Harness » Inductees » Trainers
Please select a trainer below:
- Frank Kersleyinducted in 2007
- Phil Coulsoninducted in 2007
- Jim Schraderinducted in 2007
- Fred R Kersleyinducted in 2007
- Cliff Clarkeinducted in 2010
- Bill Johnsoninducted in 2010
- Chris Lewisinducted in 2010
Frank Kersley (1920s/1970s)
Frank Kersley came to Western Australia from South Australia in 1929 as a 20 year-old and in the ensuing 30 years amassed a reputation as Australasia's finest reinsman.
His first winner in Perth came just months after his arrival in the State and four years later he then made the momentous decision to go full-time as trainer and driver.
He won the first of 11 Driver's Titles that same season on his way to becoming the first driver to pass the 500 Perth wins milestone.
Frank Kersley also won seven Trainer's Premierships – a tally bettered only by his nephew Fred. Frank Kersley retired in 1973 with more than 700 winners across Australia to his name including victory in the 1954 Inter Dominion with Tennessee Sky after a typically brilliant tactical drive.
His desire to win races was almost insatiable and his rivals saw him as the ultimate, the complete horseman, a gentleman and the idol and inspiration for every aspiring young stable-hand of his era.
Frank Kersley's achievements as a trainer and a driver were recognised in the best possible way in 1987, when he was the first harness driver inducted into the Western Australian Institute of Sport's Hall of Champions.
Phil Coulson (1940s/1990s)
Phil Coulson formed famous partnerships with some of the biggest names in Australian pacing. Pure Steel, Gammalite and Village Kid…Coulson drove them all to become the WA Pacing Cup king.
No one has come close to Coulson's record in the Cup.
He trained five winners and drove seven between 1964 and 1985.
Coulson was another who learned his art from the legendary Frank Kersley, although he soon decided that the Kersley style wasn't for him.
Coulson is widely credited with changing the style of harness race driving in Western Australian with his tactics of being prepared to race outside the leader and to dictate the pace in races.
Coulson became renowned as a superb conditioner of horses and the fitness of his horses enabled him to drive them aggressively.
His success with this new style of driving saw others copy Coulson although few enjoyed the same levels of success.
Coulson won a total of 13 Group One races including the 1967 Inter Dominion with Binshaw. He topped the Perth Driver's Premiership five times and only Fred and Frank Kersley have won more.
Likewise his six Perth Trainer's Premierships has only ever been surpassed by the Kersleys. A man who set his goals high and achieved all at a young age, Phil Coulson has a record that few will ever equal let alone better.
Jim Schrader (1950s/1990s)
With a jockey father and working around the family stables as a schoolboy, Jim Schrader was destined to become a horseman.
He drove his first winner in 1950 and retired with a total of 677 Metropolitan winners in Perth in a driving career that spanned a little over 30 years.
Schrader headed the Perth Driver's Premiership three times and was twice runner-up in that title.
In 1968, Jim Schrader was the nation's leading driver with 99 winners narrowly missing becoming the first Australian driver to drive 100 winners in a season.
In 1969, he was again the leading driver in Australia with 93 winners and he remains the only Western Australian reinsman to top the National Driver's List on more than one occasion. That season Schrader won with his only five drives on a seven event programme at Gloucester Park to become the first Western Australian and only second Australian to drive five winners at a metropolitan meeting.
In 1979 he became the first Western Australian based driver to drive 100 winners in a season. When it came to getting a horse across the line in a tight finish there was none better than Jim Schrader at cajoling, lifting or kidding a horse to the finish.
Schrader was a perfectionist and had a legendary reputation when it came to the assessment of his horses.
He was rarely off the mark, as bookmakers and the legions of Schrader fans of the time will attest.
Fred R Kersley (1950s/2000s)
Fred Kersley has won more Perth Driver's Premierships than any other driver in the 97 year history of harness racing in Perth.
His 17 Driving Premierships is backed up by 14 Perth Trainer's Premierships making him Western Australia's most decorated horseman.
He drove the first of more than 1700 Perth winners in 1957 and in 1985 became the first Australian driver to drive 100 Metropolitan Winners in a season.
In 1988, Kersley finished in the top five drivers on both the Perth and Adelaide Premierships on his way to an Australian Record total of 136 Metropolitan winners. He drove at Gloucester Park on the Friday night and Adelaide on the Saturday night.
Kersley's tally includes 22 Group One winners although victory in an Inter Dominion final proved elusive despite winning 10 heats of the race.
He is one of only four Western Australians to win the Australian Drivers Title when he tied with Gavin Lang in 1986 and has been in the Top 10 Australian Drivers on 12 occasions. He has driven five winners at a Metropolitan meeting in Perth on four occasions and topped the 100 winners in a season mark on five occasions.
Kersley's achievements in harness racing were recognised nationally in 1993 when the Australian Harness Racing Council awarded him their Distinguished National Service Award. In 2002 he joined his Uncle Frank as an inductee into the Western Australian Institute of Sports Hall of Champions.
