Sally puts bare feet up
Harness racing’s barefoot granny is finally calling it a day. And as Sally Fenning tells Barry Lichter, this time it’s for good
IT’S HARD to say what hits you first – the bare feet, the shorts or the smile. But one thing’s for sure, they’ll all be missed when our Sal says goodbye.
And yes, says Sally Fenning in her own inimitable way, this time it’s really for good.
Harness racing’s evergreen granny is finally putting her feet up – in a good ole Kiwi batch she’s bought right on the seaside in Mokau on the North Taranaki bight.
We’ve heard it all before, of course, how she’s sick of the endless travelling, the raceday hassles and the despised chores like cleaning gear.
But at 67, Fenning says this time there will be no comeback. She has her next next year all mapped out.
‘‘I’ll be spending three and a half months whitebaiting, three and a half months lying on the beach and swimming, and the other five months lying on my back reading a book.’’
It would have happened years ago had it not been for the challenge she was presented in the shape of two slow hasbeens, Joseph Perrier and Charles De Cazanove, by owner Kevin Walker.
And, standing here, the sole harness trainer in the on course stables at Thames, holding the pair with chewed up home-made lead ropes held together with tape, it’s obvious she’s found the key to their hearts.
Romeo ( Charles de Cazanove) gives her the occasional nudge in the back but two more wellbehaved animals you wouldn’t find.
‘‘ I know everyone was saying what’s she doing poking around with those bloody things?
‘‘Well, I just wanted to prove a point and now they’ve both won ( Charles De Cazanove scored at Auckland last month) I have.’’
Fenning described it as the highlight of her 37 years in the game when Joseph Perrier, the horse by Muscles Yankee who is bred to trot like a prince, but finally won a pauper’s race, pacing, at Te Awamutu last Saturday.
She nearly cried that day, when a stream of wellwishers stopped by to congratulate her – and says she’s likely to break down completely if Joey can repeat the dose at Te Aroha today.
‘‘ I’ve had to teach him what racing’s all about. He had no idea. He was always out the back galloping when he was a trotter.
‘‘When I told Kevin I wanted to throw the hopples on him and try him as a pacer he told me his horses didn’t wear hopples.
‘‘How do you teach an eightyear-old that he’s supposed to try to beat the other horses? He didn’t even know there was a purpose in being out there.
‘‘I’ve just given
him
the
confi- dence and when Morrie (Maurice McKendry) finally followed my driving instructions to make him go, and keep him off the rails, look what he did.
‘‘Put that in the story. That will gee up Maurice. He joked at Waipa that I didn’t have the horse fit enough before.
‘‘I was so stoked when he won I jumped up and hugged the guy next to me in the stand and I had no idea who he was.’’
Fenning reckons Joey grew a hand by the time he got home from Waipa, his confidence at an all-time high.
‘‘You don’t have to beat horses up to make them run, you just have to outthink them,’’ says Fenning who says she hates cruelty to animals so much she wants to come back in her next life in a world where animals rule.
Fenning might scoff at some of the stuff she learned in psychology when, after a marriage break-up, she went to university at the age of 50 but it’s obviously rubbed off on her.
‘‘The lawyers walked off with a hell of a lot of my money in the break-up and I decided I was going to be a lawyer. I ended up taking Maori as well. I figured if you were a lawyer and you could talk Maori you were in with a show.
‘‘But I lasted only six months. I used to go home to Awakino on Friday nights, sit on the verandah, look out over the bush and think ‘why am I doing this to myself, I’m not a townie’.’’
Sitting behind a desk was not in Fenning’s nature, not from the age of 23 when she discovered she had a capacity for physical work.
She worked as a firewood merchant in Mokau, going up into the bush to cut wood – ‘‘There’s no way I’d ring a woman to go cut wood for me if I was a bloke.’’
She’s milked cows, been an electroplater, a hairdresser, farmed pigs, worked behind bars.
Because her father was chief ranger at Mt Egmont, she’s been a deer stalker and pig hunter, like her son.
‘‘ I’ve learned different trades with each partner – the first was an electrician, the second a screen printer and the third a farmer and fisherman.
‘‘I fished for 10 years. Then I was attached to a beekeeper for a while and I had a shot at that.’’
Fenning’s liking for going barefoot probably stemmed from the time when she left hubby number two.
‘‘ I was as poor as a church mouse. I could literally afford to put gumboots only on my children’s feet – and there were four of them – but I went without.
‘‘I remember when I’d bring the cows in for milking I’d walk behind the last ones and try to hook my feet under their udders to warm them up. Or I’d walk through the cow pats to keep warm.’’
The early starts demanded of a horse trainer were learned when she’d be up at 4am and it ‘‘was as black as the inside of a cow.’’
