FEATURE STORY
RACED WITH HEART AND SOUL BY PATRICK BARTLEY
Australian Guineas week is always emotional for two-time winner Craig Newitt. He overcame unimaginable grief just days before winning the famed race in 2009, after taking home the prize in 2008. The Caulfield stewards section consists of a room with a long dining room table down the middle where the integrity team are placed on both sides opposite each other and will sit in judgment on all licensed people during a day at the races. Jockeys and trainers are not keen to enter this room that is located in the bowels of the course and where the penalties large and small are delivered. In late February 2009 half an hour before the Futurity Stakes, jockey Craig Newitt was doing some last-minute study on the competitors in the Group 1 event when he was tapped on the shoulder by a deputy steward summoning the jockey into the stewards’ room. “It’s always a slight concern when you’re called into the room, but I knew pretty well that I hadn’t been involved in any law-breaking that day. However, once I walked into the room and the door closed behind me I saw two sturdy policemen with long faces staring at me. “In the next five minutes it seemed my life had become a confusing mess as these kind policemen told me that my father had been killed in a road accident on the Mornington Peninsula six hours earlier on the way to his work. “My mind was confused, my mouth was dry, I was trying to make sense of something that had just overwhelmed me,” Newitt said. The stewards asked Newitt if he would like to forgo his rides but the former Tasmanian said, no, he wanted the ride in the Futurity Stakes in memory of his father.
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