1600m). He was a great horse. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of great moments, it is the end of an era.\u201d <\/p>\n
Williams said Priscott was a down-to-earth family man, and his loss will be felt by many in the industry. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe was very proud of Matt and Mel (children),\u201d Williams said. <\/p>\n
\u201cMelanie worked for me here at The Oaks for three or four years and then she went off to the world of insurance. We followed Matt\u2019s rugby career and they saw our kids grow up too. We were family friends. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe was the old style of trainer and was outstanding at what he did. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn some many ways he was underrated, but he was understated too, and that is the way he liked it.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u2013 LOVERACING.NZ News Desk <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Priscott has a lifelong involvement in racing and was introduced to the sport through his father, Bruce. Priscott…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106565,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[4065,20171,12505,30779,51867,33324,33319,51868,3004,20620,51866,101,25463,26150,56,54,55,904,3674,34010],"class_list":["post-106564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-away","tag-former","tag-group","tag-horses","tag-onewinning","tag-passed","tag-passes","tag-priscott","tag-racing","tag-robert","tag-shone","tag-sports","tag-talented","tag-trainer","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-who","tag-with","tag-young"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}