Former Trotting Trainer Will Be 92 Tomorrow

Press, Volume C, Issue 29548, 24 June 1961, Page 15

Former Trotting Trainer Will Be 92 Tomorrow

“I was lucky to have the| job I wanted." In those words Mr Arthur Cox, who will be 92 tomorrow, summed up his philosophy on life when he was interviewed yesterday. As an owner, trainer, driver, and jockey he spent about 50 years “among the horses’’ “I liked it. I played the game and there were no marks against me.” he said. Mr Cox is patron of the Spreydon Men’s Bowling Club and also the Women’s Bowling Club. Members of the clubs will visit him at his home at 362 Lyttelton street tomorrow. Bom in Guernsey, in the Channel Islands, Mr Cox came to New Zealand with hij parents when he was four. His father was a baker at

Lincoln, and Mr Cox used to drive the two horses in the cart round the district delivering bread. “I was always cranky about horses and I got the job I wanted when I got a start with Tom Sheenan at his racing stable at Hornby. He asked me if I could ride. 1 said ‘yes.’ He tried me out to see if I was telling the truth,” he said. Mr Cox later went to the North Island where he rode in flat races, hurdles, and steeplechases. He was injured in a fall and had to give up riding. He came back to Christchurch and, he says, “was talked into training trotters.” He claims to have introduced the Tod Sloan style of race riding to New Zealand

in a saddle trot at Forbury when he rode Rushlight to win. One of the last horses he trained was Todd Lonzia, which established a New Zealand and Australian mile record for two-year-olds in 1930 Mr Cox said the record of 2m in 22 2-ssec stood for 19 years Mr Cox retired when he was 65 He then took up bowls and gave his time to that game. He did not go much to the bowling green last season. A few months ago he gave up riding his bicycle He said he could still ride it, but his friends worried about him, so he decided to stop He can still read without glasses, but his hearing } s now affected “I won a lot of money for a lot of people when I was training and driving,” he said “The only man connected with the racing game I know here now is Free Holmes. All the others I knew are gone.”