During a career constantly impeded by unsoundness, Kindergarten (Kincardine-Valadore) raced till he was nine but had just 35 starts. He won 25 of them, including among his wins three of the greatest weight-carrying performances of his or any era.
Unarguably the best three-year-old of 1940-41, when he won the last 10 of his 13 starts, Kindergarten lined up at that age in the ARC Easter Handicap. No respecter of youth, handicapper Frank McManemin gave the three-year-old 9st 11lb (62kg). That was 16lb – about seven kg – above weight-for-age. Near the back of a capacity field in the running, Kindergarten stormed home to win the big mile by a head. Two days later he won the Great Northern St Leger at a mile and three-quarters (2800m). After breaking down in Australia and missing most of his four-year-old season, Kindergarten was patched up to tackle the Easter again, this time with 10st 3lb (65kg). Again he came from near last to win. In the spring of 1942, a Melbourne Cup bid was planned for a five-year-old Kindergarten. But the dangers and uncertainties of wartime shipping kept him at home and, on a seemingly light preparation, he tackled the Auckland Cup instead under 10st 2lb (64.5kg). In the hands of Bert Ellis, Kindergarten took the lead under his big weight five furlongs (1000m) from home, dropped the bit again, then accelerated away in the straight to win by five lengths.
Though Kindergarten never got the chance to prove his class in Australia, the opinion held of him by the Melbourne handicapper can be ascertained. For three successive Melbourne Cups he accorded Kindergarten top weight at 9st 10lb, 9st 13lb and 10st 6lb respectively. Let 30-year handicapper Frank McManemin pass verdict: “The best horse I ever handicapped was Kindergarten. Not only that, he was the best horse I have ever seen.”

Race Record:
35 starts, 25 wins, 3 thirds

Cambridge Stud is the proud inductee sponsor of Kindergarten. Cambridge Stud is the premier privately owned and operated stud farm in the world and presently stands the Champion sire - Zabeel, Stravinsky and new sires - Keeper, One Cool Cat and Viking Ruler. For further information please call 07-827-7887

The trainer known as much to his friends as the racing public as “Jillo” handed in his trainers licence in 2004.  He had held that licence for an amazing 54 years.

Regarded as a master trainer of stayers, he trained 1327 winners in total, 703 of those in partnership with fellow trainer Richard Yuill.

Often referred to as “racing’s gentleman trainer” and respected and admired by his peers, Jillings was renowned for his ability to set a horse for a race after mapping out the target  a long way out.
Saddling his first winner, Lawful, while still aged in his 20s, to win the Great Northern Derby in 1958, Jillings was to go on and win a Derby in each subsequent decade up to his retirement.

As well as training five New Zealand Derby winners, he trained three New Zealand Oaks winners, and won four Auckland Cups, a Wellington Cup and two New Zealand Cups.

His versatility  as a trainer were also demonstrated in jumps racing where he won three Great Northern Steeples and two Great Northern Hurdles.

Associated with many memorable horses, some of his best performers included Uncle Remus, McGinty and The Phantom Chance, who won the WS Cox Plate from the Jillings/Yuill stable as well as the New Zealand Derby.
 

The only apprentice to salute the judge before a young Queen Elizabeth at the Royal Ellerslie meeting of 1953 – not a bad win, either: the Railway Handicap on Te Awa – O’Sullivan rode for less than a decade (125 winners) before weight problems forced him out. Setting up as a trainer at Matamata, he first became known as a successful mentor of apprentices. Roger Lang, Peter Johnson, Shane Dye and eventually his son Lance were just some of the top riders who came from the stable. Equine winners also came off the property in a steadily expanding stream until (ultimately in partnership with his son Paul) O’Sullivan found a regular place at the top of trainers’ list. Dave O’Sullivan retired in 1998 with a lifetime tally of 1877 wins (at present the New Zealand record), 1613 in partnership with Paul. Dave won the premiership on his own in 1978-79, another 10 titles in partnership with Paul. Oopik, Golden Rhapsody, Sharivari, Waverley Star, Paul De Brett, La Souvronne, Blue Denim, Mapperley Heights and champion mare Horlicks were among the many Group One performers to wear the O’Sullivan polish.

Dave O'Sullivan is proudly sponsored by TRAC racing consortium which consists of the racing clubs in the Bay of Plenty, Taupo, Te Aroha and Matamata regions.

Other jockeys bettered Grenville's lifetime tally of 1,278 wins, but none equalled his popularity with the public. Grenville had charisma. Twenty years after Grenville Hughes retired from race riding, he was a guest on Radio Pacific. The switchboard was jammed with calls all afternoon.

