‘A hell of a journey’: Tubba Williams rides again

Cover image courtesy of Tubba Williams

Tony ‘Tubba’ Williams needs no introduction, a man that has spread himself far and wide. From Magic Millions to Goffs UK, these days he is the stallion director at Newgate Farm.

Approachable, jaunty even, Tubba is one of the good guys, which is just as well because he’s getting a lot of attention at the moment.

Next month, on November 24, he will ride at the Bong Bong picnic races. And not as a course clerk or pony attendant, but as a registered jockey in silks, boots and breeches. At almost 63 years old and a long, long time between riding drinks, it’s a magnificent effort, and you’d be surprised to learn the simplicity of why he’s doing it.

“I have this issue with weight, and I’ve had it all my life,” Williams said, speaking to The Thoroughbred Report. “I get very fat, very heavy, but I love riding. I started as an apprentice jockey at Flemington in the mid-70s but I had only limited rides because of my weight.”

Since he was 17, Tony Williams has been called ‘Tubba’. It was probably a cruel nickname at the time, landed on him because he was a thickset youngster in an apprentices’ room full of waif-like boys. These days, “it is what it is” and he’s used to it. In fact, people hardly know him outside of his nickname.

Tubba’s riding days had their hits. He won a number of apprentice races and tackled the point-to-point circuit from 1982 to 1983. But from Magic Millions to managing director of Goffs UK and now Newgate, his career has largely been bloodstock-driven.

“I’ve owned farms, I’ve trained winners and I’ve ridden winners,” he said, “but I’ve also worked for Dalgety Bloodstock, for Magic Millions for nine years and then Goffs. My entire life has, since those early riding years, been pretty much bloodstock.”

When Tubba relocated to England to manage Goffs UK, it was 2016 and he was a long way from riding racehorses. But based on the Scottish border, with its folding countryside and local jumping scene, he had the opportunity to get back into riding, and he took it.

“It was easy for me to be able to go and ride out national hunt horses because weight wasn’t really a problem,” he said. “I was pretty heavy, but I bought a horse to ride in the point-to-points there, and I bought another horse called Cracking Destiny to ride in a charity race at Aintree.”

Until Tubba moved to England, he hadn’t ridden for 25 years, but he rode consistently for the following two years. He rode out at Newmarket, at Manton Park and for Ewan Whillans along the border. Wherever he went, he tried to ride to keep himself fit.

However, when Tubba returned to Australia in late 2019, to take up a position as CEO of Aquis Farm, he didn’t ride again. In fact, he stayed out of the saddle until just three months ago.

“In January this year, my weight was out of control,” he said. “I was up near 100kg. One day, Bruce Slade weighed me and I was just in my little footy shorts, and I was 99.95kg. I always need a goal to lose weight so I made a public statement that I was going to aim to ride at Bong Bong at the end of November. That was going to give me what I thought was enough time, and it was a great goal to have.”

The romance of Bong Bong

The annual Bong Bong picnic meeting occurs each year in the Southern Highlands, a short trip out of Bowral along the Kangaloon Road. It’s been ongoing-ish since 1886.

The famous meeting has been interrupted over the years by COVID, equine influenza and the Depression. In 1985, rowdy race-crowds overwhelmed the local authorities and the meeting was shut down until 1992. This year will be the first time in three years it will go ahead.

Despite these ups and downs, it is a must-go meeting on the picnic calendar in New South Wales, made even more collectible by it being open to attendance by invitation or membership only. And, with an imposing hilltop in the middle of the infield, obscuring the field for several seconds, stories from Bong Bong have flowed thick and tall for nearly 140 years.

“It is one of the iconic picnic meetings of New South Wales, if not Australia,” Tubba said. “I wanted to be part of it.”

Bong Bong had surfaced on Tubba’s radar a number of times over the years, first with John Moore before COVID, then with Nicky Henderson in the UK, who had “a tall story about riding a winner at Bong Bong when in Australia in the 1970s”.

“Knowing that Bong Bong was in late November when I started this journey to lose the weight, I thought timing-wise it was good,” Tubba said. “And because of all the stories, of John wanting a horse for the Bong Bong Cup and me promising to ride it, and Nicky Henderson’s talking about the place, I thought it would be the ideal goal to ride.”

Tubba has a couple of possible horses lined up for the Bong Bong meeting. They are Richter, a 6-year-old Skilled gelding, and Red Impulse, a 7-year-old Redente mare. It’s likely he will field opportunities from other quarters as some of the state’s top trainers, including Gai Waterhouse, have regularly supported the Bong Bong races. Joe Pride has also made a commitment to Tubba.

“Joe saw me at my heaviest, at my fattest, and he opened his mouth and said he would supply a horse for the Bong Bong Cup for me,” Tubba said. “To be fair to Joe, I don’t think he gave me any hope of getting there, and now he knows that I will get there, he’s said that if he doesn’t have a horse to fit the bill, he’ll make sure there is one in the Bong Bong Cup for me.”

Bong Bong in high summer is hot, dry and pretty. It’s a place you take lunch with the ants in the shade. To Tubba, it’s the beating heart of picnic racing, for which he has a soft spot. He says the picnics are disappearing much faster than he would like.

