Thoroughbreds » Inductees » Trainers
Please select a trainer below:
- J J Kelly inducted in 2007
- Angus Armanasco inducted in 2007
- Robert Burns Snr inducted in 2010
J J Kelly (1900s/1940s)
An absolute legend of WA racing J J Kelly's career spanned two world wars and was highlighted by an outstanding record of big race wins and an association with some of the best known owners in the industry.
J J's amazing record includes training the winner of six WA Derbies, two Railway Stakes, seven Perth Cups, seven Karrakatta Plates, seven St Legers, nine CB Cox Stakes and nine Metropolitan Handicaps.
In the 1928/29 season two-year old gallopers from his stable won eight successive races, while in the 1929/30 Carnival he trained nine winners over a period of four days.
As a highly successful trainer he was associated with the biggest names of the day in WA racing including Winterbottom, Lee-Steere and Brockman.
He prepared perhaps the best galloper ever to come out of Western Australia – Eurythmic which won the Perth Cup in 1919, the Caulfield Cup in 1920 and the Sydney Cup in 1921 for owner, Sir Ernest Augustus Lee-Steere.
Angus Armanasco (1960s/1990s)
Angus Armanasco rode in WA between the wars and trained the winner of a Railway Stakes, before settling in Melbourne in the fifties where he became one of Australia's most decorated trainers.
Described as the man who largely reinvented the art of training two-year-olds in Victoria, Angus' reputation remained unchallenged from the early 1960s until the late 1980s. He was a seven-time winner of the Victorian trainers' premiership.
Angus Armanasco started his career in horse racing as a highly successful jockey in Perth where he had won a premiership as an apprentice. For the final 10 years of his riding career he was a leading jockey before weight forced him out of the saddle.
Eventually he became an outstanding horse trainer in Victoria.
Working as the Melbourne trainer for prominent owner Stanley Wootton, Angus achieved considerable success with the Star Kingdom line.
Star Kingdom was an overnight success and the stallion's offspring largely reshaped the breeding industry in Australia and propelled the little-known Armanasco into the spotlight. He prepared the winner of six Blue Diamond Stakes and finally won a Golden Slipper with Full On Aces in 1981.
Some of his best former gallopers who went on to be successful stallions included Biscay, Bletchingly, The Judge, Full On Aces and five-time group one winner Zeditave.
Angus Armanasco retired from training in 1998 and was inducted into the Australian Racing Hall Of Fame in 2002.
He is honoured at Caulfield during the autumn carnival by the running of the Group 2 Angus Armanasco Stakes. He passed away in 2005.
Robert Burns Snr (1900s/1950s)
Bob Burns Snr was born in South Australia in 1874. Leaving school at a young age to become a drover in New South Wales, he followed the gold rush to Western Australia where he trained his first winner at Cue in 1893.
Bob achieved nine Perth trainers premierships in a period of 13 years, a record not broken for almost nine decades. His forty seven winners in the 1926/27 season was an Australian record for winners trained in a season.
In the 1907/08 season Bob won eight of the twelve two-year-old events in that season.
Training the winner in every major race on the Western Australian racing calendar, Bob achieved the feat of training four winners at one meeting on three occasions. At the Ascot meeting on 29 December 1926 he trained Cunningman to win the Railway Stakes, Silver Prince to win the Swan Handicap, Tich to win the All Aged Stakes and Spearage to win the Welter.
Bob trained four Perth Cup winners, the last being Sydney James in 1947, a horse that was later transferred to Melbourne and won the Australian Cup at Flemington.
His son Robert Burns Jnr also trained with success, claiming two trainers premierships before accepting an invitation to train in Hong Kong.
Bob trained from a riverfront property on the border of Redcliffe and Guildford, which was later sold to become the Tibraddon housing estate.
Retiring from training in late 1947, Robert Burns Snr. passed away in 1955, aged 81.