A master stylist and judge of pace, Grenville excelled in weight-for-age races and is especially remembered for his partnership with chestnut champion Mainbrace – another Hall of Fame inductee - on whom he won 23 races from 24 rides.

David Peake first appeared on winning jockeys' list 1962-63, retired 40 years later as the winner of 2,085 races in New Zealand, the third biggest-winning jockey in New Zealand history.

David won six NZ Jockey Premierships, rode the most winners of any jockey in the 1970s (794) and held the course record for winners at Ellerslie (392) until topped by champion jockey Lance O'Sullivan.

Renowned as a rider of stayers David regularly rode track work over the years – every bit the professional.

At the end of the 2002-03 season, Lance O’Sullivan retired from race riding at the top (three winners at Tauranga from his last three rides) and with every record in New Zealand flat racing safely in his saddle bags. With a New Zealand tally of 2358 he held the record of wins by a New Zealand jockey – and that was without adding the wins in Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Macau, Singapore and, yep, one in Turkey which brought his lifetime tally to 2479. In 2001-02 he rode 193 winners to reclaim the New Zealand record for wins in a season which a young Michael Walker had briefly taken from him the season before. O’Sullivan retired with 12 New Zealand premierships to his credit, having broken Bill Broughton’s long-standing record of 11 premierships. All of these records placed O’Sullivan firmly at the head of his profession at the time of his retirement. What makes them a testament to character, professionalism and determination as much to innate ability is that they were achieved – or at least completed – after a horrendous race fall at Moonee Valley in which O’Sullivan’s left leg was so badly smashed that it took three years, three operations and unguessable grinding pain before he could return to race riding in 1998-99. O’Sullivan was born on August 28 1963 into a racing family. His father Dave, a good journeyman jockey who became a champion trainer, was followed into a training partnership by Lance’s brother Paul; Lance rode 181 winners while apprenticed to his father. Over two decades the O’Sullivan trio – trainers and jockey – became the most formidable team in New Zealand’s racing history. Lance won 50 Group One races, perhaps his most memorable being the 1989 Japan Cup on Horlicks, the W.S.Cox Plate on Surfers Paradise and that remarkable third ARC Railway Handicap win on Mr Tiz, on whom he won six Group Ones. Since his retirement from the saddle, Lance O’Sullivan has seamlessly turned his talents to training.

Lance O'Sullivan is sponsored by Highview Stud. Highview Stud stands an excellent line up of stallions including exciting young sires - Johar, Align and Danbird, and well established sire - Kashani. Highview welcomes your enquiries. Please phone Brent Gillovic on 07-825-2649.

The oldest of five jockey brothers from Greymouth, Bill Skelton began his successful career in the South Island, moved to Levin in 1964 and continued to pump out the winners at just as high a rate. He won seven premierships spread across three decades – four in the 1950s, two in the ‘60s and one more in the ‘70s – and was either first or second leading rider in each of those three decades. His winning tally of 124 in the 1967-68 was a record until headed by David Peake, with 127, in 1982-83. Skelton was the first New Zealand jockey to ride 2000 winners and retired with a then record tally of 2156. He rode successfully as well in Australia, where his best win was the VRC Derby on Daryl’s Joy.

Bill Skelton is sponsored by Bloodstock PR Ltd a company associated with NZRHF director - Phillip Quay. Phillip is an internationally acclaimed independent journalist and can be contacted at 07-846-4507.

Going into a racing stable behind older brothers Bill and Frank, Bob Skelton won his first premiership in 1955-56, three years behind Bill’s first, and wound up his career with nine titles to his credit, the last in 1975-76. He also topped the 2000 mark for career wins. Taller than his stocky oldest brother, Bob had a different riding style; high in the saddle and, often, with a loop on the rein. Horses “went” for him and he was a great judge of pace, notching more two-mile (3200m) wins than any other rider in Australasian history that we’ve been able to discover. He was derided for his awkward-looking style on early visits to Australia, but got the last laugh when he won the 1976 Melbourne Cup on Van Der Hum.

Bob Skelton is sponsored by Northern Ceilings NZ Ltd - a company associated with racing enthusiast Nick Rodokal of Auckland. Northern Ceilings is one of the largest specialty ceiling companies and can be contacted at 09-416-9227.

Sir George was born in New Zealand but educated in England at Stonyhurst College, after which he named his sheep and thoroughbred station in North Canterbury. Sir George bred and raced on a huge scale, standing several generations of homebred stallions at Stonyhurst with a good deal of success. Clifford horses, trained at Chokebore Lodge by Edward Cutts, won 181,258 pounds on the turf, eclipsing the tallies of Australia’s most prominent owners of the day, and won 116 classic or semi-classic races over a 50-year period. For the first decade of the 20th Century, virtually his only challenger as leading owner was fellow Cantabrian George Stead. Both frequently travelled their horses north to Auckland to win the major races at Ellerslie. Sir George was unchallenged as president of the New Zealand Racing Conference for a 30-year period, up to his death aged 82 in 1930. Yet he still found time, while running his big breeding and racing operation, to have hands-on involvement in the production of the first official New Zealand Stud Book (1900), and the next two or three volumes as well.

