Racing: Jockey who filled racing pages settles for easier life

Danny Southworth victorious on Avon Ann at Ellerslie in 1982. Photo / Supplied

Danny Southworth says these days he never turns to the racing pages of a newspaper.

There was a time in the 1970s when he filled a fair bit of space himself in those newspapers.

Now the "mid-50s" ex-New Zealander spends his time with a much easier lifestyle on Queensland's Gold Coast.

But it's been a long and varied history since the days when he was a star apprentice with Colin Jillings at Takanini and winning a Railway on Marinoto and a 1000 Guineas on Braless.

Southworth has fought a long and tough battle with tongue cancer, which he now seems clear of. "That was because of smoking - so don't smoke."

Southworth originally moved to Australia for different health reasons - he and his wife Carolyn lost a child in New Zealand.

"We decided to move to Melbourne for a change of environment and to re-group. The first winner I rode there was for former New Zealander Ted Skinner, who trained Luck Roona back home.

"For the next four years I rode for Donny Campbell and for Nigel Landers. Nigel shifted a team up to Queensland and asked me to be stable rider and I went." But it didn't work out.

A track riding accident later ended Southworth's career.

"I'd started to ride a few winners in Queensland when one morning a 2-year-old I was jumping out of the gates came out bucking and threw me head-first into the running rail. They advised me never to ride again, so I retired." To supplement the family income Southworth drove a taxi.

"I hated every second of that job - people treat cabbies like crap." He and his wife now have a sunglasses stand at the Gold Coast markets.

"It's a living - it gets us by."

Their 21-year-old son, who is in the Australian Army, has moved from the south to live with them briefly as he waits for his orders to ship out on a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

"I don't have any watching brief on racing these days except for the Melbourne Cup, but I closely followed Sunline's career when she was racing.

"I've got a lot of fine memories of Trevor McKee, he and Noeline were wonderful to me.

"And I still keep in touch with some of my racing friends in New Zealand, like Ron Taylor."

On the Gold Coast he has been mates with Billy Smith, an Australian who rode very successfully for a time in New Zealand through the 1960s and who wrote his name into the record book with victory on Kiwi mare Hi Jinx in the Centennial Melbourne Cup.

"Graeme McLeigh and Debbie Healey, now Debbie Taylor, are good friends here."