Platinum Racing

Today my earliest hero in racing turns 68 years old, but it will be just really another day of struggle for a man who is now confined to a wheelchair after having suffered multiple strokes who has lived in a housing commission house on the South Coast of NSW for the best part of 30 years.

But for Barry "Weasel" Dawes, life wasn't always like that. In the 60's there was no brighter rising star in Sydney racing than this super talented apprentice who cut a swathe through the riding ranks that was littered with legendary jockeys like George Moore, Athol Mulley, George Podmore, Bill Camer, Ray Selkrig, Des Lake, Jack Thompson, Stan Cassidy and co.

It was also a great period for apprentices with the likes of Ross Spackman, Dorian Osborne, Dennis Sullivan, Frank White, Frank Powyer - but none better than the boy from Auburn, Barry Dawes.

Barry did not grow up in a racing family, being raised in the working class suburb just upstream from the putrescible wasteland that surrounded the heavily polluted Duck Creek and cross wind from the fumes that spewed 24/7 from the catalytic cracking plant at the nearby Shell Oil Refinery.

A slighlty built, freckled faced redhead with very pale skin, modelling was never an option for Barry (hence the less than flattering nickname), and a family friend sugested he have a crack at being a jockey so he entered the stables of legendary Randwick trainer Frank McGrath.

He started from a knowledge base of nil about horses, but within just a few short years he stood Sydney racing on its ear.

He and his boss won scores of races with horses like Kwatcha, Emmett, Borneo, Muchacho, Yulcarley and Mercantile (who wore the famous all dark blue livery of Sir Alan Potter) among many others. Barry also built a very strong relationship with trainer Stan Lomond who trained almost exclusively for Bill Bradshaw in those famous orange, white sleeves, red armbands and orange cap and Barry won many races for them including a Tramway on Prince Regoli and wore those colours in two Melbourne Cups as an apprentice on board Prince Regoli and Polo Prince another horse he won many races on including a City Tatts Cup.

He also became the jockey of choice for trainers such as Baden Hasler (Aglitter is one of their multiple winners that comes to mind), Jim McCurley (Sedgwick and Kindred Star were among the horses they won many races with).

Barry was associated with many good horses, apart from the aforementioned including Tamure (another Tatts Cup), Gili, Persian Comic, Son Of Tod (for the legendary Maurice McCarten) etc.

In no time at all the apprentice's title was sitting on Barry's mantlepeice. He went within a half win the following year of repeating the dose, going into the last day half a win behind Fred Allsop's apprentice Dorian Osborne. It all came down the the last on the card and Barry was beaten narrowly on Sedgwick by Dennis Sullivan on Trigger Wood at a Wednesday meeting at Warwick Farm.

My father had spent a part of his apprenticeship with McGrath and he was riding work for his old boss when Barry entered the stables and Barry soon became a fixture at our dinner table and on weekends after the races. He and his fellow apprentice travellers, Gerald "Cricket" Phillips and Ian "Bluey" McLaughlin were all apprenticed to McGrath at the same time. Gerald went on to work for the AJC for many years and he was in charge of the fluctuation board in the paddock at AJC meetings for many years.

Last time I saw Ian he was driving buses for the Government. Barry was off and running. Soon came the flash car, one of those early model two toned Ford Customlines that resembled the Batmobile only the chassis was longer on the Ford. Barry had a great sense of fun, I remember one night he, George Costello (later famous for having won nine straight on champion hurdler Lots of Time - a run that came to an end when he was beaten into second place in the Grand National by Brother Bart), Ian and Gerald raided our house from the front and back throwing eggs at everyone like they were confetti at a wedding.

The "gooey fight" as it became known in our family circles, spilled into the street before supplies ran out and everyone manned their cars to rush down to Bream Street in Coogee to restock. It culminated with neighbours and people calling the law and stern warnings were issued before the mammoth clean up was undertaken.

I spent my pre-pubescent years when I was in Sydney cheering Barry home at the races and when we moved bush glued to Ken Howard's broadcast of winner after winner he rode. I remember when Barry won the first race on Kindred Star at Warwick Farm one day and four horses fell on the turn and the stewards abandoned the remainder of the meeting.

He turned up at our place and gave me the whip he used that day. There wasn't a sofa, lounge chair arm, pillow or fence that wasn't marked by that whip for some time.

But, Barry's star took the trajectory of a shooting star as he came out of his time. He lived the high life and became involved with, to use the well worn axiom, the "wrong people." He was soon befriended by the then warned off "Hollywood George" (Edser) and the racing grapevine was abuzz.

It all came to a grinding halt for Barry when he went to Hawkesbury with less than honest intentions on board a short priced favourite Coravordi. I suppose he invented Frankie Dettori's now world famous "star jump" - only problem was Frankie does them in the enclosure after winning - Barry chose to do his on the crest of the home turn when Coravordi had bolted to the front and, fearing the aftermath of getting home dead on the horse Barry opted for the early dismount.

