Tommy Hazlett was destined for a life in the racing industry, and the popular figure has seen it all, and won most, when it comes to riding over fences.
Growing up in Southland, Hazlett was raised in a racing environment, with his father Mike Hazlett both an owner-trainer and a successful amateur rider, and his grand-uncle, hall of famer Bill Hazlett, among New Zealand’s leading owners and was twice runner-up in the national trainer’s premiership.
From an early age, Hazlett had aspirations of becoming a jockey, and riding over fences became part and parcel of his apprenticeship once he was indentured to Wingatui legend Brian Anderton.
“We had family involvement in racing, my father had an owner-trainer license and trained the odd jumper,” Hazlett said. “Anything that he thought was more capable than he was, he would send to Rex Cochrane to be trained.
“I hunted from a young age and I was very lucky to have a magnificent hunting pony called Folly, who would jump anything that you put in front of him. As a matter of fact, I once jumped around the Riverton steeplechase course on him.
“That really developed my passion for jumping at speed, and I had a fairly good idea from the time I started high school that I wanted to be a jockey.
“I went to the Andertons because of the fact that it was pretty evident, even when I started my apprenticeship, that I wasn’t going to get too long out of riding on the flat.”
After fulfilling his six rides required on the flat, Hazlett leaped at the opportunity to ride over fences and he couldn’t have asked for a better first mount in Rock Crystal, Hec Anderton’s Great Northern-winning hurdler.
“I had six flat rides, and my seventh ride in a race was on Rock Crystal in a hurdle race at Invercargill,” Hazlett said. “He wasn’t a bad horse to have my first jumping ride on.
“There were a few nerves, I was terribly excited to be able to ride him. I asked Hecy Anderton before the race, ‘how would you like me to ride the horse?’. To which he replied, ‘he’s been around more times than you have son, just grab a hunk of his mane and hang on’.
“Back in those days, they were full fields, and you used to start the hurdle race down the side of the track at what they called Finlay Road. After we went to the start, they had to put the wing up because there were that many horses.
“I remember sitting in the gates and thinking to myself, ‘well, it’s too late now, you can’t go around it, so you’ll have to go over it.’”
The South Island had many a role model for Hazlett in the riding ranks, and he recalled that soon after his debut, he would get a taste of just how competitive riding over fences could be.
“I had a lot of respect for guys like Snooky Cowan, Neill Ridley, Angus Mavor and Shane Anderton, they were great riders and went a long way in teaching me a lot of what I knew,” he said.
“The day that I rode Rock Crystal, Neill Ridley and Angus Mavor came to me in the jockeys’ room and said ‘we both knew your father well, we rode for him, and this is how it’s going to work. Out of respect for him, we’ll give you six rides grace, to get your head around it’.
“Then, on my seventh ride, I was riding in a race at Invercargill and tried to kick up inside Angus Mavor at the one in front of the winning post, and he put me through the inside wing.
“Things were a little different back then, but I had a great amount of respect for those guys.”
After completing his time as an apprentice, Hazlett took what was intended to be a short holiday but ended up being more than a decade living in Australia and Ireland.
“When I finished my apprenticeship, I went for a month’s holiday to stay with a very good friend of mine, Kevin Jones,” he said. “We had worked together at Brian’s, he was actually his nephew.
“At the time, Kevin was working at the Epsom Training Centre at Mordialloc, and after a couple of weeks he asked if I would like to get a job riding work for Rick Hore-Lacy while I was there, with him and Willie Harnett.
“I did that, and then about four or five days before I was due to go back to New Zealand, Willie and I were walking through the carpark about to go home, and Robbie Laing approached Willie to ask who he was riding in a hurdle race on Saturday.
“He already had a ride and Willie said, ‘Tommy’s over from New Zealand, he’ll ride him for you’. The horse was called Iron Paper, he ran third, and Robbie asked me to ride him again at his next start.
“Being apprenticed to the Andertons was an absolute privilege, the way you were looked after, the way you were taught, and the opportunities that you were given. When I rang Brian and told him that I had an opportunity to ride there, he said ‘you go for your life Tom, and just remember if it doesn’t work out, you can always come home.’
“I was lucky enough to be with Brian during a golden era, when he had horses such as Bymai, Lord Venture, Royal Trelay, and Bijoumai. To be fair, it wasn’t until later on in life, that I appreciated how much Brian had done for me.
“If I hadn’t stayed in Australia, I never would’ve had the opportunity to ride in England and Ireland as well.”
Hazlett rode winners in England, Ireland and across the Tasman, including three of Australia’s premier jumping races, the Australian Hurdle, Crisp Steeplechase and Australian Steeplechase.
