| PEOPLE |
YEAR: 1977
 |
Part of the reason for Felix Newfield's consistent success in the trotting game is clear even before you reach his well laid out stables and yards. The gravel driveway is raked and neat, the facilities tidy and cared for. To quote the old saying there is a place for everything and everthing has it's place. While he doesn't actually say so it is obvious that he and his assistants place great emphasis on the finer points of running a racing stable. That attitude carried through to other areas probably explains why Felix has trained 315 winners in 25 years, making him one of the most enduringly successful horsemen of his generation. Newfield is a genial, sometimes controversial, personality but behind the quick quips there is another Felix Newfield; one who obviously puts a good deal of thought and planning into his establishment and the horses in his care.
Born in Lyttelton 49 years ago, Felix got involved with trotters when his family lived in Domain Terrace in Addington, close to the stables occupied by the late Jack Pringle. On leaving school Felix worked for Pringle for two years and when that trainer moved to Templeton the youngster joined Howie Smith in the same stable and stayed with him for eight years. His first driving experience was at the age of 16 in 1941, when he and Smith went to the Coast with Lord Brent and Blackdale. Newfield drove both without success and on his return the authorities took away his licence, there being a minor problem regarding age. Felix got his licence back when he reached 18 and his first success came shortly afterwards behind Grattan Bell at Greymouth. He won the next race, too with Sir Walter who was closely related to the Cup class pacer Cantata, the winning dividend being $288. At Westport he won three on end with Victory Boy.
Felix can tell stories about those early Coast trips which would appear almost bizarre to the modern stablehand. Jogging to the railway station in the afternoon to catch the train, clanking across to Greymouth or Reefton etc all night, jogging to the track for races, and then back to the train for another long ride home. The boys rode in the boxes with the horses with only a hurricane lamp to light up the card games or the stories of what had happened or what was going to. The trips to Dunedin, he recalls, were the worst. Sometimes the teams would be based on the Coast for weeks. Other times there would be just the day trips. Road transport in the war years was very difficult because of petrol restrictions which limited floats to being used in a 30 mile radius only. Newfield recalls on one occasion walking a team of horses with Addington trainer Joe Purdon (father of Alex) as far as Bankside where a float would be stategically placed to load the horses. You drove the thirty miles - further if you had the nerve - and then walked some more to the next float. Even meetings like Ashburton could be no cakewalk in those days.
In the early 50's Felix took up a private training position with Donald 'Sandy' Green at Methven. Success was almost immediate and in 22 months Felix trained 18 winners for Green, the mainstays being Gallant Satin, Fearless Peter, Quite Obvious (later a successful broodmare), Lothario and Robert Junior. In December 1952 at Waimate the young trainer won three races out of four for the owner with different horses. It was while at Methven that Felix got to know Colin McLaughlin and their association was to be mutually profitable for years to come.
A few months later Felix returned to Addington and set up on his own and on May 1, 1953, at the Reefton winter meeting came his first success on his own account. The horse was Marathon, owned by Mrs C Pateman, and he won an intermediate event by five lengths at odds of five to one. Not long afterwards Felix married Joan Harris fron Central Otago and moved to his present property at Templeton. It was a far cry from what it is now, having been used as a chicken farm. Felix built the stables and yards and milked cows as well to help him through the difficult early times of professional training.
His initial team was small. Main stake winners were Sedate, who was leased from Colin McLaughlin and who won four races before starting a breeding line which has proved highly successful including as it does Allakasam, Royal Ascot, Morsel and Flying Mile among its produce. Sedate was raced by Felix in partnership with Christchurch businessman Frank Kirkpatrick and Newfield's regard for his first stable patron is obvious. At the same time Frank raced Suzendy and she was a top mare winning 10 races and putting the stable well on the way to success. Frank Kirkpatrick still races horses from the stable and has remained a constant patron through the years - a trait of owners associated with Newfield.
By the end of the 1957 season Felix had reached sixth position on the trainers' table, Suzendy and Captain Free being the leading lights at that time. But it must have been hard work. With the assistance of Murray Hessey, now a trainer at Yaldhurst, Felix worked a big stable of horses and milked about 30 cows as well, which is a pretty daunting timetable even from this distance in time. His highest place on the table was third in 1962-3 when the stable produced 25 winners, only two behind the leading trainer that season, Ces Donald. Great Credit, that speedy but unruly horse was the leading stake winner. There have been any number of top horses through the stable. Johnny Guitar won a Wellington Cup and 10 other races. Queen Ngaio won 10 for the stable and ran fifth in the Cup, the closest Felix has been to achieving his great ambition of winning the big race. "There's not another race like the Cup is there?" he says, and one gets the feeling that nothing is going to be better fitted for the race than Nimble Yankee come November and all going well. Pancho Boy won nine including the Louisson Handicap and Queen Ngaio became dam of the outstanding but unsound pacer Waratah, raced by Joan Newfield and her father Jack Harris. Waratah won the Dunedin Cup and is now fashioning a creditable stud record against great odds in terms of attracting class mares.
