LATEST STABLE NEWS

Another Speedi-Kiwi Rides in Singapore

There’s more than one way to skin a cat, as they say, and more than one way to keep fit for the races as recently illustrated by Linda Meech – one of the few female jockeys currently riding here in Singapore. Last week, just days before a busy weekend’s racing including several rides for the Burridge Stables, Linda was keeping her eye in jumping Julie’s warmblood show-jumper/dressage prospect “Robert Emmitt” over at the Bukit Timah Saddle Club – and having a ball!

Although Australia is now her home Linda is New Zealand born and bred and learned to ride as a child, her boarding school in Wanganui being close to a racetrack. It wasn’t long before she was riding track work, filling the shoes of the local lad who – luckily for her – had broken his leg and was out of action. By seventeen she had ditched school and was apprenticed to a small-time yard but then along came New Zealand trainer Kevin Myers, who was keen to send both his horses and Linda to Australia to work. Linda was soon exercising for Paddy Payne and was given her first ride at the ANZAC day meeting that year.

While riding out her country claim, Linda was apprenticed to Terry O’Sullivan with whom she spent three years, followed by a further eighteen months with Peter Moody at Caulfield in Melbourne. It was around this time that Linda decided she wanted to take some time off “to put racing into perspective” and she set off to do a bit of back-packing around the world for the next year or so.

However, riding and racing were obviously too well ingrained by now and the following year, Linda was back on the horses riding track work for Gai Waterhouse (daughter of famous trainer Tommy Smith and sometime model and actress, Gai served her apprenticeship under her father and received her own trainer’s license in 1992). Gai obviously liked the way Linda rode and soon the rides were coming thick and fast. By 2006 Linda was the leading female jockey in Australia with over five hundred winners to her name. Her best day she says, came when she rode a treble at Cheltenham Park, Adelaide five years ago.

Linda attributes her successful move to Singapore to the excellent advice of her manager former champion jockey Wayne Harris (1994 winner of the Melbourne Cup on Jeune) who persuaded her to apply for her three-month license here and arranged for her arrival just days before the disastrous onslaught of Equine Influenza in Australia which has all but crippled the racing industry there.

Riding gallops and trials as well as races for Steve and Julie, Linda is also picking up rides for many of the trainers here in Singapore including Dr Yeoh, Len Treloar, David Hill and Laurie Laxon with a certain amount of success. Rides for the Burridges have included Promise Me Gold, Boxcar and a third place on Trigger Express and she has scored a second placing on Cabana Bay for David Hill.

Linda says she’s enjoying her spell in Singapore and is surprised by the greenness of the island city – although on second thought, she admits that all the rain that keeps the place so green can be disruptive to her personal training schedule but if she’s unable to ride some days she takes herself off for a jog round the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve which is right on her doorstep. By all accounts her down-to-earth attitude and sense of humour have helped her fit right in to the male-dominated world of racing.

Linda is also a big fan of the newly laid turf track at Kranji and says she’s looking forward to many more rides on it before her license runs out at the end of November. Let’s hope we’ll be seeing a lot more of her, too.