It should come as no surprise to racing’s extended family, the outpouring of support, especially financially, for Lucy Clampin, the now sadly widowed partner and mother of jockey Dean Holland’s four young children – you’ve seen that gorgeous family portrait – surely it makes you ache.
At the same time, always know that behind the scenes, Racing Victoria and its brilliantly structured emotional and personal support team rolled straight into affirmative action – though sadly, it had to be again.
Swiftly, the big show goes on at The Bool this week, and though there will be some due deference to Holland amongst all the fun, frivolity, and drama before his funeral at Flemington next Monday, where friends and family can say their goodbyes, but deep down, those will never be final ones.
Whilst much time has already reflected on Dean’s legacy, perhaps it is timely to revisit those who have lost before for some sombre perspective.
“It just never goes away” - that’s Emma Goring - pregnant at the time with the unborn child of a jockey, her husband Mark, when he was killed in a race fall at Tatura, now 20 years ago.
That child is now Mitch Goring, and Emma is not only dealing with haunting of the Holland trauma, but she is also facing her own anxious reality that the boy who never me his jockey father, will make his own debut in the saddle in the next few weeks in Queensland.
“All I can say is that is it just never leaves you (the loss), that’s the hardest part, it still is.” she said.
John Ledger lost his son Adrian in a race fall at Corowa 18 years ago. Adrian’s wife Amy was also pregnant at the time of his death. That boy is now Josh, successfully competing in triathlons with his mum, and somewhat surprisingly returning to the thoroughbred fold working to become a trainer through the Ledger stables, while completing an electrical apprenticeship.
“It doesn’t get easy, it never gets easy, even after the years, every day is like yesterday, every day is like every week,” he said.
“All that stands out to me is the pain they will suffer until they die, it doesn’t go away, it just doesn’t and things like this bring it closer to home, but every day we think of it, we just do.
You can watch a documentary I did on the Goring and Ledger families called “Paying The Ultimate Price” here.
Holland was 32, had just achieved a stunning Group 1, planning for Hong Kong opportunities, approaching his hard-earned prime after the years of slog and dogged work.
Goring was just five days from his 23rd birthday, Ledger just 25 when their hopes, dream and lives came to an end, but their families left behind having to deal with their cruel new reality.
Both have memorial races in their honour - the Goring’s - Emma, Mitch and his sister Maddy, who was just 2 at the time of her father’s death, attend Tatura every year, along with Mark’s mum Gail Davies, who still works in the industry.
The Adrian Ledger memorial is run at Albury annually. John has won it five times, but still misses the real prize.
Both families are reliving their own grief through the Holland tragedy.
“If there was a god, this wouldn’t still be happening,” Goring said.
“I really haven’t got my head around it yet (Holland’s death), I just don’t know what I could say to that woman (Lucy), it has brought back everything.
“I am glad Lucy will be fine financially, times have changed so much for the better since Mark, there was no insurance back then, it’s fantastic what the industry and the public has done, but it the emotional side which will be the hardest.”
Ledger knew something was wrong last Monday when his phone was ringing incessantly.
“I didn’t know what they were on about at the time, but everyone kept asking if I was ok,” Ledger said, before learning of the Holland fall and subsequent death.
“People know that every day is filled with some pain and then how hard something like’s Dean’s death still affects us and how hard it still hits us.”
“They (the Holland family) will have all help in the world, but the pain will always be there. It is just so cruel, and no-one can ever prepare you for it.”
Goring has never watched Mark’s fall but still remembers talking to him on the day of it.
“I told him about a dream I had, and it was him having a fall, it wasn’t nice, he said ‘it will never happen to me, I have two children to come home too, it will never happen’, and then it did,” she said.
It was Goring’s death that moved the industry to introduce self-funded compulsory insurance (luckily Ledger would take out two policies), but with no GoFundme, no National Jockey’s Trust (then), Goring was left to a fund raiser and WorkCover to cover the struggles that continue still today. Goring still lives in the Cranbourne family home she shared with Mark.
“Mark was the provider; he’d just won the Tassie Newmarket (on Viscount Alexander) and was getting better opportunities, but we were struggling. Maddy had changed his life, he won a race at Mornington one day and lifted her up saying ‘this is my trophy’, then we were robbed,” Goring said.
About $300,000 was raised at a Caulfield Sportsman’s night for the Goring family but that was immediate relief, but the financial battles alone were ongoing.
“We were doing it tough at the time anyway and my biggest fear was paying the mortgage. With that money, I paid that off, and I’m not embarrassed to say I have redrawn on that since,” said Goring, who has worked three jobs over the years to make ends meet.
The National Jockeys Trust has been able to assist Emma in getting Mitch and Maddy to get through Casey Grammar, Maddy a nurse before establishing a babysitting business, now building her own home with her partner Kyle, but Mitch heading to becoming a jockey on his own terms.
“Obviously he is not doing it because of his dad, he never met him so bless him, it is so gutsy, and he has worked so hard for it,” Emma said.
“But all the Maccas never worked. I never wanted him to be a jockey, and I really struggling with it right now and that his first ride is coming up in the next few weeks, well I’m beside myself, but of course we will be there for him.
“I keep getting these emails from JetStar for cheap flights to the Sunshine Coast (he is apprenticed to Adam Simpson), so we will be there.”
Josh Ledger wasn’t going to be a jockey, despite Uncle John giving him a pony that he swiftly traded for a motorbike, but the DNA has kicked back in and he is working the local stables with the view to his own training future.
“You can’t explain it any other way, he had no interest, but now is strapping and travelling and can’t help but be around the stables, he wants to be a trainer, but he’ll get a trade first,” Ledger said.
Mum Amy met Adrian at a Wangaratta Hunt Club Ball as teenagers, the young baby faced Ledger taking a year to ask her out and then bringing a mate in support to their first date at the movies.
She remembers that day, but more so THAT day, and those many days since.
“We were in such a good place, I’d been sick through the first three months (of the pregnancy), but then it couldn’t get any better,” she said in my documentary before it got so much worse.
Amy would find a “silly little letter that he wrote” – it outlined “if I ever die, look after these people please.”
That included organ transplant, a heart, a liver, six peoples lives saved or improved with Adrian’s death.
Both Emma and Amy have moved on personally, Emma with new partner Brett and working the tools of his plumbing business while still at the Cranbourne Turf Club in hospitality; Amy has had another son Nicholas and is with her partner Mark and still in Wangaratta.
Both Mitch and Josh have grown together – thought apart – as fixtures of the NJT cricket match. The chance of M Goring riding for J Ledger in a race is an alluring tease in times like these.
In the meantime, times like these obviously concern ourselves with Dean Holland and his family, but allow us to reflect and respect the ongoing challenges others who have been through it, have and still face.
That’s not racing. That’s life, a cruel one at that at times like this.
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