Excerpt #2 from The Joan Phipps Story…

JP: Back in Vancouver it was a daily struggle, but at least my knees were beginning to heal. On a whim, I decided to look up Frank and Lynn Barroby, trainers from Saskatchewan who now lived in B.C. I had never met them before, but I thought they might have something for me. It was worth a try. Frank remembered me and offered to help me out, so I began working as a pony rider and exercise rider. My knees felt pretty damn good. Maybe, I thought, I could give it another go. I was fitter than I had been in a long time so why not? I started to ride, and started to win. Thank God for second chances and for Frank and Lynn who stood by me and threw mounts my way. I ran the BC Derby Trial on a wonderful little thoroughbred called Room Enough. Winning that race set me up to ride the biggest race of the season, The BC Derby. I was ecstatic. I knew I could win. I had the horse. There wasn’t another horse on that track that could beat him. The day of the race, I arrived and headed to the jock’s room to warm up and get into my silks. A jockey stopped me on the way in.

“Sorry about the bad news Joan.” he said.

“ What are you talking about? ” I joked.

“ You haven’t heard? Your horse got scratched.”

I laughed, “Yeah, right!” and started to make a beeline for the sweatbox to drop some fast weight.

“No, I’m serious Joan. He came up lame this morning so they had to scratch him.”

There was this awkward silence. I slowly turned to him. “You’re kidding right?” I said.

All he could say, “I wish I was.”

I slowly nodded as I tried to wrap my head around the news. Without saying a word, I turned and walked out of the jock’s room, took my bag and hurled it at the wall with all my might. Fuck! Then slowly and deliberately I sauntered over to my bag and picked it up as graciously as possible and walked. Damn it. I watched the Derby that day, tucked away in an unobtrusive corner of the stands. Sometimes life sucks. But what can you do? I had to shake it off. After all, this was the racetrack. You win. You lose. That’s the name of the game. I remember thinking, “Put on your big girl panties and get on with it, for god’s sake. Don’t be a baby. What’s a little set back? But man, I was disappointed. I know I would have won too. As a jockey you know that you’re only as good as the horse you’re on and Room Enough was a winner. What a sweetie. No one could have touched him.”

GB: Tough break huh? So now three months have passed, and you’re riding stats on the track are looking good. You were in contention to become lead rider at Exhibition Park right? Then what happened?

JP: It was my bloody knee again. I knew I was living on borrowed time. However, we always hope for the best right? I knew a comeback was a long shot, but it was one I was willing to take. What did I have to lose? If all I could squeeze out of my career was a few more months, it was worth it. I was going to take whatever I could get, for as long as I could get it, but I knew. I knew in my heart it was over. I had come to the end of the line.

GB: You also knew you had been one of the lucky ones. You had lived your wildest dream. You’d been given a chance of a lifetime. But when that moment finally arrives? When it’s knocking at your door? How do you prepare for that?

 

With head held high in true Phipps’ fashion, she gracefully and humbly bowed out of racing for the last time. Grateful for her amazing ten-year ride, she instantly flashed back to National Velvet, “Your dream has come early,” said Velvet’s mother, “but remember Velvet, it will have to last you all the rest of your life.”

Thirty years down the road, a friend would say to her, “Wow, what a life you had Joan. How did you top all that?” That’s the million dollar question right? How do you top that? Where do you go from here?

After her last race at Exhibition Park, she slowly made her way back to the jock’s room. She made sure everyone was gone. She needed to be alone. Where earlier the place bustled with jockeys frantically preparing for the next race, the room suddenly felt antiseptic and lifeless like a black and white still from an old silent film. As she surveyed the room, the only things left were remnants of lived moments – A towel flung over a bench, some forgotten goggles, a bottle of shampoo, a coke can and candy wrappers. The smell of sweat still lingered in the air.

JP: I remember thinking breathe Joan, breathe. Every deliberate breath I took hurt. My chest tightened. It was as if everything was happening in slow motion and time was standing still. The silence was deafening. All I could hear was the whir of a fan in the distance. I remember slowly and deliberately gathering up my gear, one article at a time and carefully putting them away – that final ritual. My faithful boots now old and worn. My whip. My goggles still smeared with dirt from my last ride. And my helmet with my nickname, “Peewee”, from my first year on the track, etched on the inside in black magic marker. I tried to hold in the pain, but I couldn’t. The tears started and wouldn’t stop. I remember thinking, “What am I gonna do? This is my home. This is my family. These are my friends. This is my life. This is all I know. What now? Where do I go now? What do I do now?”

I have no idea how long I was there. Finally, I took one last deep breath as if gathering the last of my courage, and I stood. “Just put one foot in front of the other and walk,” I told myself. Taking one last look around, as if trying to burn every single detail into my memory, I finally stepped out into the night.

The gravel crunched beneath my boots as I wandered toward the empty track silhouetted in the glow of distant floodlights. I thought, “God, I’ve been blessed. Thank you God – for all of this – for every precious, gritty, painful, joyous moment. I am so blessed and grateful.” Then I added, “Oh, and could you tell Judy one thing from me? Could you tell her, I hope I made her proud.” And I walked. I walked that ‘long green mile’ into the complete unknown.

It would take time and healing before I would find the courage to return. Yeah, that was a tough time – to walk away from the only life I knew and loved.

 Excerpt #1  from The Joan Phipps Story… 

“As fate would have it, she lived a stone’s throw away from the track, Marquis Downs. It was heaven. The smell of the barns would become her refuge and horses her first real love. As a kid, she would escape the realities of her life and sneak off every chance she had to watch the powerful thundering of horse hooves around the track.  The exhilaration she felt was beyond anything she knew. It was here she was able to shut out the rest of the world, her troubled abusive home life and instead dream of a brighter future. Somehow she simply knew that this was where she wanted…no needed to be.  And she was right.  This was her salvation.  She was mesmerized by this world, and it pulled her to the track day after day, year after year. 

While at the track she’d often stuff some binder twine in her pocket.  It had that racetrack smell on it that she loved so much. She’d get home and jump on her bedrail with a pillow for a saddle, binder twine for reins and a perfectly found tree branch for a whip. She’d rig up belts for stirrups, slap on her cowboy hat and she’d ride like the dickens.  She learned to perfectly mimic the riders she fervently watched at the track.  In her childlike imagination, she always crossed the finish line to a cheering crowd, fist high in the air, and her long blonde hair blowing in the breeze. That’s not to say she never got bucked off either, but when that damn bedrail got out of control she’d just wipe herself off, and get right back on.  Ironically, she has done that her entire life.  When she started riding for real everyone would say, “What a natural!  That girl is born to ride!” Little did they know that it had more to do with clocking in the hundreds of hours on her bedrail  before she ever even jumped on a horse!  Now that’s what I call livin’ the dream! Even for a little girl born on the “wrong side of the tracks” so to speak, she intuitively knew that if you could believe it, you could achieve it. “I’ll show the world one day” she thought.  “Just wait and see.”  

And she did.  

For now however, she would have to settle for peering quietly through the fence, watching others live out her dream. 

That’s how it all began.”

Courtesy of Kirsty Morrison, Jaime Margetts and daughters Kaycie and Matilda.