Racing picks itself a winner

By MICHELE HEWITSON

There are many things to like about Bridgette O'Sullivan, the first ambassador for the Auckland Racing Club, but the thing I really like about her is that she is lying on her bed, in a sea of frothy, feathery big hats, insisting that she is "five foot one and a half. Maybe five foot two."

Next to O'Sullivan, short people like me feel very tall indeed.

You might imagine that, if you are a girl, there is much not to like about O'Sullivan.

She's model-thin and ever so pretty. She has flawless skin and lovely hair and perfect teeth. And she was a pony club girl. And she is really rich. When she said, "we're the house with the orange roof, you can't miss it," I thought, "you forgot to say we're the mansion with the circular drive and the acres of immaculate gardens and the gold taps in the bathroom".

A gardener is working when we pull up to the Matamata residence behind the silver Mercedes and the black SUV, but there are not acres of box hedging or fountains, and a child has written her name in the dust on the SUV. The gardener sticks her head in the back door and bellows "Bridgette".

The house is a substantial but plain brick and tile in leafy horse country. O'Sullivan laughs at the bad taste decor and says, "don't get the carpet in the photograph, or the curtains".

The carpet is pink and has seen plenty of traffic - the kids, the cat and Jack, the big, licky labrador, who is allowed to run up the hall with muddy paws.

O'Sullivan once appeared in a silly telly thing called Millionaire's Wives, which she says was a joke because, well, just look at her carpet.

She says she was told she was going to be in a telly thing called Sporting Wives and it was too late by the time she became uncomfortable with the questions and was told, "Oh, no we've changed the title". She was, she says, mortified.

As well she might have been, given that she lives her "basic, normal" life in a house designed for kids and pets. Anyway, she is as much responsible for the O'Sullivan millions as some bloke called Lance, her husband.

That bloke called Lance is the now retired-from-racing champion jockey. He is sitting across the dining table from us, pretending to read the paper. He says: "If I wasn't sitting here right now you'd say, 'You're the brains of it, aren't you?"'

She says: "I wish I was." But she certainly has business savvy. "Lance is really good at earning the money and I'm good at making it grow." The couple have property investments and horsey investments. Around, according to last year's NBR Rich List, $7 million worth.

Despite her substantial race day hat and shoe investments, they're not big spenders. She does have 80 pairs of shoes - they live in jumbled chaos on the wardrobe floor - and she knows this because Lance recently counted.

It is not only because she is one of those rare women who can carry off the wearing of hats which look like ornate wedding cakes that she will make the perfect ambassador.

There is little doubt that the Auckland Racing Club needs an image makeover.

It has a new board - the old one seemed to spend most of its time in-fighting - and a new chief executive in Chris Weaver, a bright young thing in an executive seat at Lion Nathan, with big plans for revamping a dingy Ellerslie course.

O'Sullivan's job is to persuade people that going to the races is sexy and cool and fun.

The current image, she says, is "older people, older men and perhaps older ladies in suits who don't really smile very much, maybe a bit snooty".

She would really like you to come to the races today and picnic on the "champagne lawn." There will be wine tasting and ethnic food stands and, of course, gee gees to have a flutter on.

There will also be girls in hats. What more could you possibly want?

You don't have a hat, or a girl with a hat? She hastens to add that "there's a place for everyone at racing. There's a place for the guy in jeans with his Best Bets in his back pocket. The guy I have seen my entire life who says, 'Oh Bridgette, have you got any tips from Matamata?"'

Her entire life is the clue to why she will make such a fabulous ambassador. She'll go on radio and TV, appear at press conferences, and talk about racing from the perspective, and with the grand, all-consuming passion, of somebody who grew up with horses and has never grown out of them.

At 10, she was sneaking out in her pyjamas to ride ponies on her grandparents' farm. She was a pony club girl but not one of those snooty ones. "We never had the flashest ponies, we just had nice old hacks."

Her step-father was a trainer. And "you definitely need an understanding of racing to marry a jockey. You need to understand the pressures of what it means to win and lose".

And that racing can be sexy and fun. "Once the women go all glammed up, you know what happens." She wants Ellerslie to be a "place for young people to have a wild old time like they do in Australia. Come and drink all day and bet and womanise ... then head off to Parnell to party".

Having O'Sullivan say such things personalises the message. That's the idea. She thinks a "20-year-old model" is likely to be on the publicity guff, on the billboards.

She's keen for the face of Auckland racing not to be her. But they'd be mad not to try to talk her into it because she is that rare thing: glamorous and friendly. Which is exactly the look racing needs to sell.

She admits she can scrub up all right, "but I think my children's school friends think there's two Bridgette O'Sullivans. They see this one on television sometimes, with the hat and the whole thing going on, then they see me taking the girls to school and I'm the tracksuit queen".

She's just what people mean when they say "oh there's no front to her."

She's made apple muffins for morning tea. She offers coffee, apologising for it being instant. Lance makes his own, because although they have been together for 14 years, he reckons she still can't make it right.

But he clearly adores everything about her. I talked to him in 2002 when he was on the brink of breaking legendary jockey Bill Skelton's record of 2156 wins. He spent most of the time talking to me about his wife.

The O'Sullivans met when she was 16 and married when she was 19. She is now 29, he is 40.

Says Lance: "She chased me for years."

They met when she was practising her dancing moves - she used to do ballroom and Latin American dancing - outside a race course. "Next minute I turned around and Lance was standing there watching me. I was soooo embarrassed."

Lance: "To save her from the embarrassment I married her."

Everywhere, on the walls, the shelves, the dressing tables and side-boards are photographs of Lance and Bridgette and their two beaming, blonde daughters.

This is a family who obviously can't imagine that anything could be more aesthetically pleasing than their own happy family pictures. They are, no surprise, a very nice family.

When the O'Sullivans build their dream home, Bridgette O'Sullivan will be rid of that pink carpet. They start building in September. Some time after that she will be able to say: "We're the house with the circular drive and the swimming pool and the library."

But she won't. My bet is that the muddy dog will still run up the hall, the kids will still stick stickers on the walls, there will be family photos on the walls where some rich people might have art.

And that she will still be as nice and sweet and friendly as a home-made apple muffin.