Harold Russell Maddock
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Harold Russell (Russ) Maddock born in Brisbane in 1918 began his career as an apprentice in the early 1930s and in 1936 rode his first winner "Camogean" in Toowoomba. A provincial city approx. 80 miles west of Brisbane (the capital of Queensland) in Australia. He was apprenticed to a horsetrainer named Mitchell. He became one of the top Australian jockeys with many jockey's premierships to his name. In 1959 he was named "Jockey of the Century" during the Queensland Centennial. Despite regular attempts to tempt him overseas he remained in Brisbane until a short venture to Malaysia in 1960 followed by a contract in the UK saw him move to horseracing Utopia. He settled into the UK racing scene quickly with a win at his first ride in UK at Aintree on Mix n Match in the Earl of Sefton Plate 25/3/1961 and the wins soon mounted up. He was successful in the UK and France. A few of the horses he was associated with in the UK are "The Pouncer", "Althrey Don", "Mountain Call" and "Park Top". In 1969 he was injured in a racefall at Brighton. It was the end of his career but he continued to live in the UK at his London home. His wife Brenda continued her painting career and both daughters were on UK stage and TV and finally in 1981 he returned to Queensland and settled on "The Gold Coast" where he still resides.
He won 9 metropolitan Premierships in Queensland and many of his achievements have not been repeated before or after. His style has been compared to the great Scobie Breasley and in the UK it was sometimes hard to pick the two apart except by the racing colours they wore. When he received his UK licence to ride it was with the comment that his riding record was the cleanest the Authorities had come across. His second Premiership August 1946/July 1947 was won by riding 32 winners over 19 meetings (4 and a half months) A very bad race fall put him out of the saddle for the rest of the season (7 and a half months) He was so far ahead of the other jockeys that he still won by 3 winners after the full 12 months. I understand that the trophy he was awarded was the first proper trophy awarded to a jockey in Australia. Up to then a jockey was lucky to get a mounted whip. His judgement of pace and the ability to ride a horse out to its best by hands and heels without the use of a whip was legendary and many times a flourish of the whip to appease stewards who thought that violence was necessary was in fact hitting his own leg instead of the horse. His major race wins are too numerous to list here. Sufficient to say they were in Australia, Malaysia, France and UK. In his career he rode 1803 wimmers including 244 doubles, 44 trebles, 4 quadruples and two quinellas. extract from autobiography manuscript[citation needed]
Russ Maddock in Her Majesty's colours[edit] External links