“When I started riding in Australia, the claiming system was different, and I still had a three-kilogram claim over jumps, which was very handy,” Hazlett said. “I ended up riding for Eric Musgrove a little bit during that time and always stayed in touch with him, and when I was in Ireland, he rang and offered me an opportunity to come and ride for him again.
“He had Blue Star, who was potentially the best horse I ever rode, and I won the Australian Hurdle on him. I loved the old horse I won the Crisp on for Michael Zampatti as well (Sir Ritchie).”
During his time abroad, Hazlett had the opportunity to ply his trade against some of the strongest, most gifted international riders.
“I was never afraid of competition, but I probably wasn’t the best jumps rider out there, I was just very lucky to have ridden some nice horses,” he said. “It goes a long way when you’re riding jumpers.
“In Australia, there were a number of great riders, including Willie Harnett, who is not only a magnificent rider but has become one of my dearest friends. Brett Scott had a great race brain and was very strong, he was also a left-handed whip rider and was deceiving to ride against in a finish.
“Craig Durden was one of the greats, and he rode for one of the greats in Jim Houlahan.
“Michael Patton and Jamie Evans were another two very successful riders, but I think the best jockey I rode against there was Frankie Stockdale. He was an exceptional rider on the flat and was very brave, he had a great ability to put a horse in the right spot at the right time.
“In England, we had the opportunity to ride against some of the best riders, guys like Carl Llewellyn and Jamie Osborne.
“In Ireland, no one will ever do what the jumping ‘goat’ Sir Anthony McCoy has done again, he won 20 jumps jockeys’ premierships in a row. I was lucky enough to ride against guys with the calibre of Charlie Swan, Ken Whelan and the like, but in my opinion, the most naturally and gifted rider I’ve ever seen in the world was Paul Carberry.
“He was just absolutely one with the horse, he rode short and had magnificent balance, and he never moved on a horse. They just ran for him.”
While still based in Australia, Hazlett collected the first of many feature victories in New Zealand, guiding his partner Pam Gerard’s hurdler Narousa to win the Great Northern Hurdles.
“I came back to ride Narousa in the Waikato Hurdle and the Northern,” he said. “I was delighted to have won those two races for Pam.”
The next chapter of Hazlett’s career took place back in his homeland, when he returned to the South Island permanently in 2003. A large part of that story is Mark Oulaghan, a trainer from Awapuni that he would develop a great partnership and a great friendship with in the years to come.
“I didn’t know Mark at all before I came back to New Zealand, and when I did, he had rung me a couple to times to ride for him and I just hadn’t been able to get to the North Island,” Hazlett said.
“Then Sabin Kirkland had a horse I’d been riding called The Muscle Man, and he ended up going to the North Island to Mark’s for a couple of months. Mark rang and asked if I would come up and ride him, which I did, and a little while later he rang again asking if I’d come to Wanganui to ride a horse called Yourtheman.
“He said he thought he was pretty capable, but not the easiest ride, so I went up and rode him.
“He won, and the rest is history really.”
In the same year (2006), Hazlett and Yourtheman won the Grand National Hurdles, and later that day, he had his first ride aboard the Allan Sharrock-trained Bogeyman, and the pair won the Grand National Steeplechase.
“It was due to Jonathan Riddell that I got on Bogeyman, he had been stable rider for Paul and Carol (Nelson) for a long time and he was committed to No Hero,” Hazlett said. “He rang me a couple of weeks before and let me know he was sticking with the horse, and he suggested I give Allan Sharrock a call to see if I could get on Bogeyman.
“He was just ready, primed for the day, suited the track conditions, and jumped very well. Allan wasn’t in Christchurch that day, but once again, I called and asked how he wanted me to ride the horse, and he said, ‘just steer him son and he’ll win’.
“He was right, and the same day, Yourtheman won the hurdle, which was the year they’d cancelled the Grand National Hurdle meeting because of the snow.”
A year later, Hazlett went back-to-back in the Grand National Hurdles, on this occasion with the formidable Counter Punch, also trained by Oulaghan. He combined with son of Yamanin Vital on 13 occasions for eight victories, including an Awapuni Hurdles, Wellington Hurdle and Koral Steeplechase.
“Out of all the horses that I rode for Mark, Counter Punch and Yourtheman were the best,” Hazlett said.
“They were very well educated for a start, and Mark’s an old-school trainer, he doesn’t try to do everything at once. His young hurdlers may have one, two or three starts, mid to late in a season, then the following year they’re pretty much ready to go.
