Lisa Cropp fights at every turn

Lisa Cropp's life hasn't been easy of late, but colleagues will say that this determined winner is not one to give up without a hard fight. Picture / Kenny Rodger

This is the time of Lisa Cropp's life. She is at once in her prime and yet faces her greatest test. Though she is reaping records and trophies she is unlikely to emerge unscathed.

It is in her nature to go hard. Even in the inquiry room - where allegations that she used methamphetamine and took deliberate steps to evade detection are being made - her defence is attack.

In these holiday weeks, while we sunned, surfed and over-ate, Cropp took to the racing calendar with a vengeance. And it may be vengeance she seeks, or to thumb her nose at doubters.

She rode at almost every available meeting, criss-crossing the country, jumping on planes to ride in towns such as Rangiora, Levin, Timaru, an exhausting schedule which saw her charge to the head of the jockeys' premiership from eighth a month ago.

In four weeks she matched the number of winners she rode in the previous four months.

On New Year's Day she chalked up another memorable career chapter, piloting within an hour the winners of two of the big races of summer, the City of Auckland Cup for stayers, and the Railway Handicap for equine speed merchants.

If she was elated with the first, her joy was boundless when Baldessarini outgunned the sprinters in the day's other $200,000 race.

Her smile was a chasm.

As she returned to the mounting yard to applause and a phalanx of photographers, she thrust her clenched fists skyward, a reminder that this is her arena, this is what she was born to do.

The contrast could not have been greater to the scene in a room not 50m away during the inquiry into her methamphetamine positive.

In that room there were no smiles.

She seemed taut, brittle, cornered, defiant.

With top jockey Michael Walker sidelined with a broken thumb, the resumption of that inquiry may be the main obstacle to Cropp winning back-to-back premierships.

If the charge against her is upheld she would likely face an immediate ban of up to a year.

For eight months, Cropp has engaged in an expensive legal arm-wrestle with racing authorities, holding at bay the charges laid by New Zealand Thoroughbred Racing (NZTR): that in breach of industry rules, she rode in races on May 7 with methamphetamine in her system, or, alternatively, that a urine sample she provided that day tested positive to the drug.

She has fought at every turn, challenging the rules and procedures not just for each step of the taking, handling and testing of urine samples but the process by which the Judicial Control Authority (JCA) formed the committee hearing her case.

One of her lawyers, high-profile criminal barrister Barry Hart, has indicated he is seeking a High Court judicial review regarding the latter.

Hart claims there is a procedural flaw in that a member of the JCA, which appoints the committee to hear the charges, was also a member of prosecuting body NZTR.

It boils down to a few days.

The member joined NZTR two days before the charges were laid, but his resignation from the JCA is not recorded until five days later.

The member is not on the two-person committee hearing the charges but Hart told the inquiry that having someone as a member of both bodies meant Cropp's right to a fair hearing could not be assured.

It may be a pointless exercise because even if successful, NZTR could lay the informations again. It is an example of the cat-and-mouse nature of proceedings that were expected to take a few days now at eight months with no end in sight.

Patience has been frayed. NZTR's lawyer, Crown Solicitor Simon Moore, at one point accused Hart of wasting time: "My learned friend is thinking it up as he goes along, conjuring up some intriguing grounds."

Hart, who has enlisted the services of Antony Shaw, a Bill of Rights specialist from Victoria University, took exception.

"It's unreasonable to suggest that we doodle along without any basis in law," he said.

The potential consequences to his client were serious and scrutinising the informant's case was no more than protecting the rights of all working in the racing industry.

Century-old case law has been quoted, minutiae of regulations trawled, but as yet the fundamentals of NZTR's case have not been challenged: that Cropp, a licensed jockey, was asked by a racecourse inspector to provide a sample for testing, that she did so to an authorised nurse, and that on analysis the sample was found to contain methamphetamine and amphetamine.

Where chief racecourse inspector John McKenzie restricts himself to describing such matters as "shadowboxing", Sports Minister Trevor Mallard used parliamentary privilege to label Cropp a "cheat".

Two days at Te Rapa racecourse in Hamilton's north marked last year's high and low points for Cropp. On Saturday, July 30, she made history on a horse named Good Reason.

It was win number 194 for the season for Cropp, one more than champion jockey Lance O'Sullivan's record.

For good measure, she flew to Oamaru and rode three winners the next day, the last of the season.

Breaking the record was her big prize, an achievement all the more meritorious because of what she'd overcome.

