Cover image courtesy of the National Library of Australia
In September 1937, when Sir Colin Stephen died at the age of 65, it was written that he was an ‘indefatigable worker in the cause of the Australian blood horse’. High praise indeed, but largely true.
Stephen was the chairman of the Australian Jockey Club (AJC), a position he had held since late 1919. By his death, he was the longest-serving chairman in the history of the AJC excepting Sir Edward Deas Thomson, who was the inaugural chairman for 20 years from 1859.
Sir Colin Stephen, photographed in 1927 by Harold Cazneaux | Image courtesy of the Mitchell Library
Each of the club’s chairmen had varying styles of administration. Some were liked, but none more than Colin Stephen. When he took office in 1919, he seemed to usher in a new era of gentleman chairmen to the AJC’s Bligh Street headquarters.
‘He was more tolerant than Knox (Adrian Knox, his predecessor), more willing to listen to views he knew to be ill-informed. His manner was quiet and shy, and he established an understated style that has also characterised most of his successors.’
Stephen sailed the AJC through some of its most interesting years, including those that witnessed the war on Sydney pony racing, the Great Depression and the Phar Lap (NZ) (Night Raid {GB}) era. He was part of the initial committee in 1919 that had determined the Australian rules of racing, but he revised those later on and they were adopted Australia-wide in 1933.
The 6 Bligh Street office of the Australian Jockey Club | Image courtesy of the City of Sydney Archives
In 1935, he was knighted, becoming the toast of racing’s aristocracy, but for all the high company that he kept, he never seemed bigger than the common man.
Stephen was involved as a racing participant. His very first visit to Randwick occurred in 1882, when he was 10 years old, and, on that day, he watched Bill Kelso boot home Lord Orville (Orville) in the Tattersall’s Club Cup. The visit was impressionable because Stephen took to the irons and did well around the reckless picnic meetings of Bong Bong and Tiranna.
Between 1891, when he began riding, and 1903, when he got too heavy, it was recorded that he rode 162 races for 58 wins from Randwick, Hawkesbury and Rosehill to Moonee Valley, and many of the picnics in between. And throughout, he remained a mean polo player, climbing right to the top of that sport on little, fleet horses.
Like most committeemen of affluence, Stephen was also an owner and breeder. He had Fidelity (Constant Son {GB}), who won the Maribyrnong Plate and Ascot Vale S. in 1935, and that filly was a granddaughter of Stephen’s wonderful broodmare Elvo (Malvolio).
By trade, Stephen was a solicitor, and this is often overlooked, so successful was he as chairman of the AJC. He was born in Sydney in 1872 and educated in Bathurst before a brief tenure in England. Thereafter, he spent all of his life in Sydney. He married Adrian Knox’s sister, Dorothy, and they lived in the now demolished old mansion ‘Llanillo’, which sat overlooking the harbour at Bellevue Hill.
The Stephen home at Bellevue Hill, 'Llanillo' | Image courtesy of photographer Harold Cazneaux, Mitchell Library
At Stephen’s death, in 1938 the AJC renamed its Spring S. in his honour, a race that already had an illustrious hall of fame, including Carbine (NZ), Poitrel, Phar Lap and Peter Pan. Since it was rebadged, the race has remained unchanged as a 2400-metre staying feature during Sydney’s early spring racing.
It can be difficult to keep the legends of old racing men alive, but in the case of Sir Colin Stephen, lawyer, horseman and leader, it is well-deserved.
