By KATHERINE HOBY
When something goes wrong with a jockey at the Auckland Racing Club, the call goes out for Norm Holland.
And he is never far away.
The Auckland racing personality and jockey liaison officer comes running with his "magic bag of tricks" - containing everything from sticky tape to paracetamol -
to fix whatever it is that ails the jockey.
He was at Ellerslie yesterday for the 126th running of the Auckland Cup, the 58th he has attended.
Mr Holland left school at age 13, determined to follow a career as a jockey.
He did not get his first official ride until he was 15, but from then he spent 35 years in the silks - and has calculated that of that time, he was in hospital for more than three years with riding injuries.
Mr Holland earned the title of premier jockey three times, and was runner-up three times. He is well-qualified to say what he believes makes a good jockey.
"They say good jockeys are born. That's not my belief. If you have dedication, determination and discipline you'll get there."
Mr Holland said the support jockeys got these days was unbelievable compared with what was on offer to him.
He rode in several Auckland Cups, his best placing being a third.
He said he believed the reason racing was continuing on a downhill spiral was that there were too many meetings. It had lost its "special-day-out feeling."
Last year, disaster struck the Auckland Racing Club when rain made the track unsafe and the meeting was abandoned. The race was run two days later.
The 12,000 to 15,000-strong crowd at the Westbury Stud Auckland Cup meeting yesterday was in high spirits. The Auckland Cup has always been one of the glamour events on the racing calendar and yesterday was no exception as colourfully clad women quaffed champagne in the sun.
Old racing heads mulled over the programme, muttering about form. But they seemed to have no more luck than those who chose their horses on the strength of name or colours.
And as for Norm Holland, he says that despite knowing the jockeys he has no inside information.
"Oh God no," he says, when asked for a pick.
"I'm just like the rest in the end - I close my eyes and take a stab."
Day of the outsider
