Invitation to Debbie Healey

Press, 23 April 1984, Page 19

Invitation to Debbie Healey

NZPA staff correspondent Singapore A Malaysian turf club has invited top New Zealand woman jockey Debbie Healey to ride in the country, it was reported in Singapore yesterday. The Perak Turf Club, in central Malaysia, invited Healey to ride at the Perak Derby meeting starting on May 5 and has approached the president of the Race Horse Owners’ Association, Tan Hock Chong, to sort out the formalities. Healey won on a Tan horse, Village Kid, at Avondale last year. But the jockey has advised that prior riding commitments in New Zealand could prevent her travelling in May and she

has now been asked whether she can make it for the Sultan’s Gold Vase meeting at Ipoh — Perak state’s capital — in October. She would be only the third woman rider to appear in Malaysia. Two Australian women, also brought in on the initiative of the Perak Club, rode at Ipoh in 1981. Healey would join two other New Zealanders already in Malaysia, Alwyn Tweedie, twice champion rider on the Malaysian/ Singapore circuit, and Nigel Tiley, currently lying third. Healey rode trackwork in Ipoh in 1981 and applied then for a visiting jockey’s licence but was turned down as s® was still an apprentice.