Within weeks multiple group one-winning trainer Lindsey Smith will close his Western Australian stables at Casuarina and focus on training horses from his on-course stables at Warrnambool.
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Smith, who began training in Warrnambool in May 2019, has kept his Casuarina stable operating but the astute horseman said the time was right to close his Western Australian operation.
"It's a sad time to close our Perth stables next month but I had no other option," Smith told The Standard. "I've been training from my Casuarina stables for more then 21 years and in that time we had hundreds and hundreds of winners including numerous group one winners.
"Plastered, Old Comrade, Scales of Justice, Reykjavik and Too Close The Sun are a few of the top horses that have been trained at Casuarina and I've been lucky to have had wonderful staff.
"It was always going to be a tough task to have stables on two sides of Australia but my staff in Perth have been very loyal."
Smith said COVID-19 made it difficult to get back to Perth to oversee those horses.
"COVID created plenty of problems when you're trying to train horses on different sides of the country," he said. "I was training from Warrnambool and couldn't get back over there much because of lock-downs.
"I suppose that was the start of the end for my Perth stable as I scaled down horse numbers there.
"My wife Rebecca and our children are in Warrnambool. They love Warrnambool and I'm training 48 horses here."
Smith said closing the Casuarina stables would make it easier for him to "fully focus on training winners" with his staff at Warrnambool.
"The decision also means once I'm not registered as a city trainer in Perth, I'll be a country trainer in Victoria and we'll be able to have runners in numerous $100,000 races and bonus races in Victoria which previously we were not able to have runners in," he said.
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