Racing analyst Deane Lester opens up about his love of horses, health battles

Deane Lester’s accuracy and expert knowledge has been helping racing punters for more than a quarter of a century. Now the Victorian analyst has opened up about his love of horses, the pressure he feels and buying a house from a day on the track.

Lester shares his golden rule of punting.

Most Australian’s know about the Melbourne Cup. “The race that stops the nation” they will tell you. For most, the office sweep gives them their annual racing fix. Then there are others that like a flutter. And for those that do, they need the best information they can get access to. Many think that comes from Deane Lester. Rarely seen, often heard, Deane has been assessing Victorian racing for over quarter of a century, and in turn, helping people find winners. He is known as humble, observant, diligent and deadly accurate. He is a sports lover and rock music aficionado. We spoke about the love of the horse, a life of battling poor health, luck and birthing classes, the sense of pressure he feels, a big win as a four-year-old and buying a house from a day at the track.

HM: You’ve made a life out of predicting the future — that’s quite a feat.

DL: I suppose it is! It’s not an easy thing to be doing week after week, but people playing the stock markets are doing the same.

Deane Lester has been accessing Victorian racing for more than 25 years.

HM: You grew up on the Mornington Peninsula. How did you fall in love with the horses?

D L: We had the stud farm in Dromana, home to a triple crown winner, Martello towers. He went to Western Australia, and we moved from Dromana to Officer and had a beautiful farm in Gembrook where we stood a couple of stallions. It was bought by the then Lord Mayor of Melbourne, Irvin Rockman. Mum and Dad split up when I was about four, so Mum and I were on that farm, and Dad had his place in Langwarrin. So it was in my blood very early.

HM: What is your first memory at the racetrack?

DL: I was in hospital when I was four, and Roy Higgins organised for us to have seats to watch Gunsynd win the Cox Plate. I was released from hospital for the day, and then I was back into hospital after he won.

Lester, 4, on the back of the great Roy Higgins.

HM: At four! Who was mates with Roy Higgins?

DL: My grandfather was Roy’s golfing partner at Keysborough every Friday! The Keysborough Golf Club was a real ‘racing’ golf club. They’d all get there on a Friday and play, whether it be trainers, jockeys, owners, bookmakers. Plenty of money was won and lost on that course …

HM: Was the Cox Plate your first race day?

DL: No. I was a veteran by then, Hame. My baby book says my first ever outing was to the 1968 Sandown Cup. I was eight weeks old.

HM: When you were four and released to watch Gunsynd, what were you in hospital for?

DL: I was born with a condition called spina bifida, and I’d had surgery on my legs. I was in plaster, in a wheelchair. Roy had us in the best seats in the house.

HM: Spina bifida. Is that why you’re in the scooter now?

DL: It’s a complication of a few things. With spina bifida, you have a weakness in the legs, but I still played golf until I was 33. My legs, especially below the knee, don’t develop any real muscle tone. When I was 19, I dislocated my knee cap, and had a full reconstruction. Again, because of the spina bifida, it just didn’t heal very well. I used a walking stick from 20, until I got the scooter in 2002. It was a gradual decline over a period of time. Under medical advice, I saw a surgeon about my knee, and he said, “With the way you’re walking, I’m more worried you’re going to develop a problem with your hips. We don’t need any more complications”. That’s when the scooter was brought into play.

HM: And now you have effectively a day a week on dialysis. Is that related, or independent?

DL: That’s independent. In the spring of 2003 I was unwell, I just thought I was overworked, but I felt very rundown. It just kept getting worse, and I had a series of blood tests. I was born with slightly smaller kidneys, and I used to have blood tests every six months. My kidney function was fine, fine, fine, and then it just dropped. You can function normally when your kidney function is at 10 per cent, but if it drops below that, to literally 9 per cent, then you are in trouble. It was like a flick of a switch. In six months, I went from having relatively normal kidney function, to trouble. I’m on dialysis four days a week.

HM: I assume you’re sitting down now, but if the doorbell rings, do you go to it on the scooter, or walk to it?

DL: We’ve got hard floors, so I use an office chair and scoot around the house. I’ve got a scooter in the house as well.

HM: Golf. What did you get down to, and would you have got lower if the horses weren’t calling?

