‘Trevors’ & Betty @ Kilmore 1966

Page 32, ‘The Sun’, Friday 14 October 1966

Featured Image: Mrs Betty Shepherd gallops ‘Trevors’ on Kilmore Race Track by Ian McPherson

‘Trainers with Cups in their Sights’

“Her Hobby- Training”

There’s something about June Allyson in the broad smile and sparkling eyes of Mrs Betty Shepherd.

And that’s probably the last thing one would expect in the 35-year-old trainer of a Caulfield and Melbourne Cup hope.

For Mrs Shepherd, who has a 15-year old daughter, is a double rarity – a racehorse trainer and a successful one.

Not that races of themselves interest Mrs Shepherd very much.

She has been riding horses as long as she remembers (her family had a property at Scone), and has been training them for 14 years.

“Mind you, it’s a sport – a hobby,” she said, “and so far it’s been a very profitable one.”

This is the first Melbourne spring carnival for Mrs Shepherd, who lives at Scone, 200 miles north of Sydney.

He entry is the seven-year-old gelding Trevors, which ran second in the AJC Metropolitan in Sydney earlier this month.

“I’ve entered him in other years,” she said, “but I’ve always scratched him. This is the first time we’ve come down, and I think I’ve got a show – particularly in the Melbourne Cup.”

With her husband, Arch, who runs a fruit shop in Scone, Mrs Shepherd is staying in Kilmore and training Trevors at the Kilmore race track.

Mrs Shepherd does all her own training work with Trevors – riding him, shoeing him, hosing him down, walking him in the afternoons and feeding him.

“This way I save on training costs, and can save more,” she said.

“I want to keep training until I have enough money to buy a property on which to breed horses.”

Then she’ll retire from training.

Author’s note:

This was a much celebrated event in Scone and surrounds. Betty & Arch also took locals Jack Winwood and Wilf ‘Wiffo’ Barker plus guard dog ‘Rastus’ as minders. The story was literally ‘the stuff of legend’ in the RSL Club and other popular ‘watering holes’ for eons thereafter.

The other feature article in ‘The Sun’ on the same day (14/10/1966) was Bart Cummings – and ‘Galilee’!