“Bush racing, the picnics, country racing... they’ve always been the backbone of racing, and we’re fast losing a lot of these little tracks and their meetings,” he said. “They need supporting as much as possible, even if it has made economic sense to close some of them in places like outback Queensland or the Territory, or wherever.

“What that does is it takes participants away from the industry, and when you lose tracks and lose people, you lose income, support and participation. I think we need to support a lot of these places as much as we can, and with the little bit I’m doing, I’d like to think I’m assisting Bong Bong.”

The interest in Tubba’s journey to the Bong Bong meeting has been sizeable. It’s a human interest tale that is relatable to everyday people, even those that have nothing to do with him outside of racing.

Within racing, though, he has a reputation stacked high with credibility, and his adventure has been shared across the world. He has a scroll of friends scrambling to get into Bong Bong next month, which is difficult in the most normal of years, let alone in the first one back since 2019.

“I might have to take a marquee,” he said.

Have saddle, will travel

By March this year, Tubba was in the infancy of this dramatic, weight-loss story. He’d lost only 3kg, poking along with little more than a wild idea in his head. But quickly, he got motivated.

“To get to 85kgs from where I was, it was not that difficult,” he said. “I had that much fat on me it wasn’t funny, and I went on the Michael Mosley ‘16:8’ diet, which I love. During the eight hours I was allowed to eat, I wasn’t eating any rubbish at all. I cut out sugar altogether, no rubbish at all, and I am a connoisseur of rubbish food and sweets.”

It takes a certain type of person to be this honest with himself, let alone with total strangers. Tubba Williams is exact about recounting the details of watching the scales, of the maddening dietary discipline and the rejection of everyday habit. For most, it’s a very personal story.

Is he usually a driven sort of character?

“I’d like to think so,” he said. “But make no mistake, it has been difficult. I’ve always had the confidence that I could do it, but there have been times when I’ve doubted I’d have the time to get there. At almost 63 years of age, to have goals and participate at any level at my stage in life is, I think, pretty wonderful. People may say it’s not sensible or it’s dangerous, but it’s been really good for me.”

When Tubba reached 85kgs earlier this year, he found it difficult to budge the scales any further. Fat loss comes in fits and starts, and he had to get creative again to make the needle move. He cut his food intake even further, with an eventual eye on reaching 75kg to begin riding work.

He took to the saddle at 72kgs, and today he is tipping the scales at 64kg. It’s put a lot of healthy stress on his body to drop nearly 40kg since the beginning of the year, but what’s that they say... have saddle, will travel.

“I’ve been riding work for about three months now,” Tubba said. “I’ve been riding for Rob Northam and Justin Drake at Scone. I went to Flemington and rode work for Nicholas Ryan, and I went to Seymour and rode work for Lee Hope. I’ve ridden for Annabel at Warwick Farm a couple of times, so if I go away I try to ride work.

“Getting to where I am now at 64kg, the discipline has had to be unbelievable. My eating window is only a couple of hours a day, and I’m really only eating an evening meal. Good food, more vegetables and not a lot of it, and though I’ve been a lot more hungry lately, I can manage to do this.”

It’s an insight into the everyday demons of professional jockeys, though few are 62 years old. Tubba’s wife, Sue Williams, has been patient with it all.

“My poor wife,” he said. “Obviously, when you’re not eating you’re a grumpy bastard, but Sue has been unbelievably supportive, and when people ask her if she’s worried about it, she says ‘if he can do it, why not?’ She’s been 120 per cent behind it all, even to the point of buying horses to race for this project.

“What I’ve done has probably not been cheap, but she’s been exceptionally supportive, as have Newgate and a huge range of my friends and industry people from all around the world.”

Tubba has spent much of the last six to eight weeks going through the rhythms of a riding licence with Racing NSW. It’s a complicated process for the wellbeing of everyone, and it has included weigh-ins, jump-outs and concussion tests. On Wednesday he rode official trials at Gosford, which were his first official trials since 1980.

“I think I went around okay, considering everything,” he said. “The trainers (Kristen Buchanan, Marc Minervini and Sam Kavanagh) all seemed happy with how I did, and I’d like to think I would have passed those trials from a steward’s perspective.

“I still have more trials to complete. I’m going to go to Hawkesbury on Monday morning and do some more, and, all going to plan, I’ll go around again after the races at Scone, just to complete all the requirements for Racing NSW, who have been exceptionally good to me. Hopefully, on to Bong Bong then on November 24.”

A hell of a journey

There’s little doubt that Tubba Williams will ride the Bong Bong meeting. He’s met his target weight of 64kg, maybe even 63kg, and the paperwork is almost done.

But, after he has ridden the meeting next month, and the adrenaline of his adventure gives way to everyday routine, what then? Will he stop riding, or even give away his career in bloodstock?

“I’ve got an outback mission next year, for which I’d like to be able to ride my own horses,” he said. “Am I making a profession of it? The answer is no, but will I continue to participate? The answer is yes. Will I ride for friends and people I’m riding work for? The answer is also yes, and I’m really looking forward to doing that.

“It’s been a hell of a journey to do it. It’s been a great exercise for me for a number of reasons; to get the fat out of my system and to get seriously fit. But I’ve also done something I’ve really enjoyed, which is riding. I love riding, and in my lifetime I’d done a lot of it, so it’s been very nice to be back at it.”