When Geoff Lane was 18 and half way through the most successful jockey’s apprenticeship Australian racing has known, a transfer deal was hatched in which he would switch stables from Tommy Woodcock to the leading trainer of the day Jack Godby.
“It gave me the opportunity to make a few demands on Tommy who wanted me to stay,” Lane said.
In 1956, however, demands weren’t what they are today, even for the flash young rider known as “The Golden Boy”.
“I told Tommy that I’d stay with him if he let me spend Saturday night after the races with my mum and dad and if he let me buy a car,” he said.
Woodcock agreed and Lane went on to become one of the greatest riders of his era in Australia, later becoming a leading jockey and trainer in Hong Kong.
Lane, 73, is one of the latest group of inductees who will enter Australian racing’s Hall of Fame on Thursday night.
He is also one of the most worthy of the 32 jockeys who have been honoured, despite having retired from Australian racing at the age of 25.
Lane won the Melbourne apprentices’ title in each of his first five seasons and was champion all-round jockey for the 1959-60 racing year.
As well as winning titles, Lane rode some of the best horses of his day nominating Lord a horse on which he won 17 races, including four consecutive Memsie Stakes, as the pick of them.
Lane went to work in a racing stable at the age of 13, he was licensed at 14, rode his first winner at 15 and had outridden his claim at 16, going through the final five years of his apprenticeship on level terms with the senior jockeys.
“They were tough days, our only time off was half a day every third Sunday,” he said.
“But racing has been very good to me.”
In his brief career in Australian, Lane rode 400 winners, winning 76 feature races including three Victoria Derbies, three VRC Oaks, three Caulfield Stakes, four St George Stakes and four Alister Clark Stakes.
As well as Lord he was associated with such great horses as Tobin Bronze, Dhaulagiri, on who he won the 1961 Cox Plate, Always There and New Statesman.
After rising weight ended his career prematurely in 1964 he made a comeback three years later before going to Hong Kong in 1971 where he rode for seven years.
He later became a successful trainer in Hong Kong, retiring in 2004.
