Don Looker celebrates a century of life and racing

With 100 years of memories to draw upon, interwoven by 111 raceday winners, Don Looker is the first to admit that he’s led a charmed life.
Last weekend the remarkable centenarian was joined in his hometown of Hamilton by family and friends to celebrate his milestone birthday. From near and far they came, and along with this writer are left to marvel at his vitality and enjoyment of talking about life in general and his involvement in racing.
A long-standing friendship with highly respected Te Rapa trainer Bill Winder was central to the highlights of Looker’s racing experiences.
This weekend it will be 51 years since one of the very best gallopers he raced with Winder, Swell Time, won the Caulfield Cup. Others during that halcyon period included that classy 1960s middle-distance performer Honour Me and the 1984 Queensland Derby winner Librici.
Looker continues to look for that next winner, with the Ralph Manning-trained La Rosa Lee gearing up to add to the two she has already registered. He bred her in partnership with close friends Dave and Kathy Smith from a winning daughter of their six-time winner Arduous.
“I feel 100 per cent,” Looker said with an unintended pun when RaceForm caught up with him the day after his big party. “It’s hard for someone like me to think that I’m now starting my next 100 years.
“I feel great. One of my grand-daughters organised everything, I was a bit apprehensive when they told me what they had planned but it went off very well and I lasted the distance. People came from everywhere – a couple of friends even from Australia – and I got letters from my old mate (King) Charlie and the Governor-General saying well done old boy.”
Reflection on his life draws a mixture of awe and disbelief from Looker, who describes himself as the most unlikely of centenarians.
“Of all my brothers and sisters when we were growing up, I was the most sickly,” he recalls. “It didn’t help when a horse kicked me in the head when I was three and a half years old, but somehow I came through all that and here I am, the last one still standing.”
In his working life Looker qualified as an electrician and developed a business that enabled him to indulge in racehorses. He and his wife Joan struck it lucky in the late 1960s with Honour Me, a daughter of the champion staying sire Le Filou.
Her 11 wins under Bill Winder’s training included two weight-for-age features, the Clifford Plate at Ellerslie and the Stars Travel Invitation Stakes, an innovative autumn feature that had its beginnings at Tauranga in 1968. Honour Me won the second edition when the $10,000 stake made it New Zealand’s richest weight-for-age race.
“Honour Me was my first good horse,” Looker says. “Bill was keen to take her to Aussie but the way things worked out that never happened. Still, she was a very good mare and she gave us a lot of thrills.”
Just a few years later Looker joined forces with Winder and local studmaster Ian Malcolm with a horse that would get her chance across the Tasman. Named Swell Time and by emerging southern stallion Mellay, the powerfully-built chestnut more than lived up to her name.
At three years she won the Great Northern Oaks, New Zealand Thoroughbred Breeders Stakes and Ladies Mile and the next season she surpassed that by winning the Caulfield Cup and failing by inches just a week later to add the Cox Plate.
“Gosh she was good! After what she did at three we decided she was good enough to take her over to the (Melbourne) spring carnival. The Caulfield Cup was her first big target and she pulled it off, then the Moonee Valley guys got in touch to see if we would consider running her in the Cox Plate.
“Bill was happy with how she came through Caulfield and we decided to give it a shot. She should have won that too. She was all at sea around that tight turning track and by the time she got into her stride the race was all but over.
“She charged home but Taj Rossi had too big a break. Another two strides and she would have beaten the horse Bart Cummings described as the best he trained.”
Ten days later Swell Time lined up as one of the favourites in the Melbourne Cup, but this time she had absolutely no luck.
“She got in a scuffle with Dayana going out of the straight the first time and that was it for her, she came out of the race with a bad leg.”
A similar mix of luck balanced the fortunes of the next quality galloper Looker raced with Winder, Librici. He hit form as a late three-year-old at the 1984 Queensland winter carnival, winning the Grand Prix Stakes and then adding the Queensland Derby.
“If only he’d had four good feet, he would have won anything,” says Looker of the untapped talent. “That stopped him from ever showing the same form.”
Those years of being involved in day-to-day activities at the Winder stable, just minutes from the Beerescourt home he still lives in, as well as going on tour with the skilled horseman, are times that Looker still cherishes.
“Every time I think of Bill, I realise what a great trainer he was, how he could set a horse for a race, whether it was a stayer winning first-up or being set for a big race – he was a master.”
A day at the races is now a thing of the past for Looker, but he still enjoys observing via Trackside TV, no more so than last Saturday at nearby Te Rapa racecourse when, in a race named in his honour, the Ralph Manning-trained Poster Boy carried the same colours as those of past Looker stars.
“That was great to see, especially when the horse made the pace and was still in the fight up the straight.”
The question of longevity is almost a cliché when put to people like Don Looker, but one that he’s happy to answer with typical frankness.
“I certainly don’t feel a hundred. I haven’t been to my doctor for a couple of years, so I really don’t know. When you’re involved in racing, all those wonderful people you meet, that’s got to be good for you, and then there’s my family.
“At my birthday party I was surrounded by grandkids and great-grandkids, and I was allowed to just sit back and enjoy them. Here at home my son Donald looks after things, when he’s at work during the day I take care of myself, prepare the veges for dinner and he does the rest.
“It’s not a bad life you know, and I reckon I could keep doing it for a few years yet.”