The late Jack Wilson was a legend in the Queensland jockey ranks winning 25 Cairns premierships. He devoted over half a century of his life to thoroughbred racing.

If I asked a group of long-term racing devotees to write down the top 20 Queensland jockeys of all time, no one would write down the name John Yet Foy. But many people may write down the name Jack Wilson – and we’d be talking of the same legend of the Queensland racing industry.

Born the son of a 31-year-old Chinese Australian drover John Yet Foy and his 19-year-old Australian mother Betsy May Yet Foy (nee Hicks), John Yet Foy jnr. entered the world 900 kilometres west of Cairns – at Normanton Hospital in far North Queensland on December 3, 1920. He was the oldest of seven children the couple would bring into the world.

From all accounts Jack had a fairly normal childhood, but his parents’ marriage break-up saw him attend schools at Tully, Ingham, Innisfail and Cairns before he returned to Normanton in his teenage years. He got a job as a ringer at “Miranda Downs”, a large cattle station situated between Normanton and Karumba, near the Gulf of Carpentaria, right in the heart of the country to where Chinese prospectors had flocked in the 1800’s by boat, to try their luck. “Miranda Downs” is still in existence today and young John Yet Foy learnt to ride horses through his employment there.

Diminutive in stature and fearless in nature, 17-year-old John Yet Foy had his first day in the saddle as a jockey at Normanton race track. By the time the sun had disappeared over the horizon that day, John had bagged himself three winners from three rides. He always fondly remembered the name of his winner – a mare called Sequna in the Maiden Handicap.

Good news travels fast in the bush – even if they were relying on Cobb and Co coaches to deliver it back then – and soon young John began riding in the big smoke at Cairns.

At an unknown date in his life, John Yet Foy changed his name by deed poll to John Wilson, but he always was called Jack Wilson. Under the name of Jack Wilson, he wrote himself into North Queensland racing folklore. Over the next half century, subsequent to him riding that treble at Normanton, “Jockey Jack” as he was affectionately known to one and all, rode nearly 5000 winners. He won 25 Cairns jockey premierships – the last being for the season ending July 31, 1976, when Jack was just 55 years old! As if that wasn’t a big enough feat in itself, Jack was dual licensed as both a jockey and a trainer. So the same year he won his 25^th jockey premiership in Cairns, just for good measure he also won both the Townsville Cup and the Cairns Centenary Cup with his handy galloper Heza Sweetie.

In The Cairns Post newspaper dated 20/7/81, it was stated that, “Jack Wilson rode four winners on six race card (last Saturday) at Cannon Park (Cairns) racetrack on Chebreka, Quinharco, Magic Hall and Twyford”. Nothing extraordinary about that, except Jack Wilson was nearly 61 years of age at the time!

Another undated newspaper clipping – probably from the same era – spoke of Jack Wilson riding four winners on the five race program at Cannon Park – Nice Line, Honey Smoke, Young Set and Levista. He narrowly missed riding the entire card when his other mount, Buck’s Prince, could only manage second.

His photograph appeared in The Cairns Post in 1986 riding a winner – at the time he was 65.

Jack Wilson – a natural lightweight jockey – was obviously a very modest man. One journalist wrote “getting Jack to talk about his career on the turf is like getting blood out of a stone”. The article continued, “Jack rode over 100 winners in one season and has gone close to the century on numerous occasions. Just as an example picked at random, of his remarkable winning average, Jack once landed 98 wins, 65 seconds and 29 thirds and (had) only 60 unplaced rides from 252 rides for the season.”

Jack served time in World War II. He enlisted in the Australian Army but later contracted meningitis and was given an honourable discharge as he couldn’t be re-enlisted. Disappointed by this, he enlisted with the Australian based office of the American Merchant Navy which he served active duty with in Papua New Guinea, for an unknown period of time. As confirmation of the aforesaid, upon Jack’s death, his funeral notice in The Cairns Post contained the information that he was Able Seaman (number) 4220 US Army Transport Corp.

Jack Wilson married Evelyn (Lyn) Walsh at Lismore in New South Wales on 1/12/1945. The couple had one child – Marie Therese (Terry) Wilson.