Twelve months earlier she had returned to race riding after a three-year absence, riding a winner appropriately named Explode Away.

Her "retirement" had been forced on her by a broken neck - her second such injury - suffered in a race fall in Macau. But the inactivity didn't suit her. Watching riders she considered inferior win races frustrated her.

In her comeback season she destroyed the record for a female of 109 wins, won the premiership by a country mile, and nabbed O'Sullivan's mark.

Pioneering woman jockey Linda Jones and Cropp's neighbour Mark Todd, a double Olympic equestrian gold-medallist who trained the horse Cropp rode to break the record, praised her focus, her grit.

Said Jones: "I knew a girl would win the premiership. It was just a matter of time. But to break the record is phenomenal."

Said Todd, who knew Cropp as a little girl at pony club: "I'm full of admiration for what she has done."

Said Cropp: "This is my dream."

But when the racing industry presented its awards at a glitzy function in August, Jockey of the Year was not among them.

A spokesman told the Weekend Herald that it was considered unfair on finalists for the vote to go ahead when the inquiry into Cropp's methamphetamine positive was incomplete.

What was not elaborated on are the difficult questions the methamphetamine positive raises.

A central one is whether Cropp was aided by a class A drug that lands dealers and suppliers in jail and is banned in sport because of its performance-enhancing effects.

Massey University's Chris Wilkins, a specialist on the impact of illicit drugs on society, says methamphetamine was used during World War II to help soldiers remain alert, aggressive and positive.

"It's one of the oldest types of performance-enhancing drugs, so there are benefits for all sports people."

Noradrenaline provides the hyped effect while dopamine promotes a sense of wellbeing and confidence.

It promotes weight loss by suppressing appetite and speeding metabolism causing calories to be burned quicker, which might appeal to a jockey along with the edge it gives to stamina, strength, courage and concentration.

Downsides can include short temper, paranoia, anxiety, depression, and exhaustion caused by interrupted sleep, over-exertion and inadequate nutrition.

It's a drug used by people from all walks of life, from building sites to plush Queen St offices.

John McKenzie acknowledges there are substances that can improve a jockey's performance but says New Zealand horseracing was unlikely to adopt a regime aimed at detecting performance-enhancing substances in jockeys in the absence of such a move internationally.

Saturday, May 7: Racecourse inspector Bryan McKenzie saw Cropp go into the female jockey's room at Te Rapa before the start of the first race and called out to her. Cropp told him to "wait a minute" because she needed to go to the toilet.

McKenzie - according to his evidence replied that she was to be tested that day and suggested that because of her previous difficulty providing a sample that they go straight to the testing station.

McKenzie said there was a delay of about 10 minutes before Cropp emerged. He accompanied her to the testing station where he introduced her to the nurse who was to take the sample.

He was later told by the nurse that "Lisa Cropp had been unable to supply a sample despite her claim to me a short time earlier that she needed to go to the toilet."

She did supply urine later in the day in which the nurse, and later scientists at Environment Science and Research (ESR) in Wellington, noticed contained hair and "what appeared to be straw".

In the race immediately before she produced her sample, Cropp presented 0.5kg overweight an unusual occurrence. NZTR claimed these were attempts to dilute her urine and contaminate her sample, "deliberate steps," Moore told the committee "to foil the tests ... so they would not reveal what they did".

The ESR tests revealed particularly high readings of methamphetamine and its metabolite amphetamine. Scientists gave evidence that the medications Cropp had declared were incapable of breaking down into methamphetamine or amphetamine.

Cropp's reading for methamphetamine was 100 times the threshold of 300 nanograms of the drug a mililitre of urine before a sample is regarded as positive.

She originally told media her positive was not for methamphetamine even though she had been formally notified that it was.

The Herald went to Cambridge to interview Cropp, who lives with her young daughter next door to her parents on a rural road. She was keen to tell the story of how she put her injuries and doubts behind her to win the premiership. "But I have some rules," she said. The methamphetamine positive must be ignored in the article. "You could be first to do this kind of story," she said. "I have got housewives back to work through what I have done." That is as far as the interview went.

Cropp has indeed been an inspiration to many. Punters yelled not the horse's name but "go Lisa" as they watched her race at Stratford.

Paul Moroney has known Cropp for 15 years. A racing manager, he was instrumental in her riding in Japan where she was the first foreigner to ride and the first female jockey to receive a full licence. "She was an absolute rock star up there," Moroney says. "I read a statistic that the biggest increase in on-course patrons in Japan was for girls 18 to 25."