‘‘I’d have to decide whether to walk over and risk tripping over the bull or ride the pony and risk being bucked off.’’
Fenning isn’t looking to change her single status again.
‘‘Gee, life’s fun when you’re on your own. I’m a bit of a perfectionist, I like things done my way.
‘‘It’s funny how men say I’m a knowall but women say ‘ gosh you’re knowledgeable’.’’
Fenning didn’t start to accumulate knowledge about racehorses until the mid 1970s when at the
I’d been out of the game for seven years once before and made a comeback only so I could be the first grandmother to drive a winner. Sally Fenning
age of 30 she started work for former Auckland Trotting Club president Noel Taylor.
It was during her time there that she met United States- based trainer Brian Pelling who was impressed by the job Fenning had done in mouthing the baby pacers.
‘‘He asked me how much I was being paid. I said $78 a week, and I was boarding two of his workers, and he offered me $US400 a week to come work for him.
‘‘ But I had four kids, and couldn’t go. I wonder where I’d be now if I had?’’
But Fenning says she’s had so much fun in the last 37 years she’ll have plenty to reminisce about when she’s stuck in her rocking chair.
Like her early years as one of the pioneers of women drivers when she’d compete in the non- tote Eyelure Derbies with Dorothy Cutts, Betty Newcombe, Dianne Cole, Belinda Holmes, Anne Cooney, Julie Fraser, Susan McKendry and Susan Gee.
Like her first race drive in 1983 in a quagmire at Hawera behind a green two- year- old when Bruce Simpson, who’d sold her her first broodmare, calmed her nerves by promising to hold her hand.
‘‘We got up behind the mobile and my horse started bucking. Bruce was beside me and he yelled: ‘‘I don’t mind holding your hand, but get out of my f... ing cart.’’
Like Hurricane Joe, the first horse she trained and drove to win at Stratford in 1985.
Like the day she won a race at Ellerslie with her galloper, Atom Smasher, in August, 1996.
Like the wet spring and summer of 2007 when she had a record 17 wins and was leading trainer in the country for seven weeks.
Like the feat of winning a race at Whangarei with Lady Marieke on December 29, 2008 when the horse hadn’t raced for 19 months and she hadn’t driven for two years.
Fenning gave up driving after Lady Marieke’s next start a week later when she ended up tangling with Rod Bowker’s cart and buckled a wheel.
Among her 81 training wins have been horses of the calibre of Walk This Way (seven wins), Cameron Jake ( five), When He’s Ready ( four), Everton Gladiator ( four), Clonmel (four) and What You Call (three) - 50 of them from her Thames base.
‘‘I’ve had plenty of other good horses, like Katelin Brooke (‘‘she was a maggot but I still loved her’’), who went to Australia and never did any good.
‘‘One trainer rang me up and said horses he’d bought off me never did any good. He reckoned my place was too much like an old folk’s home where the horses got spoiled,’’ says Fenning stopping to find and scratch an itch for Romeo, and admitting she loves her horses like her kids.
Fenning has photos of all her 14 driving wins, which she once used to decorate her specially kitted out house truck when she flirted in 2009 babysitting for other trainers, trekking round the countryside working their teams while they escaped for a holiday. She was also parked for six months at Dairy Flat after her bookings expired, driven mad by the Friday night Auckland traffic in to Alexandra Park.
The locum service was to have been her last hurrah – and she says there’s nothing that can bring her back again after the grass track circuit ends in a month or two.
‘‘I’d been out of the game for seven years once before and made a comeback only so I could be the first grandmother to drive a winner, which I did on Commander Scott.
‘‘It was supposed to be one win and I was finished but I’m still here.’’
This time there will be no owners like Dave Mobberley, Jamie Searle or Kevin Walker to tempt her back.
‘‘My back has given out on me and my nerve is nowhere near as good as it was. Jacky Simons has offered me a Sundon trotter but no, I’m over difficult horses. Touch wood, I think my house here is sold and I’ll just board or sleep with the horses until I’m done.
‘‘I’m looking forward to going home. Mokau’s one of the last of the sleepy places. It’s no Yuppyville like Oakura and I’ll be happy down there getting visits from my children and grandchildren.’’
Don’t think for a moment that Fenning will put on weight when she ditches her daily exercise round the racetrack.
‘‘I’ve been off smoking for six months and when I put on 2kg I started eating rabbit food (salads). And I’m a tightfisted old cow. I’m not buying any new clothes. I bought four pairs of shorts in Mokau – for summer, autumn and spring, and winter, and they should see me out
‘‘And no, there’s no back paddock for horses. Half my property is in the sea. There’s so much erosion I couldn’t get insurance but I reckon it will see me out.’’