Colin Maurice Jillings (11 March 1931 – 23 December 2022) was a New Zealand Thoroughbred horse racing trainer from the early 1950s until his retirement in September 2005. He was inducted into the New Zealand Racing Hall of Fame in 2008.[1]
Early life and career
Jillings was born in Auckland on 11 March 1931.[2] He became an apprentice jockey at Ellerslie Racecourse at the age of 12 in 1943. After riding track work at Ellerslie each morning, he would catch the train to school at St Peter's College.[3]
He was a successful apprentice jockey before increasing weight brought a premature end to a promising career.[3] His biggest success as an apprentice was the 1946 Railway Stakes aboard Royal Scot, a race he would later win three times as a trainer.
Training career
When he retired he had amassed a total of 1327 New Zealand winners, 703 of those with long time training partner Richard Yuill.[1]
When asked to name the best horse he ever trained Jillings had no hesitation in labelling Stipulate, the champion stayer of his era in the early 1960s. The fact that he had no hesitation in labelling Stipulate speaks volumes for the regard Jillings had for the horse given that he also trained the super little horse of the early 1980's – McGinty.[4]
Jillings' biggest success came when he trained The Phantom Chance to win the 1993 W. S. Cox Plate. Although operating with a smaller team than some other trainers, Jillings managed to keep producing top horses year after year.[5]
He trained the first of four Auckland Cup winners in 1956 Yeman, followed by Stipulate (1963), Perhaps (1976) and Irish Chance (in partnership with Richard Yuill) in 1999. He also achieved the unique record of training a Derby winner in each of the last 5 decades of the 20th Century: his first Derby winner being Lawful (1958) followed by Stipulate (1960), Uncle Remus (1977), I'm Henry (1983) and The Phantom Chance (1992).
Notable horses
Notable horses he trained included:
Athenia, winner of the 1978 New Zealand Oaks for his good friend T.J. (Tommy) Smith