Busuttin-Young: dynamic duo hoping for success again with Bowman on board

Natalie Young laughs about the time she went rogue.

It was back in the winter of 2021. Rising star Sierra Sue had just run fourth in a 1600m handicap at Flemington and the stable consensus was that the mare looked tired and needed to be sent for a spell.

But the intuitive Young felt compelled to flip the script.

“I just thought that she was a little bit pretty and maybe it was a fitness thing,” Young recalled. So she rang life partner and co-trainer Trent Busuttin, who was back in New Zealand, and informed him about a change of plans – she was sending Sierra Sue to the Mildura Cup. Busuttin didn’t agree. He argued steadfastly down the phone line that they should stick to the original decision.

But distance proved the deciding factor. With Busuttin away in New Zealand, Young figured she held the casting vote.

“I pulled rank to go to the Mildura Cup and she managed to win it, so I got the final laugh,” she said.

“It probably changed her career slightly because she ended up winning two Group 1s after that (the Sir Rupert Clarke Stakes and the Futurity Stakes).”

It is a rare anecdote in a flourishing partnership. Young says the Cranbourne couple rarely stray from the script.

They have been consistently on the same page since meeting as teenagers on a working holiday in Singapore during the late 1990s – she was a track rider, he was helping his trainer-father Paddy.

“We are both very passionate about what we do,” Young said.

“We come from racing backgrounds so it has always been in our blood.

“These days, the actual training is very demanding. So it is good to have that partnership to divide the workload. One can go to the races one day, one can go the next. Then you’ve got to do voice updates, video updates, dealing with clients, it just makes it easier to share the workload.”

Busuttin and Young rise at 3.45am each day, splitting responsibilities once they reach the stable.

“I’m sort of the one who is more on the floor, looking at the horses, doing the daily treatment, doing the worklists,” Young said. “Then we both come together to look at the form, discuss where horses should be running, how they have galloped and whether they are fit.”

Busuttin and Young are getting it right. They emerged from the 2023 Melbourne Cup Carnival as the most successful stable alongside Ciaron Maher and his former training partner, David Eustace. 

They had 12 runners across the four race days for three winners – Forget You, Pascero and Muramasa – and three placings.

By the time Muramasa won the Group 3 Queen Elizabeth Stakes (2600m) on Champions Day, the vocal Young said she had barracked so loudly she had lost her voice. “It’s what you work for all year, to find horses that can race at the really competitive time of the year,” Young said.

“The Spring Carnival is like the Olympics, so if you salute or get in a couple of winners, the whole world is watching. So it’s great that we are doing something right.” 

Busuttin and Young enjoyed a significant profile in Australia before crossing from New Zealand to Cranbourne in 2016 thanks to Group 1 victories in the 2011 VRC Derby with Sangster and the 2016 Australian Derby with Tavago.

They brought a small group of horses to Australia fully fit and ready to hit the ground running. But not everything ran according to plan.

“I came over with the kids and two horses and we literally had a bag each,” Young said. “A couple of months later, it might have been six weeks later, Trent came over with our 20 horses and there was me, the kids and the nanny shovelling sawdust at 11 o’clock at night for these 20 horses because the barn wasn’t built.”

Despite the setback, 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 80 horses in work, two foremen and more than 30 staff.

As a reflection of their success, Young has been the leading female trainer in Melbourne for the past five years, but is excited to see other young women following behind, such as Katherine Coleman.

And they continue to dream big. Young nominates the Cox Plate and the Lexus Melbourne Cup as two races the stable would love to win.

“We have dabbled a lot more in the last couple of years in European-bred horses, and we had a good run with them over the 2023 carnival and we got them up a bit in the ratings so this time next year they might possibly be in those races,” Young said.

It is not only horses that the training partnership has to juggle. Young and Busuttin are the parents of two children – Ben and Zara. Busuttin and Young manage just one family holiday a year – traditionally a week in June. As a result, they always take Ben and Zara to the Gold Coast in January for the Magic Millions Carnival.

“It is a busy week, but the kids love it,” she said. “They get to go to all the theme parks. It is just nice to be up on the Gold Coast for a week with the kids in prime weather.”

The Busuttin and Young stable is only 4 kilometres from their family home, allowing them to blend their work with the children’s school and sport.

“It is a bit of a juggle, but that is life,” Young said. “There are plenty of working parents out there who juggle the same so it’s whatever works for you as a family.”

Life became even more demanding for Young at the end of 2021 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She gave up track riding but threw herself headlong into the business while undergoing energy-sapping treatment.

“I think the horses are what really got me through it,” she said. “Mirage Dancer won the Metrop Group 1. Sierra Sue won two Group 1s, and Glint of Hope won a Group 1. So while going through treatment, we actually trained three Group 1 winners and I think I was probably more determined than ever to really be switched on and hands on and it kept my mind off the treatment.

“I probably scared a few of my staff when I rocked up and I looked like I was the walking dead, but, yeah, I think when you have those sort of life battles, I think it is important to keep busy and motivated for something and definitely the horses were what it was for me. “And now we are out the other side of it.”

So after all her years of experience, does Young have any advice for young couples looking to start a training partnership?

“I think you have got to have a tremendously hard work ethic and then you have got to back yourself and just give it a go,” she says.

“You are either going to sink or swim. But you don’t know until you give it a go.”