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Dick Lee is a prolific Group 1 winning trainer and driver, successful breeder and owner, International and trotting pioneer, outstanding administrator and tireless volunteer.
Dick Lee, son of a soldier-settler was a track ranger at the Melbourne Showgrounds before accepting a position as a private trainer in the emerging trotting industry in Wales, taking a team of horses to the UK where he had 105 drives for 29 wins. The adventure would also see him compete in Holland, Germany, Sweden, Belgium, Russia and the US, always with trotters.
He returned to Australia in 1970 with “a wife, a trainer-driver premiership, half-a-dozen miniature Irish donkeys and a horse in tow”. The horse, Hermes, would sire 1976 Melbourne Cup winner Van Der Hum.
Dick served 12 years as president of the Victorian Square Trotters Association to advocate for the gait. Emerging from this time are:
- 1985 The Redwood Classic for 2yo trotters
- 1996 the first all-trotting card, the Redwood Day at Maryborough.
Dick Lee’s training and driving produced among others:
- Bendigo and Melbourne Pacing Cups winner Rhodonite
- Australian Trotters of the Year Hampdens Pride and Game Ebony
- V L Dullard Cup winners Glenfield Girl and Game Ebony
- Rufus Youngblood, whose racing career included 32 wins, 23 seconds and 18 thirds from 139 starts, the first Australian-bred horse to win four Derbies and Australian Horse of the Year in 1987.
