Bert Ellis won Wairio ’chase by two rounds

Press, 19 December 1985, Page 43

Bert Ellis won Wairio ’chase by two rounds

By

J. J. BOYLE

In his long distinguished career as a race rider Bert Ellis made only one return trip to his home district of Wairio to show his skills in public, but he found the occasion memorable.

The Wairio Jockey Club, which will stage its centennial meeting at Invercargill on Monday, had a steeplechase on its programme for many years when it raced on its home course, even though the club had a summer date. In 1923 Mr Ellis, now 80 and living in Christchurch, was engaged to ride Maghera in the steeplechase at Wairio.

Maghera was a brother of Loughrea, a high-class winner on the flat for Mr Lou Hazlett, of Dunedin, but he was not endowed with any of the family speed. ’‘Loughrea could run half a mile about ten seconds faster than Maghera,” Mr Ellis recalls.

However, Maghera had

one thing going for him when he went into the field for that steeplechase at Wairio almost 63 years ago. He could jump safely. As it turned out his rivals embarked on an exercise of mass “destruction.” Some of them fell, others baulked, but Maghera went round without a mistake, and won by something like two rounds. Bert Ellis’s brief association with racing at Wairio was because he left Southland soon after he finished his schooling in that district to become an apprentice to Fred Jones, then one of a number of famous trainers at Riccarton. It was different with Bert Ellis’s famous younger brother, Jim. The youngest boy of the notable family served his apprenticeship with his brother Fred at Invercargill and before he left Southland to settle at Riccarton he usually made his mark at Wairio meetings. Jim Ellis won three suc-

cessive Wairio Cups, the first of them on Queen Balboa in 1928, then on Bilbo and Red Sea.

In those days the Wairio club raced either just before or just after the Wellington Cup meetings, and Jim Ellis did much hard travelling in those days to meet a growing number of commitments.

Three days before the Wairio meeting of 1930 Bert and Jim Ellis left their stamp of excellence on the programme for the final day of the Wellington Cup meeting. Between them they rode four of the eight winners.

The skilful ways of the Ellis brothers were horses were being nurtured before they started their schooling in the Wairio district.

They lived some miles from the school and in the centennial history of the Wairio school and district it is recalled that they were transported by one “Sanco” — no thoroughbred, but tall,

long-legged, quiet and reliable.

So docile was Sanco in fact that when Jim was in the infant class and finished before the others in the afternoon he would go down to the paddock, order the horse to lie down, climb aboard and ride him back to the school.

From horse back Jim could peer over the frosted glass of the windows of the classroom, and at sight of him the pupils could take comfort from the thought that their dismissal time could not be far distant.

The Wairio Jockey Club has not raced in its home district since 1967, moving at first to Riverton and later to Invercargill.

Races on the centennial programme next Monday bear names that tell of sponsorships, but it is a pity that at least one event could not convey the club’s tribute to members of a family that put Wairio on the racing map.