SOUTH WALES & MONMOUTHSHIRE AREA
NEWS
JOANNE RECOVERING AT HOME
by Brian Lee
All hunt-racing enthusiasts will want to wish racecourse steward Joanne
Hawkins a speedy recovery after her operation for cancer.
Joanne currently acts as a British Horseracing Authority steward at Hereford,
Chepstow, Ffos Las and Bath and in 2008, after stewarding at a number of point-to-point meetings in the South Wales area, answered a request by the BHA to
train other stewards with a view to sitting on the steward panel at Ffos Las Racecourse.
Following the completion of a 10 day training course at racecourses all over the
country, then followed by a 12 month probationary period in 2009, Joanne joined the
Stewarding Committee as a regular steward at Hereford, Chepstow and Ffos Las.
For the past two seasons, Joanne has attended more than 60 meetings experiencing
a wide and varied portfolio of incidents in the Stewards Room.
Sadly, last September, Joanne was diagnosed with cancer and is recuperating at
home in Usk.
Joanne was born into the racing world as her grandfather George Rees and her mother
Bridget Doherty were both keen hunt-racing fans. She went through the usual
Pony Club and Prince Philip Cup team events and hunting before riding out for Vale of
Glamorgan trainer Bryn Palling at the tender age of fourteen.
A former point-to-point rider, Joanne said that her worse racing moment was being involved in a five horse pile-up in a maiden race at Llantwit Major when all five horses came down at the open ditch. Although Joanne was not injured, she said that approaching the fence with nowhere to go was quite a scary moment.
She rode her first point-to-point winner on La-Champ-Talot at Lydstep in 1980
and that same year she became the first sixteen-year-old female to ride at Chepstow
Racecourse finishing second on Moonello in the Jeep Christies Ladies' Hunt Chase Championship.Joanne would probably have won the race the following year but for being unseated four fences from the finish leaving Rosemary White and Star Nello to land the prize.
Winning a restricted race on her own horse Construction King at Howick, after
nursing the horse back from injury, was one of her best racing moments and another
was when as a permit holder, she saddled her first winner Le Mezaray in a handicap chase at Taunton in 1996.
Joanne, who must surely be the most best turned out steward in the country, loves nice clothes, fine wine, clay-pidgeon shooting, dining out and ski-ing! She ran the London Marathon in 2003 raising money for children with leukaemia and
she hopes to be back racing in the summer.
As for her most hair raising moment she says that was going down a four-man bobsleigh in Sestriere, Italy, home of the 2006 Winter Olympics, with a member of the Italian gold medal winning team, and was just three seconds slower than the winning time!
She has asked me to tell all her friends in the horse racing world, who may think that
she has just disappered from the scene, the reason for her absence and that she hopes
to be back racing in the summer.
