JOCKEY IN MALAYA

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29336, 15 October 1960, Page 2

JOCKEY IN MALAYA

Woman Rides In Amateur Races A woman visitor to Christchurch, Mrs Menryn Thompson, of Kuala Lumpur, Malaya, has an unusual hobby. She is an amateur jockey, and at home rides regularly at amateur race meetings. With her husband, who is on retiring leave from his position as Secretary of Defence in the Malayan Civil Service, Mrs Thompson has been spending a six-week holiday in New Zeeland. Slim and suntanned, with brown hair and blue eyes, Mrs Thompson loves horses, and cannot remember a time when she could not ride. She was born in Malaya, where her father was a civil servant, but was sent to school in England at the age of five, and rode and hunted from the time she was a small girl. She returned to Malaya when she was 21, and married at 25. The Malayan Amateur Racing Association, formed in 1949, conducts four or five meetings a year, at Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Penang and Ipoh, and Mrs Thompson does the circuit There is always art least one race on She programme for women riders, and in the hurdle races, the women, surprisingly, are allowed to ride against the men. This was because the fields In hurdle races were small, said Mrs Thompson. She had frequently ridden in fields of 16 in toe women’s flat races, but hurdle races, even with women riders, drew fields of only six or eight. No Colour Bar Most of the women riders are married. Few single girls competed, probably because it was expensive to own and upkeep a horse, Mrs Thompson said. Mira Thompson said there was no colour bar among riders at the amateur race meetings. "Chinese and Malay men frequently ride, and there is nothing to stop Chinese and Malay girls riding, but they don’t,’’ she said. z

Mrs Thompson rides her own horses, and sometimes a friend’s mount. She has had two wins with her own horses, and has lost count of her number of minor placings. There are no cash prizes art the amateur meetings, only trophies—one, for the owner, and one for the rider. Digging in her handbag, Mrs Thompson proudly displayed one of her rider’s trophies—a handsome silver cigarette case engraved with the name of one of her own winners, Schubel, an Australian-bred horse.

“But my best horse was an English-bred horse named ’Capetown,” she said. Mrs Thompson has only one horse at Kuala Lumpur at the moment, a polo pony, with which she is teaching her son, aged six, and small daughter, aged two, to ride.