Deane Lester's Twitter handle is Defier1.
Ok, no blue tick (doesn’t need it or wouldn’t want it), but some not too shabby 28,000 followers and yes it suits, and perhaps subtlety sums up Australia’s most respected wagering investment adviser, or if you wanted to be cheap and a touch tacky, you could go with tipster.
But the much loved “Deano” is of course far more than just another racing media urger.
“Look at me” has never been part of the Lester persona and if you wanted to join a group that had a harsh word to say about him, first find one of those old telephone booths if you can, have your meeting and a good look at yourselves and then please lock the door (from the inside).
Like Lester, Defier, the Guy Walter trained galloper of the early millennium, gave his best at the top level but was rarely in the spotlight. That was normally held by Lonhro, but Defier did win a George Main Stakes (beating Sunline), and a Doomben Cup at Group 1 level, was placed in two Cox Plates (behind Northerly and Fields of Omagh), but did have Lonhro’s scalp in a then group 2 Warwick Stakes.
“I don’t know, Guy was just one of my favorite people in racing, a gentleman and I latched on to Defier and just loved him and his honesty. I suppose it suits me, I’ve been a defier over the years, especially the medicos,” Lester said, from his rehab ward in a Caulfield hospital.
And by the way, if it wasn’t to be Defier, Lester would have gone with Shaftesbury Avenue, pointing to his 1991 portfolio of Lightning Stakes and Newmarket handicap wins to a Japan Cup placing.
But it was to some little pleasant surprise that that well measured, well known and humbly friendly voice, came out of the radio at RSN on Saturday morning as if he had never been away. But he has been and for a very good reason but even when he was away, he was still there and sometimes here. Let me try and explain.
Lester has been off the airways since May 22. And with a good excuse note from his doctor - the not too trifling matter of a four-hour operation that turned into eight hours on his T8 and T9 vertebrae on an already troublesome spine saw to that. That was June 7.
Lester is counting the days now to be finished with Rehab and finally getting to move into his new home at Botanic Ridge in Cranbourne with his partner Leanne. He quips it’s close enough to his mate Robbie Griffiths and “Cuzzy Bro” Michael Walker, but also far enough away, if you know what I mean. The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) finally approved their bathroom last week.
But this latest serious surgery followed another stint of health induced issues that could convince that he donate his body to science fiction, not science, one the judge finally puts his number in the frame.
Lester, such a familiar figure around the mounting yard at Melbourne metropolitan race meetings, quite remarkably hasn’t been to the track since Jamie Kah scored his first group 1 win on Harlem in the 2019 Australian Cup.
But you still heard on him Melbourne radio, or Channel 7 race day coverage or a regular stint in Perth media whilst his tipping service subscribers got their regular service every Saturday. Like he wasn’t away.
And he did get a shout out from his prodigy jockey Jye McNeil, who he was instrumental in getting the ride and helping with instructions to win the 2020 Melbourne Cup on Twilight Payment.
It wasn’t just COVID that had kept Lester away. For 14 months, from February 18, 2020, he knows the dates precisely, until Anzac Day last year, he was restricted to his bed but lying on his left side, supported only by a wall of pillows and a passion for his work. All because of a pressure sore.
And not just any pressure sore, obviously.
“I went in for a clean-up and a scrub which is fairly standard but saw in their faces that this was something worse, they found a 12cm hole in my thigh. My doctor was Andrew Fuller, the head of infectious diseases and he said we want to do this properly, the alternative is that you die.”
The good news, there was some, is that Dr Fuller knew the pandemic would cause the lockdown and got Lester home to start his public hibernation while a round of nine surgeries was required to filly the wound with healthy tissue, or if you want your own research, google hyper granulation.
So, every word you heard from Lester over that period and thought life was normal, was him confined to bed, unable to roll to his right side.
“It wasn’t much fun, I had an air bid and a pile of pillows” says Lester matter of factly, but typically without the hint of a “why me” or any navel gazing.
“But I was able to work, I had a hospital table set up for radio beside the bed, which probably kept me as sane I could over that period of time. I remember Neil Kearney (Channel 7) coming to see me after the Cup because of what Jye had said, and we had to set the camera up in a certain why to make the shot work.”
But he has needed the full media silence since May to recover from the recent spine surgery. It followed a diagnosis in December of further deterioration of his troubled spin, where the changes in the spine were detected and the pain experienced with it almost unbearable.
“I think we had 10 surgeons attack it. I had a series of tests in January and by early February I was in the Alfred for 10 days because there was a shadow on the spine, which made it difficult to target the problem originally.”
Lester can thank Dr Paul Wharton for the short-term process of managing the pain at a time of debilitation so intense he couldn’t get out of bed. And he can thank Lloyd Williams for getting him in touch with Israel based neurosurgeon Professor Andrew Kaye to WhatsApp his way through the medical plan.
“It has been a physical challenge obviously as much as a mental one, but I can’t thank Leanne enough and I’ve been lucky to have racing.”
Respected form analyst Deane Lester says he's been lucky to have racing through his health battle
The operation left him in an induced come for three days and there have been Ketamine based hallucinations that still haunt him but that he openly talks about.
“The ketamine is to take the pain away, but it become like a paranoia and it like you are responded in exactly the opposite way to what it should be doing for you. I know one day I rang my mates and were telling them they were knocking me off, when they were only trying to help me. I don’t want to be going through that again.” Lester said.
“The rehab has started with physio on the back, simple things like stretching, sitting and standing up, and pedalling three kilometres on a moped.”
Lester does acknowledge the enforced break from his regular duties and medical expenses has eaten into life’s kitty but he is looking forward to getting back to the track, which he hopes may be Memsie Stakes day, August 27.
And the familiar sight of Lester on his scooter, he’s been using one (well three of them, even one that Luke Currie seconded after winning on Makybe Diva at Flemington and ran it to ground in the Flemington members) over the last 20 years for mobility, will be upgraded by a new power wheelchair, allowing him a little more elevation to look friends and fans more in the eye.
“That is one thing that has been very humbling,” Lester said. “The messages, hundreds of them, not just from people I know, or vaguely know but people who have found my number and texted me.
“I think I have been true to what I have known from the start in this game, it’s never been about me, it was the horse first and then the punting and I’ve been very fortunate for the opportunities I have been given and if that means that people have gravitated to me over time for the way I do things I am very flattered.”
So, if he tips In The Boat or Stern Idle, or How’s The Serenity, The Admiral or Seberate in Perth with his great mate Simon Miller, horses he has interests in at the moment, he will do so because he thinks they will win on form, not because they have been improved by his ownership.
That’s the Deane Lester way. Keep defying them, Deano!
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