Subzero and Graham Salisbury
© Darren McNamara
Graham Salisbury has received his most encouraging medical results for some time and he immediately credited his closest friend, Subzero, with dragging him back from the brink of death in his fight last year with cancer.
Salisbury and the age-defying Melbourne Cup winner, who is into his 31st year, were guests at Monday’s National Jockeys’ Trust cricket game where the former clerk of the course said Subzero’s zest for life inspired him to fight on when ‘the (coffin) lid was half down’.
“The last six or seven months, I was pretty crook and I couldn’t go anywhere and it was just driving me mad,” Salisbury said.
“He sort of sparked me up. He said ‘eh, come on, I haven’t been anywhere for a while so you’d better get off your backside and do something’, and that’s what I did.
“He’s a great backstop. If you are feeling down, you go out and give him a pat and a carrot and he puts his head over your shoulders and says ‘come on, come on, keep moving’.
“We’re just a great team actually and we love doing what we are doing.”
Salisbury said his doctor told him recently, at his most recent check-up, that he was ‘going good’ in his cancer fight and that he wouldn’t need to see him for the next check-up for another three months.
Salisbury doesn’t just have to worry about his own health. At 30 years of age, Subzero is defying nature and Salisbury does everything in his power to ensure the health and happiness of the horse that has delighted thousands of children with his school visits as well as entertain many thousands more in the nursing homes and hospitals around Victoria.
“The master here, he gets a check-up three times a year and I took him down for his check-up yesterday,” he explained.
“For a 30-year-old, he’s 520 kilograms and they said that is unbelievable. All his teeth are in sensational order. Blood’s good. Everything’s good with him.”
This article first appeared on Racing.com and is reprinted here with their kind permission. To find out more about Racing Victoria’s Off the Track program, visit rv.racing.com/the-horse/off-the-track.
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