A WEEKLY REVIEW: The Good The Bad The Ugly

When I became a regular in the 1950’s, the fox population at Randwick racecourse exceeded females, a recollection incited when Sara Ryan described the industry as “male dominated” last Saturday on Channel Seven.

Now under her own banner at Wyong after producing considerable expertise with Domeland, the Ryan quip coincided with brilliance of Brisbane pin-up Angela Jones last week.

Last season Jones was the first female to win a major jockey’s metropolitan title, Brisbane, but followed up with a double at Trentham, New Zealand, her first experience around the demanding circuit, last Thursday.

Yes, she guided another Eagle Farm double on Saturday but her navigation on Miss Personality in the Cricks Highway was exemplary.

Had champion George Moore, another Queenslander, produced the effort when the odd fox ranged at headquarters wise guys would have decreed the magic whistle had shrilled.

Folklore maintained the sound was applied by Moore to get freak runs in tight situations for financial compensation, transmitting: “I am here, get out of the way and there’s a good sling for you.” 

Jones just applied hands and head on Miss Personality, a top effort, as did other women on Saturday down the eastern seaboard. Consider the other exceptionals: Rachel King on Lonhro’s Queen (Eagle Farm), and wee Winona Costin on Placid Pearl outpunching the boom colt Zac Lloyd in the Yarraman Park at Royal Randwick.

Sure, the context of the Ryan opinion was in relation to her breaking into what once was exclusively men. Betty Lane, great with horses, was laughed out of Sydney by the Australian Jockey Club and exiled to Geurie in bush NSW. But it did not stop her nor Gai Waterhouse or Barbara Joseph.

Female jockeys had it tougher. Pam O’Neill, also from Brisbane, was a delight on horseback shunned in her bloom, but would be a topliner today.

However time and equality came to the turf. Females are as good as males which is GOOD, an apt description for the Channel Seven racing cover last Saturday, again a plus for the easy on the eye gender.

Through technical difficulties on Saturday, I could not get Sky Channel and was left with Ladies Day on Seven: Emma Freeman, Lizzie Jelfs, and Ally Mosley, not a male in view, hardly the situation in the good, old day when my mates Ken Callender and Keith Hillier beamed.

Perhaps Seven these days is more colour than hardcore punt but the human-interest infusion like Sara Ryan was worthwhile. 

Alas the discussion on packing a dish washer did not gel, although I am a dab hand at it, and would back myself against Bjorn Baker. Still the music chosen by jockeys as a highlight was BAD, not an outfit or tune I could recognise.

What about Neil Diamond, anything from the current film, Song Sun Blue, or “Money Talks” (the opening line out of “Forever In Blue Jeans”), Leonard Cohen (Hallelujah) or “Smile” as only Nat King Cole can sing it?

And with tone being female: Edit Piaf (“No Regrets”) and Nina Simone (“Feeling Good). Piaf and Simone had to battle adversity but so too the first female saddle breaker, New Zealander Linda Jones, no relation for Angela.

I was fortunate to be at Trentham for the 1979 Wellington Derby in which Jones became to first woman to ride a Derby winner in Australasia, Europe, and North America.

Jones also opened the female innings to become the first to succeed over professional males when she steered Pay The Purple at the 1979 Labour Day Cup at Brisbane in  1979, the year she sustained two separate injuries fracturing her rib and puncturing a lung. Jones had notched 65 successes within 18 months.

Early in 1980, she sustained a suspected broken pelvis, a fractured vertebrae atop her spine, sprained wrist and concussion in a training accident, forcing her to retire later that year.

When she was striving for jockey’s license the New Zealand Racing Conference knocked her back on the score “she was too old, too married and not strong enough”.

Indeed UGLY.

Writing for the Sun-Herald, on the memorable Wellington Derby Day, I described the Linda Jones triumph as proof female jockeys could be as good as the men.

It was the last time I was right.