DL: Probably. I got down to 8 when I was 16, and then I started to become more distracted with the horses. In 1984 in year 10 at school we won the Shell Shield, which is a Victorian schoolboys comp. We won that in May, and then in July I was playing in a regional comp to go towards the State Titles. I was playing at Peninsula on a Saturday. The family had a runner at Mornington after the round, and I thought it had a good chance. I was getting very distracted about the timing of the race and getting there, and I ended up three-putting the last three greens! We got to Mornington to back Fair Smile and she ran third at 33-1. That was the day that I knew racing meant more to me than golf.

HM: You rode thoroughbreds at Koo Wee Rup where your dad located to — and then you ended up training one or two didn’t you?

Lester first rode thoroughbreds when his dad moved to Kooweerup.

D L: Dad had an indoor arena on the farm, and I’d always had ponies, but had never ridden a thoroughbred until then. Dad had a really quiet racehorse there called Prince Hal, and I rode him around the indoor arena for a while. I then swapped my pony for a tried racemare Lady Delina, who went on to win a race at Traralgon. We had another called Branui, who was just the quietest, most perfect horse. I ended up having him and training him myself a couple of years later when he was past his best, racing him at the picnics when I was 15. I rode most mornings before school.

HM: Did you have your trainer’s licence?

DL: Mum had been looking after horses for 20 years by then, and we always had an old brood mare or something on the property. We started to get interested in the racing side of things. She got her licence in 1983, and it developed from there. She trained more than 100 winners including a winner at Flemington. She had a very good career at it as a part-timer.

HM: When did you have your first bet?

DL: In 1973. I was five … I asked Mum or Dad if I could back Baghdad Note in the Sandown Cup, and it won at 33-1. We went out for dinner at the Notting Hill Hotel, and I shouted Mum, Dad and my grandparent’s dinner.

HM: At five! You weren’t discouraged to bet; in fact, it was your mother that opened up a TAB account for you?

DL: She did! I’d placed a few bets with a local SP and lost a few dollars … and I had to front up to Mum about it. She thought that wasn’t the way to go, so she said, “If you’re going to have a bet, you write them down before you go to school. I’ll open a phone account for you and put them on”. She opened a phone account, and put $20 in it. I bet half my stake on the first bet I had. It was at Woodend, which we no longer race at, a horse called Mak Marlei. It won at 8-1. I had $5 each way on it, so the account was up and running!

Lester doing what he does best.

HM: Big start. You still got the same TAB account?

DL: Well that was Mum’s … I had to use the phone at school occasionally — I’d put the deepest voice I could muster and have a bet or two.

HM: From the school phone? How old were you at this point?

DL: I didn’t try that until I was about 15.

HM: As a 10-year-old, you saw the debut of Manikato?

DL: I did! At Cranbourne. It was during school holidays, which didn’t mean anything … I tried to get to Cranbourne meetings even when school was on! The word was out, this horse was just going to win. I really liked the look of the second horse that day, and he just got blown away. Manikato won that, and about six weeks later he won a Blue Diamond.

HM: You found yourself at the track a lot early on. People have told me you are the best analyst in the country because you observe, listen to everyone’s opinions and aren’t arrogantly attached to yours, you are always noticing things others aren’t, and people, and trainers, are happy to talk honestly to you.

DL: That’s very nice. I was a sponge as a youngster! We used to have our horses in the same row as legendary Cranbourne trainer Colin Alderson sometimes at the track. He was hosing this beautiful little chestnut horse one day, and I was waiting to use the wash. I just asked him, “What’s that horse, Mr Alderson?” He said, “This is a horse that I’ve got from Adelaide, and it’ll win the Metropolitan”. The Metropolitan is run first week of October, and this was mid-July. The horse’s name was Nicholas John, and he won five or six in a row, including the Metropolitan! I’d just ask them, and they’d talk.

HM: And Bill Allan?

DL: I used to spend weekends occasionally with Bill Allan. I was very lucky, at the time he had an A grade horse called Galleon. He’d won a Sandown Guineas, and Robert Sangster bought Galleon, the half-brother, the mare and foal, all in a package. At the time it was $700,000, and then Colin Hayes took over Galleon and won the Futurity Stakes, beating Manikato. Bill had trained a Melbourne Cup placegetter, and an Australian Cup winner in the 50s. He was a wily horseman, and I learnt a lot from him just through observation more than anything.

HM: You’ve seen a lot of jockeys. They are at risk every time they jump on.

DL: As soon as they get anywhere near the horse they are, Hame. Some of the injuries occur just trying to get on them! It’s one of the few professions where an ambulance follows you around at work. The most amazing thing about a jockey is that you’ll see them win a Melbourne Cup, and fifty minutes later they’ve got to ride a race worth fifty times less and put the same amount of effort into it! You couldn’t imagine an AFL player winning a grand final, and then going and playing in the Ovens & Murray the next day!

