Lucy’s long life in racing
Dennis Ryan - Raceform • August 15th, 2025 10:00 AM • 5 min read
Few racing enthusiasts have a story combining history and longevity that could compare with Lucy Scoular’s.
A Hawke’s Bay resident for all 88 years of her life, she is the most senior member of the I See Red Syndicate and made the most of yet another trip down to Christchurch for Grand National week to cheer home the winners of the Sydenham and Grand National Hurdles.
On opening day, Dictation carried the Paul Nelson/Corrina McDougal stable’s red and black hooped colours to victory in the Sydenham Hurdles, looking every bit a serious contender for the Grand National.
Typifying the highs and lows of the game, by Wednesday Dictation was out of contention with a suspensory ligament injury, but then up stepped fellow I See Red runner Suliman to snatch a nose win in Saturday’s $100,000 feature.
Lucy Scoular and her late husband John took one of the 30 original shares when Paul and Carol Nelson launched the jumps syndicate more than 20 years ago. Just A Swagger was their first big winner in the 2004 Grand National Hurdles, which he repeated a year later and added the Grand National Steeplechase in 2008.
Numerous others have followed since, including Suliman in the 2023 Wellington Hurdles and Dictation in the Waikato Hurdles two months ago – and invariably the little old lady dressed in red is there making the most of the occasion.
“I just love it, the people you meet and the fun you have – it’s just wonderful!” she says with no room for argument. “I get very spoilt the way people look after me, if I need a driver someone steps up, but I’m not exactly helpless you know.
“I did drive myself to Whanganui earlier this year to see one of the horses race and my daughter Sally came down to Christchurch with me for the week, so I’m always in good hands.”
Lucy is a member of one of Hawke’s Bay racing and breeding’s most historic families. In the latter years of the 19th Century her great-grandfather William Douglas farmed Te Mahanga Station near Hastings, where he stood stallions and even conducted his own yearling sales.
Thus began a long list of high-class racehorses bred and/or raced by family members, from The Hawk, who won a string of races from six to 10 furlongs in Sydney, Melbourne, Hawke’s Bay, Canterbury and Taranaki through the 1920s, to 1930s Auckland Cup winner Gold Trail and 1950s star Red Jester, a big winner throughout New Zealand as well as Sydney, and later a successful sire when standing at Te Mahanga.
“My father Denys (Dinnie Douglas) bought Gold Trail from T C Lowry in 1930 and when the horse won the Auckland Cup four years later, he was the youngest ever person to own an Auckland Cup winner,” she recalls.
Another legendary horse that was to play a more direct part in Lucy’s life was Hall of Fame jumper Brookby Song, the winner of two Great Northern Steeplechases and after the second of those also the winner of the Wellington and Grand National Steeplechases.
“I was 14 at boarding school in Havelock North when I received a telegram from my father that said ‘You have been given Brookby Song as a hunter. You’re a very lucky girl’.
“My father was a friend of Brookby Song’s owner Mr Whitford and one day at the races after they had been talking, the decision was made to let me have him.
“I could hunt him only during the school holidays as we were allowed home just three weekends each term, but we had a wonderful time together for the next six years.
“He was a lovely jumper, he just loved to hunt and the bigger the jump the better! One day this horse just ahead of us crashed through a fence made of wooden posts and we were committed to it, but the trouble was the fence was flicking back as my boy launched himself.
“It didn’t make any difference though – he just sailed over it!”
Once married and settled on a property just down the road from Te Mahanga, Lucy and John Scoular farmed as well as running broodmares, which led to them founding a very good line.
“We bought a Sucaryl filly as a weanling off Tom Lowry at Okawa and named her Honeypot. She never raced but from her we bred the New Zealand Derby winner Jolly Jake and two other good horses, Sweet Gem and Our Secret Weapon.”
Subsequent generations of the Scoular line produced the New Zealand Cup winner Bizzwinkle and his siblings Awesome Treasure, a useful winner in Hong Kong, and five-time winner Free Bee, who is raced by Lucy and family members.
“I’ve still got some of them here on the farm,” the incorrigible octogenarian told RaceForm from her home on Tuesday morning. “I can spell them here and look out the bedroom window and see them waiting for me to go out and feed them – I wouldn’t have it any other way!”