Cliff Clarke (1920s/1950s)
Born in Devonshire England in 1895, Cliff Clarke became involved in harness racing in 1923 and had an immediate impact topping both the Perth Reinsman’s and Trainer’s Premierships in his first full season.
No other trainer/driver has headed the Perth Premierships in their first season.
The first of Clarke’s winners came in 1923 at the WACA Ground track with Princess Willow.
He amassed his total of 341 Perth wins as a driver in just 25 years as a heart condition brought a premature end to his career in the sulky.
Cliff Clarke topped the Perth Drivers Premiership four times whilst being runner-up eight times.
He trained 412 Perth winners in 32 years heading the Perth Trainers List six times. He was also runner-up on five occasions and third twice.
Clarke’s record as a trainer of quality horses is exceptional and he was the first trainer to qualify three runners for a WA Cup - a feat only repeated a handful of times since.
He trained and drove Belalie to win the 1936 WA Trotting Cup and repeated the success with giant pacer Will O’The Wisp in the 1939 Cup. Will O’The Wisp was a son of Clarke’s 1929 WA Derby winner Willowcliffe.
Cliff Clarke and Bill Horn share the Fremantle Cup training record with four wins apiece. Clarke won the race twice as a trainer/driver and twice as a trainer.
The 1947 Fremantle Cup winner Stormy Weather gave Clarke a national profile when he was a brilliant winner of his three heats of the 1947 Perth Inter Dominion with champion reinsman Alec McLean at the reins.
Clarke was also the trainer of Kellett which won a heat of the 1953 Perth Inter Dominion for Fred Kersley. Kellett finished third to Captain Sandy and Ribands in the final that year.
Bill Johnson (1930s/1960s)
While W F “Bill” Johnson began training and driving horses in the early 1930s, and drove some 70 winners in Perth, it was as a trainer that he excelled.
Johnson topped the Perth Trainers Premiership five times, in addition to being runner-up six times, between 1949 and 1964.
The first of the more than 600 winners (474 in Perth) trained by Johnson came at the old Richmond Park track in Fremantle in 1928.
He controlled the State’s biggest stable between 1950 and 1965 and, at a time when most of the leading trainers had a dozen horses in work, Bill Johnson’s stable was closer to 35 and the horses were worked by Bill and his sons Max and Bob.
His success on the Premiership Table was to be expected with such large numbers of horses in training however the Johnson stable didn’t lack when it came to quality either.
Bill trained WA Pacing Cup winners in Royal Shadow and Heroic Action and won his hometown Fremantle Cup three times with Imperial, Admiral Royal and Sylvia Mint.
The stable star Kiwi Dillon qualified for four Inter Dominion finals (1958,1960, 1962 and 1963) and may well have equalled the five finals record of Caduceus had the gelding handled the travel to Christchurch in 1961.
Kiwi Dillon, competing in six series, won two heats and a consolation. Johnson also won heats with Sultana and Kodak (finalist in 1959), both consolations of the 1958 Championship with Sultana and Calendar and a consolation with Interview in 1962.
This record is more remarkable considering the primitive travel arrangements at the time whereby a combination of air, sea, road and rail was the norm to get from State to State and New Zealand.
In March 2010, Bill Johnson was recognised nationally with the awarding of the “Brian Hancock” Distinguished Service Award for his outstanding contribution to the Inter Dominion in its formative years and establishing its profile in Western Australia.
Chris Lewis (1970s/present)
Chris Lewis was sixteen years old when he had his first race drive in South Australia and won with Classic Heir in an era when there were no concessions given to newcomers.
Chris is the only Western Australian to won two Inter Dominions after the success of Carclew in 1976 and Village Kid in 1986.
He is the leading Western Australian driver all-time so far as the Inter Dominion is concerned with 14 wins from two finals and 12 heats.
The first of more than 2000 Perth winners came in June 1976 behind Burgundy and with a career total in excess of 4000 winners, including two in Moscow and one in the USA, Lewis is one of only three Australian drivers to have passed this milestone.
Chris has won eight Perth Driver’s Premierships and has an unprecedented 27 successive Top Five finishes on the Perth Premiership between the 1983/84 and 2009/10.
He has won a total of 14 State Drivers Premierships surpassing the previous record of 13 shared by Fred R Kersley (WA), Ross Sugars (SA) and Tony Turnbull (NSW).
Chris earned further national honours in 1995 when he beat Victorian ace Chris Alford to claim Australia’s Leading Driver Title (wins) with a then Australian Record tally of 211 winners.
He is regarded as the best big race driver in the State and has driven more than 40 Group One winners in races that include the Inter Dominion, WA Pacing Cup, Fremantle Cup, WA Derby, WA Oaks, WA Golden Slipper Stakes, Australian Pacing Championship, M H Treuer Memorial, WA Golden Nugget and NSW Miracle Mile.
He is the only Western Australian reinsman to win at Group One level in each of the five mainland States in Australia.