There were other horses to recall from earlier days. Semloh was a Welcome Stakes winner, but unsound, and First Belle was a good winner for Felix which persuaded him to buy her first foal. Named John Craig, after the trainer's sons, he was sold to Australia where he was a champion three year old winning two Sires Produce Stakes and two Derbies, and he later did well in America. Earlier there had been Dilossa, Chiffon, Dacron, Seafield Hanover, Sirretta, Sirrah (Harris in reverse for the anagram pundits) and numerous others.
Felix had won his first Addington race in the late 40s with Elation, who splashed through the mud to score at long odds. Elation was later sold by his owner for two shillings and won two in a day for Colin Berkett at Addington, the first time paying a big dividend. Newfield has compiled a fine record in provincial Cup races, winning five at Greymouth for example and three Geraldine Cups, including American Chief's this season. He set some sort of record some years ago when lining five horses up in the New Brighton Cup, finishing first, second, fourth and fifth. He, of course, drove Royal Ascot in the dramatic Auckland Cup of 1973 and relates that he "didn't especially go looking for anyone" until it was announced the dividends were going to be paid out so that the Cup was safe following a controversial incident in the middle stages.
With Tronso he won a Dominion Handicap, and nearly brought off a unique finish to the Derby of 1973 when New Law beat Royal Ascot by a nose. Royal Ascot, driven by Alan Harrison, was called in first by the judge and Felix, with half shares in both horses, thought a dead-heat would have produced a most unusual Derby result.
This season has been another good one, the stable having 18 successes. Ambridge, now in the US won five and Warragamba, by Waratah from Laughlin's Lass who were both trained by Felix, won three, but the star has probably been Nimble Yankee who has risen from being a strong but unreliable pacer to a Cup prospect. American Chief has been another good winner.
Like all professional trainers, especially those who do well, Newfield no doubt has his critics. But a feature of his career has been the way his prominent owners have stuck with him through thick and thin. Frank Kirkpatrick and Colin McLaughlin have been mentioned. Another is Eugene McDermott who has been associated with the stable for more than 20 years through horses like Guinness, Black Label, Holmfield and now Americamn Chief and Gladarm. Few other trainers can match this sort of record over such a long period and it is one that Felix is rightly proud of. He doesn't expect to train so many winners in coming years as he has done in the past because things have changed in trotting. "Working them up and winning races and then selling them is the thing today and horses which might have won eight or nine in past years are now sold like Ambridge after four or five wins, or even earlier," he said.
He works about 20 to 25 now with help from Fraser Kirk, who has developed into an outstanding reinsman under Newfield, and his son Craig, who is 17 and with a good trials record behind him, is set for a probationary career next season. Bob Cole helps out in return for using Felix's track. Elder son John was more interested in machinery than horses but Felix's 15-year-old daughter Dianne is keeping the family name to the fore in pony circles. Most 15-year-old girls have their bedroom walls covered with pin-ups of pop stars. Dianne has so many show ribbons won on Bacardi Rum she doesn't have space for pop stars!
As Newfield shows you round the 36-acre complex you are soon aware that a lot of thought has gone into it's construction though there are some things he would now change. His basic training philosophy could be summed up as: "Keep them working, keep them warm and keep them well." He relates the horse's position to humans. How would you like to be shut up in one little room all day or get a cold shower in the middle of winter or run on concrete roads in steel boots? The answer is plenty of room for the horses during the day, warm water for hosing and plenty of attention to feeding and shoeing. Unlike a growing number of trainers Newfield still sets store by chaff which he uses constantly.
Newfield's training programmes have naturally been formed on what he observed as a young man. He names Ces Donald, F J Smith, Ces Devine and Jack Pringle as the best trainers he has seen. "I noticed that they always produced their horses on the big side," he says. "I try to do the same and this is partly why I race very few two year olds. They need time." He deplores the tendancy to drift away from 3200m races. "They made a lot of our horses because they didn't have to be worked up early. We could do with more of them."
Reinsmanship? Freeman and Maurice Holmes, Wes Butt, Jack Pringle and Bob Young are his tops and he also admires the driving of his good friend Jack Carmichael, who won a lot of races for the stable. "That was when Jack was younger of course," Felix adds with a grin. Newfield admits to being a collector of odds and ends. "We've three tractors on the property and never plough a paddock." He does however make a lot of his own hay, and fowls, ducks and peahens outnumber the horses on the property. His latest pride and joy are three peacocks brought from the North Island and there is the odd turkey as well.
