Smug the latest in a long line of Thompson winners
Dennis Ryan - Raceform • July 17th, 2025 5:01 PM • 5 min read
During a lifetime of racehorse ownership, Hauraki Plains couple Ron and Marianne Thompson have experienced the full range of emotions that go with their favourite pursuit.
But not until the past fortnight had they been party to such a contrast in fortunes as that delivered by Smug, the latest horse to carry their purple, yellow and white colours.
On June 28 at Trentham, Smug made a winning steeplechase debut around the figure-eight course, only for a stewards’ inquiry to result in disqualification due to his rider Michael Roustoby opting for the wrong gap in the course proper running rail when he exited the steeplechase course.
The hapless jockey, along with Smug’s owners and trainer Chris Wood, were devastated to lose an otherwise meritorious victory, exacerbated by his “winning” margin of several lengths despite having taken a longer route than his closest rivals.
Fast forward to last Sunday at Woodville, and Smug delivered more than ample compensation with his narrow defeat of reigning Jumper of the Year West Coast in the $75,000 Glenanthony Simmentals Hawke’s Bay Steeplechase. Similar to his Trentham performance, Smug made most of the running and in something of a David and Goliath confrontation, the medium-sized brown found plenty when the giant of jumps racing threw down the gauntlet.
Smug didn’t help his chances when he screwed on landing over the second-last, but comeback jumps jockey Mathew Gillies kept his cool as he summoned one last effort and pulled off a defiant victory. As the climax to a wonderful day of jumps racing it could not have been better scripted.
West Coast confirmed that he’s primed for yet another Grand National carnival, while Smug joined the day’s earlier Te Whangai Romneys Hawke’s Bay Hurdle winner Never Look Back and last month’s Trentham stars Jesko and Billy Boy as fresh talent in jumping ranks.
“Talk about the highs and lows of racing!” Ron Thompson told RaceForm when reflecting on Smug’s contrasting fortunes. “As I said to Chris, the older you get, the tougher it is on your system.
“What happened at Trentham was so disappointing, we were gutted to see him run so well only to have it taken it off him. Then to turn it all around and beat a horse like West Coast – it hardly gets any better.”
Ron and Marianne Thompson have countless examples of what racehorse ownership has to offer, dating all the way back to the first, Arragon’s Lady, a filly born in 1969 who was to be tyro trainer Brian Smith’s first ever winner when she scored at Ellerslie. Later in the 1970s Smith became famous as the trainer of the globetrotting champion Balmerino, and just this week after being based for the past four decades in Brisbane, he announced his retirement.
A common thread in the majority of the Thompsons’ subsequent winners has been the Arragon’s Lady line, both directly and indirectly, some bred themselves and the balance sourced from other breeders.
Smug’s sixth dam Autumn Glow is also the ancestress of the Thompsons’ Canterbury Gold Cup winner Anteaus, their Foxbridge Plate winner Adonia, nine-time winner Woodsman and Wanganui Guineas winner Fiddler.
“We haven’t kept an exact tally of our wins over the years, but it’s well over 100,” Ron Thompson added. “There’s quite a lot of history hanging on the walls of my man’s room.”
Thompson’s working life revolved around a construction business he established in Waitakaruru, a township on the southern fringes of the Firth of Thames familiar to the thousands of Auckland holidaymakers travelling to the Coromandel Peninsula.
“It was a good business with up to 36 guys working for us and I decided to sell up to a junior partner when I turned 70, which was coming up 13 years ago.”
Apart from the bloodlines responsible for most of the Thompson racing string, another common thread was Matamata horseman Tony Gillies, initially riding jumps winners in the Thompson colours and then training them for some four decades.
“We go back a long way with Tony and we had a fantastic relationship right through to when he retired about five years ago. We’ve also had horses in Australia with Ray Cleaver, when he trained in Wyong and then when he moved down to Victoria.
“The best of them was Big Risk, who got as close as any of mine to make it to the Melbourne Cup, and since Ray died his understudy Alex Rae has trained a handy one called Shock ’Em Ova that’s won five from not many starts.”
When Gillies handed in his licence, Cambridge trainer Chris Wood entered the picture offering part-ownership in handy sorts Side Eye and Funtonic.
“I’m always on the lookout for horses from the breed, which is how I came across Smug in a Karaka catalogue,” Thompson said. “Simms Davison bred him at Mapperley Stud but he had a bit of a fetlock problem and he withdrew him from the sales.
“Tony and I went out to Mapperley to inspect him, we liked what we saw and we arrived at a price.”
After he began his racing career as a late three-year-old, it took until Smug was a spring six-year-old before he broke through for his first win, over hurdles at Rotorua. Placings in the Great Northern, Waikato and Hawke’s Bay Hurdles followed but it was a still long wait for a second win, only for that to be ruled out at Trentham last month.
“He’s taken time, but the way he’s taken to steeplechasing our patience is finally being rewarded,” says Thompson. “It was perhaps a big call to line him up against the guns in the Hawke’s Bay Steeples, but after talking to Chris we figured that but for taking the wrong course at Trentham he would have been in this race anyway.
“He won’t be going to the Grand National, but the Great Northern Steeplechase could be a decent target, so he’ll have a look at the Te Aroha jumps later in the month and we’ll take it from there.”
