Women owned, trained and rode winner

Press, 16 January 1980, Page 16

Women owned, trained and rode winner

By J

JOHN DREW

The Chatham Islands Jockey Club, which held its first meeting 106 years ago, reached a milestone recently. The winner of this season’s renewal of the club's premier annual flat race, the Chatham» Cup, was not only ridden to victory by a woman but also owned by a woman and trained by a woman.

The 16-year-old galloper, appropriately named Island Cracker, broke the course record last year at the age of 15. Mrs Joanne Lanauze, a

fourth generation island resident, who rang from the Chathams with news of Island Cracker’s notable success, said it resulted from a fine piece of team co-oper-ation between the three women.

The owner is Cissy Preece, aged 56, the trainer Rena Hough, aged 19, and the rider Betty Braid, who is 30. Betty is the mother of two sets of twins, boys aged seven and girls aged two.

Mr Dick Preece, a trainer for Mr John Douglas-Clif-ford at Riccarton for several years, is a brother-in-law of Mrs Preece.

Mrs Lanauze, who with her husband, Mick, runs the island’s general store at

Waitangi, said a record and enthusiastic crowd, representing about 90 per cent of the island's population, watched the races held on a fast track in ideal weather.

In spite of record attendance at the meeting she said the Chatham Islands Jockey Club’s antique grandstand, a historic landmark at the race course for many years, was not as crowded as it had been in past meetings. She said this was because more racegoers chose to take advantage of the island’s improving roading system to arrive in cars and sat in them or in picnic groups to watch the races. This sight would doubtless have delighted the man responsible for bringing the

first motor vehicle to the Chathmans nearly 50 years before. The island’s first motorist was an enterprising mainland motorist, Tom Ropu, who brought his flatdeck Model T Ford from Lyttelton on board the steamer, Tees, in 1929. It was reputed to have cost £3O and was the island’s only motor vehicle for many years.

The Chathams’ historic race meeting might feature on television. A spokesman for SPTV said from Auckland that his channel was keeping a close eye on the possibility of filming it. The channel recently completed a documentary on the Moriori race, the original inhabitants of the Chathams before the Maori invasion in 1835.