Against the odds. The life and times of Betty Lane, the first woman to be granted a No. 1 racehorse trainers licence by the Australian Jockey Club

This thesis consists of a creative writing artefact in the form of a biography, with a complementary exegesis. The biography chronicles the life and times of Betty Lane, the first woman to be granted a licence by the Australian Jockey Club (AJC) to train thoroughbred racehorses at Randwick Racecourse, the founding home of regulated horse racing in New South Wales.

When Betty first applied to the all-male AJC Licensing Committee in 1962 to be licensed as a trainer, she was told it was not their policy to license women. Without recourse to any anti-discrimination appeal mechanism, Betty took matters into her own hands. Fourteen years later, she became the first woman in the 134-year history of the AJC to be granted a licence to train at Randwick. In 1982, she was elevated by the AJC to the status of a No. 1 licence holder, the highest recognition for professional excellence and achievement as a racehorse trainer. Betty remained the only female trainer licensed to train at Randwick from 1976 to 1991, when she retired.

Betty Lane’s story is about perseverance to achieve a goal in the face of physical hardships and pervasive male chauvinism. It is the story of a woman who succeeded in breaking through the barrier of gender discrimination at a time when there were no laws to prevent such discrimination. It reveals the extent to which women’s participation in the racing industry was peripheral before Betty Lane’s breakthrough in 1976, and the lasting impact she made on an industry that now provides employment opportunity for women in every role in the horse racing business, albeit at lower participation rates than their male counterparts. Despite her pioneering achievements, however, Betty is virtually unknown outside a dwindling circle of horse racing professionals. The story of her incursion into the ‘sport of kings’, and her accomplishments, have not previously been the subject of biographical research and publication.

When I became aware of Betty’s significance in the racing world, and the absence of any comprehensive account of her life and achievements, I was motivated by empathetic curiosity to discover the circumstances of her trailblazing career. And my creative instinct was to fill a gap in Australian horse racing literature by adding her biography to it. To achieve that objective, I elected to undertake a research project that would enjoy the benefits of being conducted within the rigorous and credible environment of the academy. The biography which constitutes the creative artefact of this thesis, and the exegesis which accompanies it, were constructed from the inquiry I undertook to answer the following research question:

How did Betty Lane become a leading trainer in the thoroughbred horse racing industry; what is the potential of biographical writing in documenting her achievements; and what might her biography reveal about why her contribution to racing has not been widely publicised?

The exegesis augments the creative artefact by explaining the creative writing technique of practice-led research, research-led practice I used to create an authentic and intriguing biographical narrative based on the life experiences of a living subject who is now 97-years-old.

The Betty Lane biography fills a gap in Australian horse racing literature and contributes to the social history of Australian women. As an academic project, the artefact constitutes a unique example of biographical writing as research. It positions the writing of biography as a field of scholarly practice for creative arts research, and exemplifies the efficacy of using a hybrid research methodology of interviews and archival inquiry to enable creative writing practice.

In the field of creative arts, this thesis makes a contribution to knowledge by ‘rescuing’ an important woman’s achievements from obscurity through a creative writing biography. It also makes a contribution to knowledge concerning the inner workings of the racing industry and the AJC as they were constituted and managed from their origins in the mid-nineteenth century through to the last decade of the twentieth century. As such, the thesis provides the basis for apposite research in the fields of Australian history, society, culture and sport, as well as creative writing practice.