Felix Newfield, as I said, has sometimes been a controversial figure but I found him candid answering the awkward questions. He will tell you what happened the day a Greymouth crowd gave him one of the noisiest receptions even that colourful area has witnessed. He says frankly that his own experience caused the public to miss seeing the best of Auditor, the finest horse he has ever trained. "He was phenomenal," Felix recalls, "and beat all the top horses of his day. But I was anxious to get him ready for the Cup and brought him back too soon after an attack of strangles. He was never the same again and had I known then what I know now he would have won a Cup." Auditor was owned by another long time patron in Jack Brosnan.
How does he react to the sometimes heard allegation that he is a tough cookie out on the track? "When Derek (Jones), Jack (Carmichael) and I started out years ago we were boys among men," he says, "and you had to quickly learn to look after yourself if you wanted to make it, because there were some great drivers about then. We did what we had to do and those days formed our driving patterns. These days it's easier and the old methods look worse than they are." He points out that young drivers have a much easier row to hoe today even though it is apparent that he feels the standards have slipped over the years. People in stands, he maintains, cannot properly read what is happening on a track particularly in a big race at Addington where you have to be in the race to experience what's going on. Newfield's ability in the cart was clearly evident in the Driving Championship held at Addington in March, which he won. Some of the horses he drove went a lot better that night than they had before and, in some cases, since.
He regards False Step as the finest horse he has seen and is adamant that today's horses would be hard put to match old time horses when it came to hardiness. "Jogging to the station, all night on a train, jogging to the track, having two races and jogging back to the train and so on was pretty testing," says Felix, "but they seemed to stand up to it." Returning to the topic of driving, he can recall the day he drove Swingalong in a race at Ashburton in which 40 horses started. Addington, by a mile, is the finest track he has driven on or seen.
Like I said at the start, Felix Newfield is a more complex character than he perhaps likes to appear. He has no doubt had his bouts of luck, good and bad, but there is also no doubt that he is a worker and the success he has had has not been lightly earned. Young men wanting to be top trainers should take careful note for it is consistently a hallmark of all top horsemen.
Credit: NZ Trotguide 6Jul77
YEAR: 2016
FELIX NEWFIELD - Horseman
You wouldn't call the recent death of Felix Newfield the end of an era. His era ended, well, eras ago. But it triggered the recall of a less sanitised harness racing time when enterprise and skill mixed with some sharp lateral thinking could take you a long way.
Felix was reportedly something g of a recluse in his final years in Queensland. That outcome seemed most unlikely given the lively approach to life and racing evident in his heyday, roughly from the late 1950s through the 1980s. There was always something happening or sometimes not happening when Felix Newfield was around.
It started when he first drove in races as a 16 year old in 1941. The problem was he was supposed to be 18 and the authorities took the licence back until he was. He lived in Domain Terrace as a youngster and worked at the major stable there firstly for Jack Pringle and later Howie Smith.
His first winner was Grattan Bells at Greymouth in October 1945, the mare's third win at the two day meeting. His good friend Jack Carmichael drove Margaret Hall to win earlier and Felix won his second drive when the trotter Sir Walter paid $288. Those were the days.
He would win five Greymouth Cups before he was through, Felix specialised in winning provincial cup staying races but the clipping he wanted to show you was one of his defeats. The headline referred to the "Biggest demonstration ever known on the West Coast" which, considering some of the others, must have been something. "When I pulled up I could hear the crowd starting to go off. I loosened one of the hopple straps and went back pointing to it. They seemed to be very upset," he quipped years later. It was probably no coincidence that his last training win(1994) was Come On Joe at Greymouth driven by Mike De Filippi.
Felix used to recall hoe tough the life of a stablehand was in the War years and after. After a full morning's work you'd jog a horse in the afternoon to the rail station and head for Greymouth, sleeping overnight in the horse boxes after card games by lamplight. You would jog from the station to the track, race, probably twice, then head back to the station for another long night on the train. During the war years horses might be walked up to 40km between horse floats with police roaming the back country roads looking for lawbreakers.
He pointed out that guys like Jack Carmichael, Derek Jones and himself were "boys among men" and you learned to make your presence felt early or make your way home. No quarter given and none asked. Perhaps that is why he gave Fraser Kirk every chance as a junior driver, the first and only of that grade to win a Pan Am Mile.
Felix made his impression as a private trainer with Methven's Sandy Green including winning three in a day at Waimate with different horses. Rare for anyone then. Not too long after that he married Joan Harris and they moved to an 18ha chicken farm at Templeton. Her father Jack raced a lot of horses with them. Hard work from both partners which included milking 30 cows, made it into a top facility for horses and a wide variety of other animals. Sadly Joan suffered from multiple sclerosis in later years and was hospitalised for a long period. Felix's younger son Craig, a good horseman and Murray Hessey were long time assistants and Bob Cole was another familiar figure at the stables.