Cropp was revered not only by girls. On her last day in Japan, the vice-president of the Japanese Racing Association made a special presentation. The chauffeur-driven car provided for her was mobbed. "I couldn't believe my eyes. It was like rock'n'roll."

Moroney, part owner of the country's top galloper Xcellent, describes Cropp as a "natural" who rides with an "international" style.

"She was virtually born on the back of a horse," he says, of the future star raised in a close-knit family centred around horses. She and her sister, Vicki, were standouts at pony club, and dad was a huntsman and trainer of the mighty Hunterville, three-time winner of the Great Northern Steeplechase.

She was in the company of Hunterville when Moroney first saw Cropp. "Lisa was leading the horse in after the Great Northern. This was a 17.1-hand horse, being led by this tiny tot who would only have been 8 or 9. This little wee girl leading this great big horse. That was Lisa."

Moroney has never seen Cropp show fear. When she planned a comeback after her last broken neck he went to visit her "to try to talk her out of it because she's a bionic woman, she's pretty much man-made from here up," he says jabbing a thumb into his chest, such is the surgery she's had.

Cropp is known as a jockey horses will run for. She doesn't need to rely on the whip to get the best from them.

By "international style", Moroney is referring to how Cropp rides with her weight over the horse's shoulders, using her strength to drive it forwards. "She doesn't grab the horses up tight, she has very soft hands and she rides on a long rein, and the horses relax for her."

As Zarius did last Sunday in the City of Auckland Cup. She didn't panic when the horse virtually fell out of the starting gates settling last in the field of 18.

Still there on the turn, Cropp eased the inexperienced gelding to the centre of the track and waited. A gap opened with 200m remaining and the pair drove through for a decisive win.

Cropp is undoubtedly one of the best jockeys racing in New Zealand. But is she the best? She won last season's premiership by so much it would seem there would be little room for argument. But her 197 wins came from 1261 rides, a staggering 60 per cent more than the next busiest jockey, premiership runner-up Hayden Tinsley, who was one of only four other jockeys to ride more than 700 races during the season and one of two with a ratio of winners to starts better than that of Cropp.

The industry's most prized events are called "group" or "listed" races. They carry the serious money and the most pressure. Cropp won six, but eight other jockeys won more. Leith Innes won 14.

"You can have someone who is really fit and dedicated flying around the country," says Pat Finnegan, author of Tapestry of the Turf, "and at the end of the season they haven't made that much. Whereas some are real good money riders. Joe McFarlane [who rode during the 1940s] only rode about 300 winners but when the money was up he'd come through."

O'Sullivan, for example, set his record of 193 wins in the 2001/2002 season from only 815 rides, 446 fewer races than Cropp took to beat it. "Physically, I don't know how she did it," says O'Sullivan, who describes Cropp as "talented and very driven".

Although competition is weaker at midweek meetings in out-of-the-way places, Moroney says Cropp maintained a remarkable standard considering her workrate.

Cropp has always had her mind set on getting to the top, Moroney says. "In a lot of cases those people will get there come hell or high water."

"Lisa has often in her life come first, second, third and fourth. That's part of her makeup that's got her where she has got. I don't mean in the trouble she is now in, but more in the way she has succeeded. She wouldn't think twice about getting under another jockey's neck to get a ride. Everyone's fair game."

Her singlemindedness helped her break into the top bracket in the tough Sydney competition, beating down the resistance of trainers to putting women on their horses, something Moroney rates as good as her New Zealand record. "Lady jockeys had no chance when she went there. Sydney was the last bastion."

She returned from Macau in 2001, her marriage over, fractures to three vertebrae and with a harder edge to her character. A year later her sister, after whom Cropp named her daughter, drowned in Florida.

"You wonder what drives people to where they get to in life," says Moroney. "There are usually reasons and Lisa has had her fair share of trauma, heartache and pain." Moroney believes Cropp draws motivation from her sister. When he visited to dissuade Cropp from returning to race riding there were pictures of Vicki on the fridge.

Cropp told him she had made up her mind to race again. "You're a long time dead," she said.

Cambridge is in the heart of Waipa District, and as proud districts often do, it advertises its successes. The faces of Olympians Sarah Ulmer, cyclist, the Evers-Swindell rowing twins and Mark Todd adorn billboards proclaiming the county "home of champions".

But for the baggage, the district may have been moved to add the name of a determined jockey.