Leonard Ross "Mick" Dittman (born 2 July 1952 in Rockhampton Queensland) is a retired Australian Racing Hall of Fame jockey.
Nicknamed "The Enforcer" due to his strong use of the whip, he was renowned for his vigour and strength in a tight finish. [1] He rose to become one of the best jockeys in the country.
Some of the achievements during his career included winning the Melbourne Cup (Gurner's Lane), three Golden Slippers (Full On Aces, Bounding Away and Bint Marscay), two Cox Plates (Red Anchor and Strawberry Road) and a Caulfield Cup (Sydeston). [2]
During a career spanning more than thirty years in the saddle it is estimated he has won more than 1,700 races (which included 88 Group 1 races) and through his partnership with trainer Tommy Smith also won three Sydney Jockey Premierships.
Mick Dittman was inducted in the Australian Racing Hall of Fame in 2002.
Thoroughbred horse racing is a spectator sport in Australia, and gambling on horse races is a very popular pastime with A$14.3 billion wagered in 2009/10 with bookmakers and the Totalisator Agency Board (TAB). The two forms of Thoroughbred horseracing in Australia are flat racing, and races over fences or hurdles in Victoria and South Australia. Thoroughbred racing is the third most attended spectator sport in Australia, behind Australian rules football and rugby league, with almost two million admissions to 360 registered racecourses throughout Australia in 2009/10. Horseracing commenced soon after European settlement, and is now well-appointed with automatic totalizators, starting gates and photo finish cameras on nearly all Australian racecourses.
Ángel Tomás Cordero Jr. is a Puerto Rican jockey. He is known for being one of the winningest Thoroughbred horse racing jockeys of the late 20th-century and the first Puerto Rican to be inducted into the United States' Racing Hall of Fame. He led all jockeys in wins at Saratoga Race Course for thirteen years. Cordero rode three Kentucky Derby winners and won over 6000 races in his career.
Carbine (1885–1914) was a champion New Zealand-bred Thoroughbred racehorse who won 30 principal races in New Zealand and Australia. He was very popular with racing fans, and sporting commentators of the day praised him for his gameness, versatility, stamina and weight-carrying ability, as well as for his speed. He was one of five inaugural inductees into both the New Zealand Racing Hall of Fame and the Australian Racing Hall of Fame.
Russell Avery Baze is a retired Canadian-American horse racing jockey. He holds the record for the most race wins in North American horse racing history, and is a member of the United States Racing Hall of Fame and the State of Washington Sports Hall of Fame.
Archer (1856–1872) was an Australian Thoroughbred racehorse who won the first and the second Melbourne Cups in 1861 and 1862. He won both Cups easily, and is one of only five horses to win the Melbourne Cup twice or more and is one of only four horses to win successive Cups. In 2017 Archer was inducted to the Australian Racing Hall of Fame.
Thomas John Smith was a leading trainer of thoroughbred racehorses based in Sydney, New South Wales.
Harry White was an Australian jockey. He was one of the country's leading jockeys, especially in the 1970s, and was a four-time winner of the Melbourne Cup. He also won three Newmarket Handicaps, three Oakleigh Plates and three Futurity Stakes.
Super Impose was a New Zealand-bred Thoroughbred racehorse who was inducted into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame. In a career spanning 74 starts, he won eight Group One races and a then Australasian record $5.6 million in prize money. Trained throughout his career by Lee Freedman and ridden in his Group One wins by Bruce Compton (once), Darren Gauci (once), Darren Beadman, and Greg Hall (once), Super Impose won the AJC Epsom and Doncaster Handicaps two years in a row, in 1990 and 1991, and won the Cox Plate at his penultimate start as an eight-year-old in 1992.
Jorge Velásquez is a thoroughbred horse racing Hall of Fame jockey.
Shannon (1941–1955), named Shannon II in America, was an outstanding Australian Thoroughbred racehorse who was inducted into the Hall of Fame. He created new racecourse records in Australia before he was sold to an American buyer who exported him to California in 1948. There Shannon equalled the world record of 1:473⁄5 for the nine furlongs in winning the Forty Niner Handicap Stakes, then one week later equalled the world record of 1:594⁄5 for a mile and a quarter. Shannon was named the 1948 American Champion Older Male Horse. At stud in America he proved to be a good sire.
A race caller is a public-address announcer or sportscaster who describes the progress of a race, either for on-track or radio and TV fans. They are most prominent in horse racing, auto racing and track-and-field events.
Raymond Shane Dye, is a former jockey. He was an apprentice jockey to Dave O’Sullivan at Matamata, before moving to Sydney, Australia where he was initially working with Vic Thompson at Warwick Farm in the late-1980s. In a distinguished riding career, Dye won the Melbourne Cup on Tawriffic in 1989 in then-record time, and won four consecutive Golden Slippers from 1989 to 1992. He also won the Cox Plate on Octagonal in 1995.
Gurner's Lane (1978−2000) was a Thoroughbred racehorse who was the 1983 champion. He is best remembered for winning the Caulfield and Melbourne Cups double in 1982. Gurner's Lane was just the seventh of 11 horses to complete this rare double.
Peter Pan (1929–1941) was a chestnut Australian Thoroughbred racehorse and stallion.
George Thomas Donald MooreOBE was an Australian jockey and Thoroughbred horse trainer. He began his career in racing in 1939 in Brisbane where he quickly became one of the top apprentice jockeys and where in 1943 he won the Senior Jockeys' Premiership. He then relocated to Sydney and in 1949 went to work for trainer Tommy J. Smith with whom he would have considerable success.
Jim Cassidy, often referred to as "Jimmy" is a retired New Zealand jockey who has been inducted in both the Australian Racing Hall of Fame and the New Zealand Racing Hall of Fame.
Eurythmic (1916–1925) was a versatile Australian-bred Thoroughbred racehorse who had the ability to produce a brilliant finishing run in staying races and he also won important sprint races, too. At four he won 12 of his 13 starts including the Caulfield Cup and Sydney Cup. When Eurythmic finished racing he was the greatest stake-winner in Australia. He was later inducted into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame.
James Hugh Bowman is an Australian thoroughbred racing jockey. Based in Sydney, Bowman has won the New South Wales Metropolitan Jockey Premiership four times and has ridden 100 Group 1 winners. He was the jockey for Australian champion mare Winx from 2014 through to her retirement in 2019. In 2017, Bowman won the Longines World’s Best Jockey award presented by the International Federation of Horseracing Authorities. The award capped off a year in which he added to his domestic success with international Group 1 wins in Hong Kong and Japan. In 2019, he was inducted into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame, the industry’s highest accolade. Bowman is also renowned for his “She’s Apples” winning salute and his nickname of “the Undisputed Group 1 King”.
Brent Thomson is a New Zealand jockey, who is best known for winning the Cox Plate on four occasions and his association with the champion horse Dulcify.
Winooka was a bay Australian thoroughbred stallion who raced for 5 seasons from a two-year-old to a six-year-old including America recording major wins from 6 furlongs to 1 mile and winning jockeys being Stan Davidson from Newcastle and Sydney Australian Racing Hall of Fame inductees Jim Pike and Edgar Britt.