They can see Barnesy standing right there: the big man in the cheap suit with the booming laugh and his mates orbiting him like the sun. He's holding court in the Members Bar at Randwick. Then the Theatre of the Horse, rubbing shoulders with racing's elite as the jockeys mount. Then out the front of the grandstand, owners crammed in like sardines as the field moves into the barriers.

Barnesy is laughing that contagious laugh that makes everyone around him laugh because he owns a share in Fell Swoop, who is one of the outsiders in The Everest, the $10 million sprint about to be staged for the first time.

Few have tipped Fell Swoop. If they haven't dismissed him they have forgotten him altogether. Barnesy couldn't care less.

"You watch," he says knowingly, rubbing his hands together. "You just watch."

And they're away!

The heartbreaking reality is Rob Barnes will not be there on Saturday. Nobody will hear his laugh. He died at the age of 46 after suffering a heart attack on the June long weekend in 2014.

His family and mates tell you he was the life of the party. They never thought it would end so soon.

Barnesy won't be at Randwick but his wife, Bec, and daughters, Sharnie, 20, and Kasey, 14, will be. His eldest, Jess, 22, will be away with her friends but still watching on.

That's where the story of Fell Swoop turns and it is so achingly beautiful it best explains why racing is never just about 500 or so kilograms of overpriced horseflesh speeding around a racetrack for the purposes of gambling turnover.

Bec didn't know anything about horses while her husband was alive. She certainly didn't know he was the part-owner in nine of them. She didn't want anything to do with them after he died, signing all the relevant paperwork to sell them off.

Barnesy's mate, Paul Armstrong, kept one share still open. The share was in Fell Swoop.

Hydrotherapy: M J Dale Racing's Colbey Hill, Jamie Stewart and Matt Dale on Fell Swoop freshen up their horses. Photo: Sitthixay Ditthavong

The horse that cost $45,000 as a yearling has now collected more than $1.6 million in prizemoney having won nine races from 25 starts with some brave placings in group1 races behind some of the best in the land, including Everest rival Chautauqua.

"I am still in shock about it all," Bec says, sobbing. "It took me a long time to get over him. It is still very raw. I felt like life was over and I kept it together for the sake of the girls. I slowly realised that it isn't over ??? it's just changed. Rob lived life. This is one part that seems real. Like he's real. You can have the house, you can have the boat and the photos. You can have memories.

"But the fact is we're experiencing all this with Fell Swoop through Rob. I keep feeling sad about him not being there. I keep picturing him. It's a really weird thing. Somebody will say something or do something and it's like he is right there. I don't know how to explain it ..."

Neither can Armstrong.

"I often think about him, especially when Fell Swoop won those first four races early on," he says. "Then he won another four in a row. I kept thinking, 'The big fella is looking down at us'. We often have a toast to him after the race ... I'd have broken ribs if he was still alive. He'd be out of control. Just a heap of fun. A beautiful bloke."

Barnesy was a Canberra identity; one of those people everyone knew. In a city where people say a lot but deliver little, he was the real deal. He lived for racing and rugby league. He was a handy junior footballer and played in the Canberra Raiders' SG Ball side in their first season in 1982 alongside Ricky Stuart, who went on to become a club legend and now their NRL coach.

"Good player," Stuart says. "A centre. Barnesy was just one of those generous people everyone loved. There's a difference between being a good bloke and a good person and he was both. I went to his funeral and it was just so sad."

People couldn't help but like him. Barnesy met Armstrong three years ago in the place where most great mateships start: the pub.

At the Eaglehawk Hotel at Sutton, just off the Federal Highway and not far from Canberra, they would punt and drink. Then they bought a share in two mares, including Touched In Flight. She had limited ability but as a broodmare provided them with Fell Swoop.

Sprinkled among the public servants and tradesmen and others who own a share in the horse are Barnesy's mates, Ryan Cappello, Matt McIntyre and Matt Thompson.

Barnesy had many mates but he lived for his family, especially his three daughters.

Legacy: Bec Barnes with daughters Sharnie, Kasey and Jess. Photo: Supplied

"Biggest dag ever," says Bec. "He was just a knockabout bloke and supportive of everything we did. All he wanted for us was to be happy. They say it's rare to find such love. He was just my best mate. The day it all happened was the worst day of my life."

He hadn't felt well that June long weekend. When he got into bed, he said to Bec: "You know that I love you?"

