Bruce Sorensen has been an Injune Race Club committee member for nearly seven decades. His most recent jobs have included acting as timekeeper and harrowing the track. Now approaching his 81st birthday, Bruce will be heading to the track for the annual Injune Races on June 6, and is hoping to spend the day having a yarn and beer with his racing mates and placing the odd $5 bet. Well-known local identity PUDDY CHANDLER sat down with Mr Sorensen to record some of his best memories of nearly 70 years of Injune racing.
THE seed for a love of racing and riding race horses was sown when Bruce Sorensen attended a Geebung Race day at Glentulloch, Injune, almost 70 years ago.
This was about the middle of the 1950s and Bruce and his cousin Fred took a couple of horses out for the sports day.
A calcutta was held and Bruce rode his horse, Mixmaster, a half-bred race horse, sired by the famous Gain Carrington, owned by Flo Kilpatrick. This was the first time Bruce had ridden in a pad, which was given to him by his uncle Les.
Bruce quickly realised the racing advantage of a pad over a stock saddle for speed. So began his amateur racing career.
He had always loved riding horses, starting as a small child riding to school in Injune, and then as a ringer mustering for Sorensen Brothers.
As an amateur jockey Bruce always rode in the Roma Picnics and other amateur race days around the district.
The love of the sport and the thrill of riding a thoroughbred kept him enjoying riding at the picnics.
In 1984, when Bruce turned 50, he thought he had better hang up the pad.
This was also when he sold his property and started on his next hobby - training horses.
Bruce's first experience with this came through Injune's Tomm McCawley, who had a mare called Market Cross. He leased her yearling called Guo to Bruce to train and race her. Bruce then purchased another yearling, also out of Market Cross, called Wrong Bias.
But it was with his next horse that he hit the jackpot.
Purchased out of Market Cross by Post Elect, he called her Wilkes Joy.
What a joy this horse was to Bruce - she had 78 starts, 25 placings and won 14 races, bringing in $56,000 prizemoney, which was not bad coin for the 1990s.
None of this matters to Bruce when he talks about this horse - it is evident she gave him a wonderful hobby in the thrilling world of racing.
Wilkes Joy has now retired to El Dorado near Roma as a brood mare to live out her sunset years.
To explain the passion that Bruce got from this horse is to hear him recall the race 'word for word' at the 2005 Roma Picnics, where the horse started at 40-to-1 in the Ladies Bracelet and won.
Bruce had been told she didn't stand a chance against the Brisbane and Toowoomba horses.
Despite Bruce being a jockey, he was past riding track work when he started training his horses, so the main aid to the training regime was his old utility.
He would lead the horse on a long rein out the window of the tilly and the program, three times around the track at a trot, and then a canter around the 1600-metre track.
He would feed after track work was done and then let the horses into the paddock at Bruce's block.
Injune racing has always relied on volunteers such as Bruce Sorensen to stage its race meeting every year.
Here's to a true local racing icon.
