Shoot Out’s Randwick Guineas victory in March was the start of his great trek towards Tuesday’s Melbourne Cup.
It was the four-year-old’s first Group 1 victory and was supposed to be part of the journey that propelled Gold Coast trainer John Wallace and his late jockey Stathi Katsidis to the top of the Australian racing tree.
Soon after the victory, award-winning Gold Coast artist Michael Montgomery painted Shoot Out winning the Guineas and connections had thought of a way to help out the Queensland Jockeys’ Association’s distressed jockeys’ fund, which helps jockeys who have been injured or have fallen on hard times.
Wallace and Montgomery had signed 200 limited edition prints of the painting on canvas and Katsidis was about to do the same. Instrumental to the idea was ex-jockey Brett Calkin, who introduced Wallace and Montgomery. Katsidis was to sign the prints on the day he died at his home in Hendra. “I spoke to Stathi about 7.30pm the night before he died and he told me to meet him at Eagle Farm the next morning,” said Calkin.
“He was only too happy to sign. That was the way of Stathi, only too willing to help out “.
Yesterday the prints were on display at the Gold Coast racetrack and being sold at the Magic Millions sale by Calkin. Montgomery, a part-time art teacher at TSS, has worked around the world teaching visual art and graphics.
He has painted Military Rose and All Bar One for Gold Coast trainer Gillian Heinrich and has Melito and Rothesay in the works for Gerald Ryan while Wallace owns the original Shoot Out painting.
