VRC Australian Cup Day is the perfect occasion to celebrate the illustrious international career of former champion jockey Ron Hutchinson. In a sense it all began here at Flemington 78 years ago. As a 17-year-old apprentice in his first year of riding, R. Hutchinson won the Australian Cup on a grey mare named Spectre, who had never won a race before.
‘The Old Grey Mare Better Than She Used To Be,’ quipped a Sydney newspaper. The odds were long, and all credit was given to the boy jockey as he sooled Spectre (carrying barely 43 kg) to the front half a mile from home and rode her to the finishing post with what became his trademark pace and judgement, just half a second outside the course record.
This was Ron Hutchinson’s first feature race victory, and his eighth race win. He went on to win the Australian Cup three times more, on Bold John in 1950 (breaking the course record), on Sir Chester Manifold’s colt Arbroath in 1953 and on Pushover in 1956—in a course record again! In a long career there would be some 3000 wins for Hutchinson: success in country cups and feature races on city tracks in every capital in Australia, then on famous racetracks around the world: Newmarket, Ascot, Epsom, The Curragh, Longchamp, Baden-Baden, Milan and Rome, Singapore and more.
Right from the start they predicted big things for the small kid. At his first city win at Mentone in August 1944 the Sporting Globe had said: ‘The lad carries the confidence of a number of astute trainers at Flemington’. In January 1945 he rode a treble at Moonee Valley: ‘A youngster with a bright future.’ The Australian Cup on Spectre was the proof.
Here was the Weekly Times a year later: ‘No apprentice rider in Melbourne has better prospects of reaching the top of his profession than Ron Hutchinson, apprenticed to Mr Claude Goodfellow at Ascot Vale. Young Hutchinson has wanted to be a jockey since he was a lad and sold sweets at the Sun Theatre at Yarraville. As the trainer said, he had the essential attributes of a horseman—good hands and a keen brain.’
Australia has produced many champion jockeys—Hutchinson is among forty-seven in the Australian Racing Hall of Fame including his early tutor Bob Lewis and colonial-era jockey Tom Hales who won the Australian Cup a record eight times—but by any reckoning Ron Hutchinson must figure near the top. He was champion Victorian apprentice two years in succession. As a senior jockey throughout the 1950s he finished perennially a close second in the Melbourne premiership, most often to his great rival Bill Williamson—who was best man at his wedding to Norma Gum in 1953. Hutchinson became premier jockey in his own right in season 1958–59.
His career then took him to Britain through to the end of 1977. Most years he rode a hundred winners or more. Time and again he came agonisingly close to the English jockey premiership, edged out first by his compatriot Scobie Breasley and later by Lester Piggott. Not bad company.
It was fellow Australian, George Moore, already riding in England, who had recommended Ron Hutchinson to Irish trainer Paddy Prendergast in 1960. Success was immediate in both Ireland and the UK. At his first ride in England, at Newmarket, Hutchinson seized the classic 2000 Guineas on Martial—from Moore, in a photo finish.
Whether it was the broad tracks at Newmarket or the tight bends at Chester, Hutchinson proved himself adaptable, a master of pace, always looking for the shortest way home.