He broke his pelvis in the fall when he hit the running rail. For the trainers that had remained faithful through thick and thin - it was the end. When he returned to the saddle the rides had dried up and full books soon became one ride a meeting. Leading Melbourne trainer Geoff Murphy had long been a fan of Barry's talent and he rang Barry up, laid down the law and offered him a lifeline.

He told Barry if he came to Melbourne, kept his nose clean and turned up every morning and he would "give him a go." He had no option - he knew he was "off tap" in Sydney so he headed to Melbourne.

Within a few short weeks his life changed forever. He was driving home from a provincial meeting and fell asleep at the wheel and wrapped his car around a tree. He damaged his legs irrepairably and at one point it was feared he would not walk again, and certainly riding again was out of the question.

At 23 years of age the name B. Dawes was about to disappear into the cobweb ridden annals of the turf. The rehabilitation process was arduously long, callipers, crutches, but worst of all he developed an addiction to pain killing drugs. His next ten years were spent in a blur of pain and battling his injuries, as well as slipping into a drug fuelled world that saw no boundaries.

Enter Georgina. This lovely, straight-talking black haired woman, a divorced mother of three met Barry and, despite all the baggage Barry had, Georgie drove him till he began to claw his way off the bottom of the well of life.

At 35, the unthinkable happened. Despite having constant pain, not being able to ride as short as he used to, Barry started to ride work again at Kembla Grange (where Georgie and he lived). Georgie knew he missed horses and riding and thought riding work was better rehab for him than any counselling. She was right.

The next year we all made the trek to Kembla for Barry's comeback, on board a horse called Mildie in a maiden at Kembla. Mildie was then trained by Bob Bates at Kembla (and later she was transferred to George Hanlon where she won several quality races in Victoria). It was a surreal occasion, and all of us did not know if Barry was doing the right thing. He had a very pronouced limp as he walked to get on the little chestnut mare with a white face, and had to reach down physically to put his feet in the irons as his shattered kneecap did not allow him to lift his right leg up and slide it into the stirrup.

Barry told us he was confident the mare would win - he was a good judge in another lifetime and to be quite honest I am sure we all put our money on out of hope rather than confidence and my most fervent hope was that a glimmer of the former B. Dawes was on display.

From barrier 5 he was third and fourth on the fence inside 100 metres, and tracked the leaders to the turn. Just before the 200 metres a gap came between the two leaders and Barry's innate race sense kicked in and he drove the mare into the gap in two strides at the same time pulling the whip. I have never seen a Tuesday crowd at Kembla go "ape" as they did that day as she raced clear to win by a length or so.

That night Barry was in severe pain from the just one ride. The press was all over the story and Rosehill trainer Kerry Walker engaged Barry for Total Abstainer at Canterbury the following week.

He gave Total Abstainer a gun ride that day but he was not good enough. I remember Barry talking to me on the phone that night after I asked him what it was like to have a ride in town again after all those years. "I can't do this much longer Gaz, the pain during a race is just too much," he said.

The comeback was short lived. His body would just not permit him to do it. He could ride work and handle that pain but the pressure of race riding was just too much for his shattered legs. He had nothing to prove, he proved that day on Mildie that all the skill, finesse and race brain was still there - just his body could not cope.

Soon the pain got too much for him to even continue riding work and he and Georgie settled into a happy life with them getting to the odd Kembla meeting and listening to the races and having small bets, before SKY Channel came into being and he could watch at home. As he said to me on the phone last night "it will never get out of my blood."

Life dealt him a further shattering blow about 10 years ago when Georgie died of breast cancer and subsequent to that Barry has had a series of strokes that have confined him to a wheelchair.

My sister and I are going down to take Barry to lunch for his birthday and no doubt racing will be the centre of conversation as it always is with Weasel.

I was indeed one of the luckiest kids on the planet that growing up I got to know my hero on a very personal level. Sure, I had photos and newspaper clippings of Barry's success on my wall, in my schoolcase and of course I had "that whip", but more than that he would spend hours with me talking about horses, racing, other jockeys, and what he had had learned from George Moore - his idol. For a person who hated riding and reading he would spend hours at our place on Friday night going through form, talking about where he expected his horses would be in the run and who he would follow etc.

But as much as I was in awe of what he did as an apprentice (even Max Presnell, formerly of The Sun and now the Sydney Morning Herald wrote a column in the 90's on vigorous riders where he called Barry as good a whip rider as he had seen) - I am even more of awe of what he achieved away from the racetrack and the pain he went through from a very young age and how he has faced each health hurdle now, on his own, and previously with Georgie's support.

It probably explains why he was a great jockey in the first place. He may be 68 today - but he can look back on a period in the 60's where he had a racing career that only few can dream of. Barry was a champion on the track, but he has been just as cosmic off it.