Echuca-Moama horse trainer Gwenda Johnstone has received the Victorian Country Achiever Award – the first woman to receive one of horse racing’s most prestigious awards.

In Flemington on Saturday there will be a race named in her honor on the track’s annual Provincial and National Race Day and she will be a guest of Racing Victoria at a reception to celebrate her success.

The typically reserved coach said she not only couldn’t, but wouldn’t believe she had received such a tribute from the industry.

“I was so shocked that I had to ask them if they had the right person,” Johnstone said.

But once she realized it was really about her, she admitted she could find a nice horse in her run and get a bit of a flutter on it.

Starting out as a 14-year-old occasional rider at Joe Harrington’s Echuca stables – she was up soon before dawn to ride track before going to school – she had her owner/trainer’s license at 20 and a open license at 22 years old.

A consistent winner, Johnstone really made headlines in 2008 when Shadoways – a horse bred at Moama by Rob McKenzie whom she foaled – beat 19 other horses to win the Group 1 Goodwood Handicap in Adelaide.

It was one of the horse’s six career victories – and his last.

Gwenda Johnstone has, on more than one occasion, been seen almost running to avoid the media’s best efforts to corner her for an interview after picking up another winner.

It may be his home track at Echuca or the Hallowed Grounds of Flemington. It doesn’t matter where she is, as long as she’s not near any media.

Gwenda prefers to leave all the talking to her husband Mick Johnstone, if you think you’re going to have Gwenda on the phone, stand still for an interview or smile for the cameras, you’d be supporting the wrong horse.

Even Gwenda’s website carries the message, listing Mick with many responsibilities, from when he rode 150 of his 462 career winners for Gwenda to “Mick…takes on a range of responsibilities around the stable and manages all public relations”.

Gwenda and Mick go far, far, backwards – so he’s had a lot of practice being the spokesperson for the stable.

He started his racing career as an apprentice jockey with Kel Chapman at Caulfield and when he was 18 he was sent on loan to work with trainer Joe Harrington at Echuca at 18 – where he met Gwenda, who had worked at Harrington Stables since she was 14.

Australian Trainers Association chief executive Andrew Nicholl said “National Running Clubs feature some of the most dedicated and passionate people in the business”.

“Like Gwenda Johnstone, this year’s recipient of the Country Achiever Award,” Nicholl said.

“The Australian Trainers’ Association, Country Racing Victoria and Victoria Racing Club are proud to honor him as our 2022 Country Achiever at Provincial and National Race Day in Flemington.

“This award recognizes the career and wider industry contributions of a country-based coach, and it includes a race named after Gwenda at Flemington tomorrow.

“Country racing not only embodies the spirit of the sport, but also the history and the people of our great industry.

“With 66 country running clubs across Victoria, holding 450 meetings a year, generating over $750 million for the Victorian economy each year, each club offers its own unique scenery, history and local attractions.”

Even the announcement of this major milestone in her career wasn’t enough to get Gwenda to tell her life story, but in one of those rare moments in sports, she agreed to talk a bit about her love affair with racehorses – and Mick.

Gwenda is one of five children, including twin sister Susan, who grew up in Echuca, where she still lives today. And where her fate may have been decided early on since the family lived just 2km from the Echuca Racecourse, and Susan’s Starlet pony ended up being Gwenda’s care.

A horse, a nearby track and an opportunity to start working in Harrington’s stable.

Two years later, the 16-year-old dropped out of school and joined Harrington full-time to do track work, the stables and whatever else she needed – she was even waking up long before the sun set. gets up to go to the track to ride on the track before leaving. off for another day at school.

It was 1983 and Gwenda was about to run her own stables. In 1987, she earned her owner-trainer’s license and embarked on the world of juggling, dividing her week between training on her own terms and working for the Harrington stable.

But in 1989, her whole world was turned upside down with the sudden and unexpected death of Harrington.

It left her with an incredible sense of loss and also created a dilemma for the young trainer – she was still a rookie trainer with several of her own horses and Joe also had a stable of 20 people.

She wasn’t sure what to do.

But if she didn’t know the answer, Bill Stutt, who at the time was one of Harrington’s owners and also the president of the Moonee Valley Racing Club, certainly did.

After making no secret of the potential he could see in Gwenda, it was agreed that Stutt would support his application for an open permit to train. And at 22, she got it, and never looked back.

Gwenda said that if her time was up, she wouldn’t change anything – for her. But as with other aspiring young coaches, she would insist that they stay in school until they are done, before heading out into the world.

This includes her new apprentice Rose Hammond, who has worked with Gwenda for three years but only started her formal apprenticeship earlier this year aged 19 – after finishing school (and the setback of a broken leg following to a runway accident in 2020).

“I will continue to train, as I always have,” said Gwenda.

“I don’t think the award is going to change anything I do, or how I do it.”

“And yes, I guess they’ll want to drag me to say a few words to Flemington tomorrow, which I will, but I’ve always been happy to be on the sidelines, I’ve always been a bit shy.

“The real challenge I face now, I guess trainers still face, is finding the next really good horse.”

She’s had a few over the years, including Pinerate (14 wins), Maest (11 wins) and Shadowmaker (10 wins), who also won a highly sought-after Golden Topaz at Swan Hill.

But in Gwenda’s mind, none of these compare to Shadoways.

He only had six wins in his 36 starts for her – but five of them were in Metro class and he would earn $700,000 in his career.

And in 2008 in Adelaide on April 12, Shadoways blew away a field of 19 other classy sprinters to win the Group 1 Goodwood Handicap over 1200m.

This would be the highlight of Gwenda’s career and she wasn’t even there to see it, she had too many horses to handle here and couldn’t make the trip.

“Thank goodness for television,” she said.

“Shadoways was bred in Moama by Rob MacKenzie, and although the horse last raced in 2011 and officially retired in 2012, he still lives in a paddock where it all started as a foal.

“I had him from the start, we bred him and prepared him for racing at the age of two and he was such a good horse.

Shadoways won their first race, at Echuca, in 2005 and a later start won their first city race at Caulfield. Lightly ran over the next three years (Shadoways would spend a total of 55 of those weeks being spelled or refreshed).

The Goodwood Handicap was the horse’s last victory.

But while it’s hard to find good horses, Gwenda said finding apprentice jockeys is even harder.

She’s only had two – the first was her nephew Peter Johnstone, in the late 1990s and now Hammond in 2022.

“Rose is from Tongala and her father called me to see if I would be interested in taking her and I said ‘absolutely’,” Gwenda said.

“After working part-time for me, she has now officially passed AJTP 2022 Victorian Apprentice Admission, which is a good program for these young runners,” she said.

Having been in the racing industry for nearly 40 years, Gwenda has produced 321 winners in Victoria (69 of them at her home track), New South Wales and South Australia, including Group 1 and 2 and the races listed.

At Flemington tomorrow she’ll be the star attraction and for once can’t send her public relations officer in her place, can’t say she’s got too much work to do the trip, can’t do anything else only accept the recognition of his peers and for once put in the honor so well deserved.