“Counter Punch was an absolute natural, a very good jumper of a fence, and could really stay. Whereas, Yourtheman took a bit of making, he was a tricky horse to get your head around. But he was probably one of the toughest and most ignorant horses I’ve ever ridden, but that was what made him so good.”
Unbeknown to him at the time, the Koral victory in 2009 would be Hazlett’s final ride on Counter Punch. He rode through the early part of the 2010 season, but a series of untimely injuries put him on the sidelines, where he would watch the gelding defeat Yourtheman to win both the Koral and the National in August.
“I had broken my leg in a trackwork accident at home, which slowed me down a bit because the original doctor had told me it was just badly bruised,” he said. “After a month of walking around on it, it wasn’t getting any better, so I went back to Ashburton Hospital and saw the head orthopaedic surgeon, and after taking a shot on a different angle, he found I’d broken my tibia and fibula.
“Straight after breaking my leg, in my first ride back at Awapuni, I fell at the fence leaving the straight, and Jonathan’s horse came over the fence and landed on my ankle, which completely obliterated it.
“I was due to be back to ride Counter Punch in his first Grand National win, but then the surgeons decided they wanted to take the screws out of my ankle, so that ruled me out.
“After that, I felt like I didn’t have any more to prove, Counter Punch was a horse I really wanted to win a Grand National Chase on because I’d won the hurdle on him, and when that couldn’t happen, it put things into perspective.”
Taking many factors into consideration, including a young family, Hazlett decided the time was right to retire, and did so publicly while commentating on Trackside during National Week.
“I had a young family, three children and two under three,” he said.
“Pam had always supported me right through my career, she never asked me to change or to stop riding, so I thought maybe now it was time I supported her in what she wanted to do in her training efforts.”
With 158 wins and a wealth of experience to his credit, Hazlett was welcomed into a new role as the apprentice jockeys’ mentor, but later discovered it wasn’t quite the right fit.
“I had a little bit of an indication that the mentor’s role might be available, and I did that for 18 months, but then I worked out that I wasn’t really the right man for the role,” he said. “I called the Head of NZTR at the time and let him know I was relinquishing from the role for that reason, and he said he appreciated my honesty and wished me good luck.
“From there, I rode work for a little while, then I had the opportunity to be the breaking in and pre-training manager at Valachi Downs. When that operation wound up, I was just pottering around doing a bit of this and that, because we also own an agistment property in Matamata.
“I rang Mark Chittick one day and asked if there was anything on the farm that might suit me, and he said we’re looking for a truck driver, and I’ve been there ever since.”
Described as a ‘Man Of Many Talents’ on Waikato Stud’s website, a title he doesn’t entirely agree with, Hazlett has been with the Matamata farm for well over two years, while supporting Gerard, who won this season’s Gr.1 New Zealand 2000 Guineas (1600m) among a host of victories at the helm of Ballymore NZ.
“I don’t know about that name, my main role is driving the truck, but otherwise I just make a nuisance of myself on the farm,” he said.
Since his retirement, Hazlett’s involvement in jumps racing has diminished slightly, but he hopes to see a resurgence in the coming years, despite the loss of the South Island circuit.
“I still enjoy watching the jumps and have a great involvement with Mark, we’re very good friends,” he said. “We discuss jumps racing quite a bit, and I went to Warrnambool with him this year with Berry The Cash.
“I think, first and foremost, Pete and Jess Brosnan, and her committee, are doing a great job of attracting more horses and getting young riders involved in the industry.
“I do think it could be a case of too little, too late, because in my honest opinion, I think that jumps racing has been in decline over the past five to 10 years, but we’ve allowed that to happen, until it’s got to the point where we now have no jumps racing in the South Island, apart from the Grand National.
“I think that’s been a downside, because the South Island always used to be well-represented at the National meeting.
“But, following that statement, there is people out there now, like Jess, that are doing a great job of trying to reinvigorate it, and they’ve done a magnificent job of attracting these young riders into the country and getting them going.
“We don’t have a lot of old heads in the riding ranks anymore, but if the younger heads that are in the game are prepared to take on advice and listen to those that have been around for a while, there is an opportunity to see it flourish once again.”
When sharing his wisdom on to prospective riders, Hazlett keeps it fairly simple.
“I think riding jumpers is a real passion, it’s certainly not something done for serious financial gain, so you’ve got to be passionate about what you’re doing,” he said. “Listen to as many different people as you can, and it’s up to you to determine what is good advice and what isn’t.
“The three most important things when riding jumpers are rhythm and balance, and always make sure that a horse has rein leaving the ground.”