HM: You really got your start in form analysis through your illness in a way, didn’t you? In your final year of school, you got so ill you were unable to complete HSC, and one thing lead to another?

DL: It did. Dad was keen for me to study law. With the spina bifida, I had a complication with my urinary tract. I was in the process of having surgery done, and they just didn’t know how they were going to handle it. It happened at the end of term 2 in my HSC year, so I didn’t complete year 12. When the exams were on, I was supposed to be in hospital, but in October of 1986 there was a nurses’ strike. There were no admissions to hospital, so I didn’t get into hospital until the first week of January for a smaller surgery, before major surgery 18 months later.

HM: No HSC, and the doctors ruled out any significant physical activity for the rest of your life.

DL: It wasn’t ideal. I came out of my HSC year without the surety of going to uni, or getting a job. I was just marking time from October ’86 until I finally had the major surgery in August of 1988. It was nearly another 12 months of recovery, but then I was thrown a lifeline.

HM: When Jenny Symons gave you a call?

DL: This is how luck can fall your way. A guy called Graham Schofield, who was a trackman clocking horses at Cranbourne, got really ill. The Wednesday before my 21st a woman called Jenny Symons introduced herself on the phone. She said, “I’ve been passed your number by Ken Keys (a trainer I knew well) who said you might be interested in taking over the clocking job”. I jumped at the opportunity. The only reason Jenny Symons, who worked at the Sporting Globe, knew Ken Keys to get a reference about me, was because both Ken’s wife, Louise, and Jenny, were in the same birthing class!

HM: How random. And from clockwork at Cranbourne, how do you become one of the country’s leading form analysts?

DL: I was doing the track clocking for the Sporting Globe, and then 3UZ rang. They had a two-minute spot for Cranbourne trackwork. My first radio spot was on the 2nd of September 1989, the day before my 21st birthday, and one thing leads to another I guess and you get a few right, a few people notice, you get some more breaks and you just keep searching for winners.

HM: How many meetings do you do form for a week now?

DL: A minimum of five a week, 48 weeks of the year. I’ve done that for 25 years.

HM: That’s 6000 meetings. Let’s say eight races a meeting. That’s 48,000 races. Let’s say 10 horses a race. That’s 480,000 runners … and you’ve put a comment down for every one of them.

DL: They are big numbers when you look at it like that! It’s a lot of horses to look at — and a lot of winners to try and find!

HM: You know most horses in Victoria — in detail — like many people know their football teams players or their mates at school?

DL: That’s true, Hame. I like to profile horses, know their strengths and weaknesses, much like people analyse footballers or any sportsmen.

HM: If you weren’t really good at it, you wouldn’t have been able to keep doing it for 25 years.

DL: I guess that’s right. I started selling my form publicly in 1995. I’d read the Don Scott books, and the art of trying to get through the form, but the form was changing at that time, because videos were very accessible. I was very lucky to be introduced to David Price, who’s a very successful punter now in Hong Kong. David taught me the art of what to look for in a race, and how to do form. I could then marry up the fact that a horse had galloped well, but it doesn’t matter how well it galloped, it was still only the fifth best chance in the race. That was a turning point. It all gradually developed, and I thought by about 1995 it was worth giving it a go publicly. It wasn’t an era of Twitter or websites at that stage, it was an era of phone numbers, so I started a 1900 service.

HM: And that continues today. How do you forecast how you think a race will play out?

DL: You’ve got to try and picture it all playing out in your mind. I draw up where the horses are going to be in running, and then I see if that horse can get a good run and see what the horses are around it. It’s a bit of the cycling mentality in the peloton, see if you can get on the back of the right ones. I like trying to envisage that, and I try and understand what a jockey would be thinking where he’s positioned in the run and how that’s going to work out. You can actually drive yourself mad doing it because there’s all different scenarios that can play out because it is a sport at the end of the day, but you’ve got to have some sort of clear thought. By the time I go on radio Friday morning, I’ve got a fair idea of what I’m thinking. After final scratching’s 7.30am Saturday you’re full bottle on how you feel a day is going to pan out.

HM: Do you feel an enormous amount of pressure doing what you do, or has it now become normal?