One of Felix's first winners was Sedate leased from Colin McLaughlin and she was later a breeding source of great success for both. Names like Suzendy, Captain Free, Great Credit, Johnny Guitar, Queen Ngaio, Sirrah, Nimble Yankee(the Miracle Mile winner for Fraser) a genuine top liner in Waratah; the absolutely brilliant but erratic Great Credit later a big success from mobiles in America and Auditor whom he always regarded as the best he trained. He blamed himself for putting Auditor into work too soon after a strangles attack to get to the Cup and "He was never quite as good again. If I knew then what I know now he could easily have won a Cup."
One of his feats was lining up five horses in a New Brighton feature finishing first, second, fourth and fifth. But winning the New Zealand Cup, his greatest ambition, eluded him. No less impressive was his list of owners of long standing. Frank Kirkpatrick was the first and stayed loyal. Names like Jack Brosnan(Great Credit, Pancho Boy etc), Eugene McDermott(Guiness, Black Label, American Chief), Len Law and McLaughlin among others.
He had a big result in the 1973 NZ Derby when New Law which he trained and co-owned with Len beat Royal Ascot, which he also part owned, by a whisker, the latter being originally called the winner. "I reckon they should have called it a dead heat, that would have been something." He also won a Dominion Handicap behind Tronso for Colin Berkett.
Felix always had racing people talking. He often handled trotter Power Cut for close friend Bruce Woods and one day he was side-lined for a few weeks by the stipes for whistling loudly and calling out at the home bend causing a rival driven by George Shand(one of the great whistlers himself as Felix well knew) to gallop. Power Cut won.
Felix was and is known to all as "The Cat" but I quickly found out nobody actually called him that to his face. He didn't like it. After writing a story of bad puns based around cats("The stipes consulted the SPCA and told the Cat to 'paws' his career and curl up in the sun in the stands for a few weeks"), I was put in the deep freeze for a few months.
Another part of his gamesmanship was suddenly putting his feet on the ground and wanting some minor attention to his horse from the starting attendants just as the others were all ready to go. As the last to stand and so likely to be the first to go, this ploy often worked. All unintentional of course.
Once he and Bruce bought a horse Jimmy Wood from Doug McCormick in a Greymouth hotel late one night,(actually early the next morning) after Doug announced he was finished with the plain and lean looking little gelding. Bruce and Felix thought he just needed building up. A lease was written and signed on a piece of paper in the hotel's toilet. The partners were optimistic, they could turn him around for the second night with some tender loving care but the amiable Doug warned them they should never have taken the bell boots off. They had been on for three months! He was right. Jimmy ran last and the more condition the partners put on the little fellow the slower he got.
Felix was given a share in Royal Ascot to get him to race trim as a colt but it wasn't until he was finally gelded that Colin McLaughlin and Allan Harrison got him right. He went up a level when Felix took over the driving but even he thought he was lucky to hold the 1973 Auckland Cup after some old fashioned "argy bargy" to get off the fence in the middle stages had checked some favoured runners. "I took the whip and the Cup and just tried to keep out of the way," he recalled. He only got a two race-day suspension. Local media was furious.
Felix carried on the tradition of his younger days rather than make major changes. Cecil Devine, F J Smith, Ces Donald and Jack Pringle, all great conditioners, were his training role models. His horses were always washed down with hot water("How would you like a cold shower on a col morning?" he would ask) and did plenty of work. They won a lot of races(rising to third on the premiership with an average sized team) but they also won a lot of place money. All part of the tradition. He once told me after ensuring it was for publication that his great mate Jack Carmichael was one of the best he drove against "but that was when he was much younger of course."
F E Newfield did not have a lot of education but he was an opportunist who ha a quick mind and asked the sort of questions which could put jurnos on to good stories but also on their mettle. He told even better ones and often against himself. Plus you never quite knew what he was thinking. Nor even, at times, his owners.
There won't be another quite like Felix Newfield because the system which produced him is also history. It is now almost too demanding and clinical. Much bigger teams are raced constantly because of the need to cover costs. The plotting and scheming around a few races a week was given way to a tougher and harder routine. Felix always maintained in defence of his tactics that judging drivers from the stands was a dodgy premise. Now they see it all on camera.
A top horseman; sometimes a rascal but always a likeable one; jovial company and astute thinker, proud of his children, Felix Newfield was an old fashioned harness racing character. His passing is a sad reminder how few who can genuinely claim a similar standing, are still with us.
Credit: David McCarthy writing in Harnessed Aug 2016