KEY POINTS:
Bob Skelton says he'll have two thoughts racing through his mind when he walks on to Ellerslie racecourse today.
The first is the honour he feels in being inducted by the Auckland Racing Club into the Ellerslie Legends this afternoon.
The second is one of the hundreds of races he won on New Zealand's most famous racecourse.
And only one.
The 72-year-old might have won a Melbourne Cup on Van Der Hum, but he says Grey Way's Easter Handicap in 1977 under 60.5kg was one of his finest memories of one of the truly great careers in the saddle.
It wasn't just winning. It was winning when the rider had already given up.
Skelton was always one of the most honest jockeys after the race.
He said at the time, and he's happy to repeat it, he'd tried to pull Grey Way out of a gap that wasn't really there at the 175m because he felt it was too dangerous.
When Skelton was last at Ellerslie on Boxing Day 2005, his eyes went straight to the blade of Ellerslie home straight grass when he remembers saying to Grey Way, three decades earlier: "We're getting tightened, tightened, let's get out of here."
Grey Way and Skelton were behind a wall of probably the finest horses that ever made up an Easter Handicap field.
Great horses and great riders. No one was giving an inch.
At exactly the wrong moment for Skelton's nerve, Grey Way spied an opening - well, enough daylight for Grey Way to believe it was an opening and he charged, despite Skelton's opposite instructions down the reins.
Lumping his 60.5kg he barged through and beat horses of the calibre of Kiwi Can, Vice Regal and Tudor Light, any one of which would replace Sir Slick as favourite for Saturday's renamed Champions Mile.
Grey Way is one of those horses that makes that name appropriate.
Skelton says some of his finest racing memories are of Grey Way, who won a staggering 51 races, winning every season from 2 until he was 10.
"It was the ultimate to be on a horse that wanted to win for you.
"When I looked at the size of that gap, a gap that wasn't really there, I can tell you he wanted to win the Easter more than I did!
"He wanted to win. In my estimation the gap wasn't big enough. It brought tears to your eyes. I'd chickened out."
Bob Skelton was lucky to be on Grey Way. His brother Max originally rode the horse in the South Island before heading to Malaysia.
Bob Skelton was visiting the house of another brother when Grey Way's owner Peter South called to engage Bill Skelton, champion jockey at the time, for Grey Way for a Trentham race.
"I told Peter that Bill was down the road and he said: 'Is that Bob Skelton? You'll do.' Old William [Bill] never got on the horse."
Skelton said the affinity he ended up developing with Grey Way was the same as for three other greats he rode, Show Gate, Great Sensation and Star Belle.
"Star Belle was the best 3-year-old I ever rode - she beat the colts every time she met them."
Skelton moved to Australia more than 25 years ago and was riding work into his 71st year.
He gave up not because of his body, but because he had no more horses to train. "My last two horses, both New Zealand-breds by Personal Escort, won a race each then broke down 18 months ago and I haven't been on one since."
Perhaps significantly since he's given up the trackwork, Skelton's lower back has been playing up.
But there will be no signs of it in the Ellerslie birdcage today.
"My daughter Tracey is a physiotherapist in Devonport and she's been fixing me up all week. She's had me swimming every day and walking up hills."
Skelton will stay on for Saturday when he will once again be guest of the ARC for the Champions Mile.
