Remember When A New Zealand Team Could Win Something?

In between watching the rugby and the Tour de France at the weekend, I managed some recreational reading and was impressed with a quarterly publication coming out of Melbourne called “The Thoroughbred”.

Regarding the rugby, Robbie Deans has once again proved the wisdom of the old adage that a Kiwi exported to Australia raises the IQ of both countries. I was a notable example of that a decade ago. The All Blacks, who look blacker than ever these days, seem to have lost the killer instinct.

But back to the magazine. I found it a good read and nicely illustrated, plenty of fresh angles, well-researched and not just a bunch of sycophantic advertorial which is the usual diet served up these days. Because of the instant news delivery of the internet and TV, unless a magazine can find ways of saying something different it won’t have a long life. The Thoroughbred is put out by Geoff Slattery and features quality writers like Danny Power, Stephen Moran, Adrian Dunn, Matthew Stewart, Stephen Howell, Ben Collins, Peter Ryan and Rhett Kirkwood. They are all Melbourne based and the magazine at this stage has a strong Victorian bent but as it grows it intends to widen its horizons. They have a website, check it out.

One article of interest in the Winter edition traversed the progress of women in racing, focusing mostly on the progress/plight of female jockeys. I recall when I left New Zealand to come to Sydney, in 1997, the Auckland Apprentice Jockey School, of which I was the Director, had more female attendees than male. If New Zealand is slipping back in rugby one thing it can always claim to have been ahead in is equal opportunity for females in racing.

Those bastions of freedom, New Zealand and South Australia, lay claim to being the first places in the world to give women the vote, in 1893 and 1894 respectively. Around the time I came to Australia, the New Zealand Prime Minister, Leader Of The Opposition, Governor General, Chief Justice and Attorney General were all female.

I was around when there was the infamous yellow line at Trentham, the line the women didn’t step over, including the women trainers of the time. There was a hell of a stink one year when I recall a youthful Maureen Madsen had one of the fancied runners in the Wellington Cup and couldn’t watch the race in the same area as the other owners and trainers. Maureen was a good looker, a photographic model. I couldn’t imagine any bloke not wanting her to be in the same area. But there weren’t many blokes amongst the Wellington Racing Club officials back then, they were actually dinosaurs.

I came from the north. Auckland v Wellington is like Sydney v Melbourne. Crass and fast v The Old Money, and a touch more liberal. Being a racing journalist meant you turned up at the races, worked for maybe a total of a couple of hours during the day and spent the rest of the time eating and grogging, entertaining your mates who were eternally grateful if they were invited into the holy sanctum of the press room.

At Trentham there was this quaint convention in the press room that you weren’t allowed to open up the grog until “after the first leg of the TAB double” – usually about race five! Unaware of this local custom on my first visit to a Wellington Cup meeting, I copped a decent bollocking from the late John Golder, chairman of the press room, when I innocently began pouring a gin for a distraught visiting owner whose fancied runner, Wiremu, had had to be scratched on the morning of the race.

The main topic of serious conversation in press rooms was usually the quality of catering provided for the privileged hacks whose workplace it was. Complaints were made if it fell much below cordon bleu standard. Journos felt the clubs owed them a living because, after all, “they were giving racing space in the paper”.

The climax of the day was the draw to see who took home the unconsumed liquor after the last race. Liquor was very important. Many senior journalists seemed to attend racemeetings for no other reason but to drink. When I first met them, one or two almost-preserved individuals had been at it so long their hand-to-mouth coordination left a lot to be desired. It appeared to me, basically a non-drinker (so THAT’S why I was unpopular?!) that they spilt as much on the way up to their mouths as what went down their throats. Many clubs supplied copious amounts: half a dozen bottles of gin and whisky, beer by the cartons; you asked for it and most likely you got it. There wasn’t a hope in Hades we could consume it all without ending up paralytic. After the last race we put our names into a hat and did a draw, the winners cramming the unopened and partially full bottles into their briefcases, bags and under their coats so as not to be seen as they crept away from the track with their booty. The dried-up pies still sitting in the warmer went the same way. When I first began working in the press room, in 1968, it became apparent to me that if one remained there too long chances are one ended up dead, divorced or desperately drunk. I got out intact in 1976, though one of the d’s got me eventually whilst another awaits.

But enough of this diversion, back to female jockeys. It was the year after I got out of journalism that women were given their rights, finally, and allowed to ride against the men. As a precursor to open competition, the females had been riding against each other in specially designated non-betting races, euphemistically known as “Powder Puff Derbies”. Several of the pioneers didn’t make it all through to the professional ranks for one reason or another. I remember a few of them, such as Lyall Baird, Cheski Tibbetts, Linda Jones, of course, Debbie Stockwell/Healey and the trail-blazing Canadian jockey Joan Phipps who had been the leading jockey in Saskatchewan in 1972 and 1973. She was the first female to win against the males in New Zealand, on Daphalee in 1 November 1977, and Sue Day was the first professional New Zealand female jockey to win a race, exactly 30 years ago this week.

The Thoroughbred’s article doesn’t purport to be a history of the women’s movement but in passing it mentions the likes of Julie Krone in the USA who retired in 2004 after an 18 year career encompassing more than 3,500 wins, amongst them a Belmont Stakes and a Breeders’ Cup Juvenile. Ms Krone became the first female jockey inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall Of Fame.

Lesser known and not referred to in the article is possibly the first superior female open competition rider anywhere, the Argentinian Marina Lezcano. Originally barred from apprentice school because of her gender, Lezcano is regarded as one of the greatest female athletes produced in Argentina and was at her zenith through the late‘70s and early ‘80s during a 15 year career. Many Grade 1s fell her way but she became most celebrated through her association with the 1978 champion Telescopico (Table Play-Filipina, by Fomento) who won all four legs of Argentina’s Triple Crown equivalent – the Cuadruple Corona - and the Gran Premio Carlos Pellgrini by 18 lengths. Such were her feats that People Magazine (USA) ran a big feature story on her in March 1979.

No female jockey anywhere had previously won a Grade 1. If memory serves me correctly, Marina Lezcano rode Telescopico when he took on the 1979 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. Telescopico features as the broodmare sire of Genereux (Arg), a Grade 1 winner which is standing his first season at stud in Queensland this year. Other important winners ridden by Lezcano which might be known here were the champion mare Bayakoa and the later fairly successful sire Fitzcarraldo. Lezcano, whose father was half South American Indian and whose mother was Irish, retired to have a family and is still a public figure. As recently as February this year a raceday in her honour was held in Argentina.

The first Group 1 race in Australia won by a female jockey was the Fourex Cup at Doomben in July 1982, the good New Zealand jockey Dianne Moseley partnering the New Zealand stayer Double You Em, carrying all of 49 kgs.

Those were the days when a New Zealand team could come here and win something!