She thought that was weird. That didn't sound like Barnesy.

The next day, she went into Canberra to buy groceries and when she returned he was nowhere to be seen. That wasn't unusual: he was the type to take off with mates to do something without warning. Then three mates turned up and said they couldn't raise him on the phone.

Bec went upstairs and yelled out. No reply. Then she went into the walk-in wardrobe. He had suffered a heart attack.

"At least the girls didn't find him," she says quietly. "They did an autopsy. His heart just stopped. The coroner said if he was in hospital they could not have stopped it. He would've suffered no pain. It would've just stopped immediately."

Armstrong had just returned from his annual trip to Eagle Farm for the Stradbroke Handicap. He was laying on the couch cradling a hangover when he got the phone call.

"I couldn't believe it," he said. Only a month earlier they had been draining beers at the Wagga Gold Cup carnival.

In the coming months, as Bec and the girls dealt with their grief, Barnesy's best mate, Scott McInerney, stepped in to help sort his affairs, including his racing interests. Bec had never met Armstrong before any of this.

"I don't want anything to do with it," she told him when it came to Fell Swoop, who had raced only once before Barnesy died.

Armstrong didn't want to let his share go ??? but he also didn't want to take on his late mate's.

"I decided I'd just keep the share open," he says. "I'd just pay the bills and put it aside for his girls."

Fell Swoop kept winning. Armstrong kept ringing Bec. She kept saying no.

She finally relented and came to Randwick. With Blake Shinn in the saddle, the horse won his sixth race from eight starts.

"See, you silly bugger?" she said to Barnesy, like he was there. "I'm not cranky with you now."

Says Bec now: "I was having this whole thing about never forgetting Rob. I was in a really bad place. That day, I just felt he was there."

So now Bec must be there. When he won the Testa Rossa Stakes at Caulfield in the spring later that year, an official handed her the plate as she walked into the winner's bar and said, "You get this because you were cheering the loudest."

"I am the loudest!" she confesses.

Primed: The owners of Fell Swoop, including Bec Barnes, meet for dinner before the $10 million race. Photo: Adam Taylor

Some of Fell Swoop's best runs haven't been victories, like his narrow second in last year's Oakleigh Plate and his second to Rebel Dane in the Manikato after that.

But the runs that stand out from the rest have come in the same race for the last two years at Randwick.

Each time, in the TJ Smith Stakes, Fell Swoop has looked the winner coming down the straight. Each time, Chautauqua has crushed their hearts with his signature late finish down the outside.

"God I hate that grey horse, mum," Sharnie often says.

The TJ Smith is held over 1200 metres. So is The Everest, which on Saturday will be held for the first time. Twelve slots worth $600,000 each were put up for sale earlier this year and were snapped up by wealthy businessmen and breeders.

The country's biggest bloodstock agent, Inglis, selected Fell Swoop to take up their slot.

"We feel the horse is good enough to win, having placed in the TJ Smith for the past two years," says Inglis managing director Mark Webster.

"We also wanted to get behind a young up-and-coming trainer, and Matt Dale is an ideal candidate. He has talent, integrity and puts in the hard yards. His owners just love him." Barnesy loved him, too.

"He was always talking about Matt," says Bec.

Dale took Fell Swoop down to his satellite stable at Moruya on the south coast last week to change things up.

"His coat wasn't where I wanted it and I've thought for a while about taking him down," Dale says. "Overall, he's yet to win a group1 but he's put in a number of group1-winning performances. This preparation he's been caught wide twice on hard tracks. He'll be much better third up if the sting is out of the ground."

Few believe Fell Swoop can win because of those last two races. Others prefer Golden Slipper winner She Will Reign and, of course, that grey horse Chautauqua. Still, you don't own a share in a horse lining up in a $10 million race every day. Bec says she and her girls don't care about the potential return.

"It's not about money with this horse," she says, angrily. "People say you would've won this and that if he won. I don't care. It's not about that for us. I value things about Rob a lot more now he's gone."

No, they are there because they can feel their husband, their father, their mate standing there with them, as trite as that might seem to those not in this unique situation.

So how would Barnesy be looking down on all this?

"It's a question that addresses everything," she says. "He'd be really proud of the girls. He'd be really proud that I have learnt how to use a ride-on mower and reverse a trailer. He'd be looking at me getting into racing and just say, 'My God!' And then he'd have a big, big laugh."

For more information on The Everest go to theRaces.com.au.