Jack was closely bonded to his brother Roy from their childhood days. Roy had also changed his name by deed poll from Yet Foy to Wilson. Roy was also a jockey and later a trainer and the brothers rode in races together. Roy trained horses like Davmond and Sinenora, which Jack rode with plenty of success. It is believed when Jack and Roy Wilson rode together in a race when both were in their 60’s that they are, to this day, the oldest brothers to ever ride in a registered race together anywhere in the world.

Jack Wilson had a reputation of being a great hands-and-heels rider. In an article in The Cairns Post in 1981 it was written “Jack Wilson has a reputation for withholding the whip and has been seen to use it only on a very few occasions”. Jack told the author Gary Schofield “in my opinion, it’s a desperate move to resort to the whip for a jockey”. He continued by saying “balance is the key to a good jockey, I learned the basics of balance while working cattle as a youth – a job that needs you to be fast off the mark”.

Jack Wilson was by all accounts obviously an intensely private man. His niece Debbie Jerome, from Mareeba, furnished a lot of historical information to do this story and she said her uncle “rarely smiled”. She recalled with pride the occasion of him receiving his trophy for winning his 25^th jockey premiership from Cairns Jockey Club Chairman George Pegg as being a rare exception and a treasured photo of the occasion remained the only photo the family possessed where her uncle was actually smiling.

At one stage in his career Jack Wilson moved to Brisbane where turf experts predicted a big future for the northern rider. Of his subsequent return to Cairns a short time later, one publication wrote “but he preferred the country lifestyle and abandoned the success he was enjoying at Albion Park”. Fellow Cairns jockey, who rode for 20 years in that era, Linde Allendorf – now 72 – disagrees entirely with that. “Jockey Jack rode up here (in Cairns) with a pencil moustache. Chief Steward of the time in Brisbane was Neive Frawley and he told Jack to ‘shave it off, or you won’t be able to ride’ and so Jack came home to Cairns on a matter of principle,” said Linde, who continued by saying, “Make no mistake though, he’d have held his own anywhere in Australia, he was a freak, you’d think you had him beaten, but you couldn’t get past him. In fact he proved he could hold his own anywhere. There was a trainer up here called Norm McHardie and he trained a horse called Rim Huff for a chap called George Cannon, whose father George snr. donated the Cairns Jockey Club the land where Cannon Park is located – that’s how Cannon Park got its name. Jack Wilson rode that horse Rim Huff in Brisbane and won on it and he even went to Sydney and won on it when they took it there.”

Another person who was very close to Jack Wilson from a young age is current Tablelands-based 50-year-old jockey Ron Ryan. Ron spent his entire apprenticeship under the tutorship of Jack Wilson from the age of 15. Their association provided the foundation that saw Ron Ryan win 11 consecutive Cairns jockey premierships. Ron remembers Jack as being “a good boss. He was a hard boss, but very fair,” he said. Jack Wilson’s faith in his young apprentice was rewarded when Ryan won both the 1976 Townsville and Cairns Centenary Cups on Heza Sweetie – a horse Wilson trained.

Jack Wilson rode tens of thousands of horses in his illustrious career including many southern horses that were taken north, to try to plunder the rich prizemoney of feature races like the Cairns Newmarket and Cairns Cup and Townsville’s Cleveland Bay Handicap and Townsville Cup. But one special former broken-down equine crock would eventually go on to gain equal top billing alongside two other horses, in the mind of Jack Wilson, when he finally hung up his saddle. A grazier named Charlie Wallace bought a horse called Zarook from Melbourne. The horse had gone hopelessly amiss after running 8^th at 12-1 to subsequent champion stayer Galilee in the 1966 Caulfield Cup. The then-4YO entire, by Landau out of Brave Love, was ridden by Rod Dawkins and finished fairly close to odds-on favourite (8-11) champion Tobin Bronze, who had clocked in officially 6^th. The grazier entrusted the horse to a then Mareeba based trainer – highly respected for his ability with crocks – Dinko Pecotich. Just short of three years after the Caulfield Cup break down, Pecotich saw his patience and expertise rewarded when he took Zarook to Townsville in 1969 and won both the Townsville Cup and the North Queensland Cup in that city. Pecotich entrusted the winning ride on each occasion to Jack Wilson.

