SHANE McGovern - the racing journeyman you'd never heard of until his lifelong journey ended in tragic circumstances.
- Bruce Clark
- 36 minutes ago
- 4 min read
It was only a few weeks ago Shane McGovern drove from his caravan trailer home on the Charters Towers racecourse to Mt Isa, about 800km, nine hours on the road, for five rides and no winners.
He was straight back on the highway to Barcaldine overnight, another 755km, eight hours, another five rides and again zero winners. (For a career journeyman jockey, they were to be the last rides for the 68-year-old.)
Petrol cost over $600 but riding fees at $257.50 per effort offset that on paper but shows that the Shane McGovern you may have never heard of until a tragic accident that led to an horrendous ending on Saturday morning, represents everything about the true spirit that keeps Australian racing ticking.
As James McDonald was cheered, typically timing it right on Birdman in the Doomben Cup for his 137th Group 1 win and giving Chris Waller his 200th, McGovern was respectfully being remembered around the country, much of which he had plied his trade across.
Both McDonald and Waller had one thing in common with Shane McGovern, they were Kiwis each from humble seeds but all hoping to sow richer crops in the industry that was their passion.
Of course, Waller and McDonald would grow to be the tallest trees in the forest, McGovern replanting himself time after time to find his place in the sun.
While McDonald was straight to Hong Kong first class for Romantic Warrior Sunday, Waller was contemplating his name alongside Smith and Cummings in the 200 Club, as he too lamented a departed friend and part-owner of Birdman (Mark Timms), the McGovern family were coming to terms with the loss of a supposedly indestructible character and a GoFundMe page was chugging along, they thinking Waller had indeed anonymously pledged.
You may have read how this final chapter started and it’s very sad ending.
McGovern with wife Kim (one time childhood best friends in New Zealand with a then Sarah Belcham, eventually Sarah Moody, wife of trainer Peter), were basically minders on the dilapidated Charters Towers track, gypsies transiting to wherever meetings needed jockeys in North Queensland. (Two horses were scratched at Mt Isa on Saturday because there were not enough available jockeys, Shane McGovern would normally have been on one of them.)
Kim always kept their small team going, Shane rode them until a one-time Waller trained galloper Reformist (a $140,000 yearling that they picked up third hand for $2750) collapsed dead on top of him, trapping him underneath for hours until he was found. You can imagine the pain and the loneliness.
A leg amputated, then another, dialysis, infections, blood clotting, gangrene, an induced coma, it was always going to be a challenge to the tough McGovern, one he eventually would succumb to as any hope for a better outcome vanished.
“He was a cheeky bugger,” his sister Leigh said. “He was loved by a lot of people; he’d do anything for people. If there was a bad horse Shane would ride it. He loved horses and horses loved him.”
Statistically McGovern joined more than 880 other riders who have “paid the ultimate price” doing what they love and were born to do.
But his racing story is why none should ever be dismissed as a mere bullet point or a memorial notation that the National Jockeys Trust can lean on.
Shane McGovern, despite original reports that he was 67, was 68, he would have been 69 next month and the oldest active jockey in the country following Keith Ballard’s recent retirement.
His career will never be Hall of Fame stuff - from 3000 rides, there were 317 wins - but McGovern gave the sport all he could and then ultimately himself.
Though a natural horseman, it took him almost three years to land his first winner and after a protest against what is registered on the Racing And Sports almost biblical data site, it is not their Coruba Reef at Matamata in July 1995 but Blue Movie at Levin in November 1994 for Alan Stratton, that courtesy of owner Mark Lupton, yes of course of the famous Snowy Lupton “Kiwi” family. He owned Blue Movie - the horse of course.
His winners map is littered with flags from Victorian picnics, like the 2009 Woolamai Cup on Palisander (see below), links with Robbie Laing, Rick Hore-Lacy and Peter Moody, moving on to Central New South Wales, riding winners at Parkes and surrounds before trying to eke out their existence nomadically across Queensland from Toowoomba to Longreach to Chinchilla to Yeppoon and eventually Charters Towers.
But it all started in New Zealand, McGovern’s father John a jockey who became too tall and heavy, before Bruce Deacon remembers him walking into his father legendary Kiwi trainer Brian’s stables.
Deacon would win a Brisbane Cup with Sky Flyer but was a master trainer of jockeys, Greg Childs did his apprenticeship at the Hawera stables along with the likes Maurice Campbell and Jim Walker and others
“We were full when Shane turned up and dad sent him to Herb Burgeson, he was a tough man, but Shane loved it, thrived on that,” Deacon said.
Burgeson is the grandfather of Sam Burgeson, now assistant to the Te Akau operation with Mark Walker.
“Shane would ride anything, if there was a bad horse, they’d put Shane on them, he just had no fear, he was tough and he’d get the job done,” Deacon said.
Deacon and McGovern were close friends as he was with the family.
“Shane could ride 54kg, break a collarbone and be back riding three weeks later he was as tough as, ride anything, get the job done,” Deacon said.
“He made a living and just thoroughly enjoyed the horses, he always did. And he’d never whinge.”
Shane McGovern’s last winner was for Kim with their own horse Willy The Kid at Cloncurry on March 28.
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