DL: When it becomes normal, I’ll give it up. You’ve got the responsibility of people’s money on your opinions. I try to stress to people that I don’t have all the answers, I’m just offering an opinion on how something will transpire. If it goes the way you hope, that’s all well and good. The modern punter has got access to everything now, but if I can add one per cent of observation to their thoughts, and it mightn’t even be the winner, it might be something that might run third, a roughie, and they get the trifecta. I do feel the pressure. I’m not much fun to be around on a Saturday, it is a very serious role, which I take very seriously!

HM: What’s the golden rule in your world for punting, and winning on the punt?

DL: Not betting on a race that you’re not well researched on is the most important. Just try and find a race that’s got the most exposed form, and research it as much as you can. That gives you the best chance of winning.

HM: What do the best punters in Australia win at, percentage wise?

DL: Do the best punters actually reveal their real percentages! Big punters, like all bigger businesses, work on high turnover and small margins.

HM: Did you buy a house with a good outcome on the punt in the early days?

DL: I did. In April 1999. My good friend Robbie Griffiths had a horse that he thought would run well, called Suraya, and I had something on it at big odds. I had a share in a horse that day that I thought had a really good chance called Go With The Flow, in the Sandown Country Cup. I was waiting to watch the Suraya race, and I was outside the tote window at Sandown watching on the monitor, and a horse cast a plate behind the barriers. I put my hand in my pocket, and there was $100 in there. I thought, I’ve got to send this around. I had $100 on the all up of Suraya, into Go With The Flow. That little moment won me about $45,000, and with other bets on the day, about $80,000. Within a couple of weeks, I bought my house. That day has been such a pivotal day in my life, because Suraya is the grandmother of The Quarterback. I was a part owner of him when he won the Newmarket Handicap!

HM: Was that the last time you cried on a racecourse?

DL: It was. The two most significant days for me on the track personally were when Big Pat, who I also part owned, got into the Melbourne Cup. I remember tears streaming down my face when he won the SAAB to qualify, and it was the same with The Quarterback. It was such a journey, and such a build-up that for a great mate, Robbie Griffiths. He’d done so well in racing but hadn’t won a Group One. We knew that horse had the Group One ability, and on the day, we had a very simple plan: follow a grey horse called Chautauqua and try and nab him late with six kilos less. We got past him, but there was one on the inside kicking that nearly beat us, and that was Black Hart Bart, who won six Group Ones. It was a decent race to win. Winx winning Cox Plates 3 and 4 may have seen a tear welling in my eyes also.

HM: Biggest winning bet you’ve heard of?

DL: Well, if there is truth to it, Mr Packer and Mr Williams had a very good day finding the winner, and quinella of the 1998 Melbourne Cup. If you look at the fluctuations, the winner was 14/1 into 6/1. To move the odds that much you need to be swinging pretty hard. I am told they might have landed the quinella too!

HM: Hypothetical — you can put the best two you’ve seen together, at their peak — who is running, who is riding, and where?

DL: I think Winx needs to be there with Hugh on. We saw her best, but I’m not sure we saw Dulcify’s. He was something else before he broke down in the Cup of 79. He won the Cox Plate that year by seven lengths. According to CS Hayes, he was the best he trained. Winx, and Dulcify, over 2040m at the Valley would be my dream race.

HM: When was the last time you were physically on the racetrack?

DL: The Australian Cup, early in 2019.

HM: And since then, you’ve either been in hospital, often in ICU, or lying on your side at home?

DL: It’s been a long year, Hame, and I wouldn’t have got through without my partner, Leanne, and my mum being at my side. I had a pressure wound on the back of my leg, and I went into hospital with a 1cm skin tear, and when they did a surgery to clean it up, I woke up from the general anaesthetic with a 12cm deep hole in my leg. That was on the 25th of July last year. I’ve had six surgeries on it since, and it’s getting closer to healing. It’s going the right way finally, but it’s been the hardest 12 months of my life.

HM: Given your lifelong health battles, a lot of people said you wouldn’t get to 50, which you did a few years ago.

DL: A lot of good medical people. Many didn’t think I’d get to 36, including my mother! She organised a 36th for me which is an odd birthday as she thought it might be my last.

HM: You may as well get to 60 now you’re on a roll …

DL: I’ve got much bigger plans than that. We’ll keep going for a fair bit longer yet!

HM: Good to hear. You are a music tragic — best concert you’ve been to?

DL: I love concerts. Can I take a trifecta? Sir Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen and Robbie Williams.

HM: Maybe book them all in for the 60th. Would more people have said, “How are you?” to you in your life, or “Have you got a tip?”

DL: “Have you got a tip” … by lengths. If you’ve only got enough breath in the lungs to get your tip out, they’re not worried about your health!