Taken to Brisbane after his Townsville victories, Zarook made a clean sweep of three of Brisbane’s feature races – the Brisbane Handicap (1600 metres), Queensland Cup (3200 metres) and the Recognition Stakes (2100 metres) – a feat never performed before, or since, in Queensland racing history. The weight of 9 stone 1 pound (57.5 kilograms) that Zarook was asked to carry in the 3200 metres Queensland Cup of 1969 – a race first run in 1878 – is the highest weight carried to victory between 1917 and today.

Current 79-year-old retired race caller Dick Chant, who spent 45 years initially in radio – and later television broadcasting – in Cairns, was fluent at calling all three racing codes. During his illustrious career he called 40 consecutive Cairns Cups at Cannon Park, before retiring in 1996 aged 70. With his mind still sharp as a tack, he referred to Jack Wilson as an “outstanding jockey” and noted, “He was a very shy man, I’d nearly have to beg him to do an interview. But he was a beautiful hands-and-heels rider, just a very skilful, quiet person.” Dick Chant conducted an ABC Radio interview with Jack Wilson in 1981, in which Dick recalled Jack named “the best horses he ever rode as being Zarook, Rim Huff and Heza Sweetie”. Dick Chant also spoke a moving eulogy on ABC Radio to listeners the Saturday morning following Jack Wilson’s death.

Retired 75-year-old The Cairns Post newspaper editor, Allan Hudson, who was editor of the daily from 1974 until his retirement in 1991, knew Jack Wilson well and said: “I have followed racing in Cairns since I was a schoolboy. Jack Wilson would certainly be up there with the best jockeys I’ve seen. In fact he may be the best. He was outstanding in his time and had a wonderful affinity with horses. He seemed to get the best out of them with just hands-and-heels riding. Zarook, a horse Jack rode, would be the best galloper that ever raced in Cairns, in my opinion.”

An avid fisherman when time permitted, Jack Wilson passed away on September 20, 1997 at age 76 at Cairns Base Hospital. Following his cremation, his ashes were scattered at the winning post at the Cannon Park racetrack in Cairns at his request. His last years were tinged with sadness due to his longstanding marriage breaking up and he became over reliant, in some people’s eyes, on alcohol.

History shows that Cairns racetrack has been proven to be a fertile seat of learning for some wonderful racing careers of both trainers and jockeys. A young fellow named Brian Mayfield-Smith lived on course at Cannon Park racetrack in a caravan training just one horse. He went on to break Tommy Smith’s 33-year stranglehold on the Sydney trainers’ premiership when he moved south.

Fred Best – a leading Queensland trainer throughout the 50’s, 60’s and the 70’s – was inducted into the Queensland Racing Hall of Fame. He learnt his trade at Cairns.

Vic Thompson, the first private trainer appointed to the Jack and Bob Ingham racing empire, was once a leading Cairns jockey.

A Filipino kid called Frank Reys rode at Cairns in gymkhanas and pony races before becoming a jockey. He became the toast of Australian racing when he won the Melbourne Cup on Gala Supreme on the first Tuesday in November in 1973.

A chap called Ron Dillon moved from Cairns to Brisbane and trained a horse called Bore Head. They travelled to Melbourne in 1965 and combined to win the Caulfield Cup at 14-1.

So, Cairns has an established rich racing heritage, which only further serves to exemplify the Herculean job that a champion jockey called Jack Wilson achieved by being able to win 25 premierships. In November each year, the Cairns Jockey Club remembers Jack Wilson by running a memorial race named in his honour.

Through his niece’s love and admiration for her uncle’s achievements, the memory of Jack Wilson will live on for many decades to come. Maybe, just maybe, one day his half-a-century continuous contribution to the racing industry and his accompanying 25 Cairns jockeys premierships and nearly 5000 winners will be rewarded with the recognition it justifiably deserves – via his posthumous admission to the Queensland Racing Hall of Fame.

A special "Photo Gallery" of 10 photos has been put together by this website in memory of Jack Wilson. To view the photos, just click on the "Photo Gallery" icon on entry to the site, then scroll down and click on "Jack Wilson" - give them time to load as per the bottom left hand corner of your computer - and enjoy. They shall be retained here as a lasting tribute to a wonderful jockey.