Sir George Clifford was proudly sponsored by Barry and Deidre Neville-White of Auckland. Barry Neville-White is a past Chairman of the Auckland Racing Club. It is interesting to note that the first five inaugural inductees into the NZ Racing Hall of Fame were based or born in Canterbury.

At the forefront of the thoroughbred industry as proprietor of Cambridge Stud for the past three decades, Patrick Hogan was recognised for his services to racing with a knighthood shortly before that title was removed from the New Zealand honours list. Born in Auckland in 1939, the young Patrick Hogan became involved in the breeding industry in the 1960s with his father Tom and brother John at the relatively low-key Fencourt Stud near Cambridge, where Blueskin II was a successful sire.
Wanting to operate on a bigger and more commercial scale, Patrick set up Cambridge Stud on his own in 1972. His entrepreneurial and marketing/promotional skills quickly brought him prominence. With the National Yearling Sales his focus, his “Melbourne Cup,” he moved staff and yearlings to Trentham (then the home of the sales) on a previously unknown scale, was a pioneer in the hospitality tents which became a sales feature, and became a renowned presenter of yearlings. Leading his own yearlings into the ring in those days, as brisk and well presented as the young thoroughbreds, he knew where the buyers were positioned (the Australian market was his target from the outset) and made sure the main players got a good look at the youngsters he led.
Sir Tristram, the stallion who was to build Cambridge Stud into a showplace and an unquestioned market leader, arrived in 1975 and, though greeted with lukewarm enthusiasm at first by the market and by some of Hogan’s established clients, made sensational progress from the time his oldest progeny turned three and included the likes of multiple Group One winner Sovereign Red. When he died, 22 years after coming to Cambridge Stud, Sir Tristram had been Australian champion sire six times (only once at home, where relatively few of his best-bred progeny raced) and had won five Dewar Awards (for combined Australian-New Zealand progeny earnings). He was second in the world for individual Group One winners (45). Sir Tristram founded a sire son dynasty (Grosvenor, Kaapstad, Marauding and Military Plume notable among them) but it was not until late in the great stallion’s life that Sir Patrick acquired a Sir Tristram son, the well-performed and well-bred Zabeel, to stand alongside his ageing father and take up the mantle. Zabeel was to outshine the other sons of Sir Tristram and rival his father (as at October 2005, two Australian championships and always in the top two or three; three New Zealand championships; a remarkable nine Dewar Awards; 33 individual Group One winners) and keep Cambridge Stud in a pre-eminent position. With his wife Justine Lady Hogan, Sir Patrick has been four times Mercedes Breeder of the Year and in 1991 received the Mercedes Award for Outstanding Contribution to Racing. A past president of the New Zealand Thoroughbred Breeders Association and a major racing sponsor (especially at Te Rapa), he has been a large-scale racing owner in recent years. Going into the 2005-06 season, he had an interest in 46 racehorses, including a dozen two-year-olds.

Sir Patrick Hogan is sponsored by the internationally acclaimed hospitality lodge - Huka Lodge of Taupo. Huka Lodge is a NZ business icon and we are delighted to have this association. For further information on Huka Lodge and its facilities please call 07-378-5791.

George Gatenby Stead was 12 times leading owner in the 1890s and early 1900s, but this conveys only a part of the influence he wielded on New Zealand racing in the early days. He was treasurer of the Canterbury Jockey Club for more than 30 years and chairman from the turn of the century, at a time when the strength of New Zealand racing was very much based in Canterbury. Active in the formation of the Racing Conference, he was much involved in the formation of a uniform set of rules throughout the country, and oversaw the building of a railway line from the main line to Riccarton racecourse. At first a leviathan punter, he became an enthusiastic supporter of the totalisator and was played a leading role in moving New Zealand racing to an all-totalisator structure. With only two trainers – David Jones and Dick Mason – during a 30-year period, Stead raced many of the best gallopers of his era and won all the country’s feature races on numerous occasions. He also made some stunningly successful raids on Sydney racing. He was a fearless buyer of bloodstock, but also imported some significant stallions and broodmares to New Zealand.

George Stead was proudly sponsored by the Canterbury Jockey Club - the premier racing club in the South Island. Stead is recognised as the founder of the Canterbury Jockey Club.