Born Victoria Park WA
7 January 1939
Fred Kersley jnr was the first Western Australian to obtain a dual license to train pacers and gallopers in the complementary worlds of harness racing and horse racing.
After dominating pacing in Western Australia for two decades, winning every major race, both as a trainer and a reinsman, Kersley tackled the challenge of racing and a horse named Northerly looks set to help him carve his niche in turf history.
The name Kersley has been synonymous with harness racing Brothers Fred Kersley snr, Frank ,Ron and Keith started the trend in the 1940’s followed by Fred jnr and his brother Bill. Kersley jnr now has four children – Greg, Kellie, Karen and Katherine – involved in the sport, along with wife Judy.
Kersley headed the Perth trotting drivers’ list a record 17 times and the Perth trotting trainers’ table a record 14 times. He was the second reinsman to drive 100 winners in a season, achieving the feat five times, with his best tally being 148 in 1984-85 which included a record 113 metropolitan winners.
Kersley won the Australian Harness Racing Council’s J.D Watts award for drivers (based on metropolitan victories) four times in the 1980’s and shared the 1985-86 Australian drivers’ premiership with 130 winners all-up. In 1987-88 he set and Australian record of 136 metropolitan winners to break his own record.
His race wins included three WA Pacing Cups as a driver and two as a trainer, four WA Derbies, three WA Oakes, four Golden Slipper Stakes, two Fremantle Cups, two Golden Nugget Championships and the Mount Eden Sprint six times.
On the national scene, he won 10 heats of the inter-dominion pacing championships, finishing second with Coneeda (1967) and Pure Steel (1976). He represented Australia in the 1991 World Drivers’ Championship, finishing a close second.
The 1989 conversion to a horse racing trainer was considered a radical move and came after many unsuccessful applications to the Western Australian Turf Club.
He won his first race a Perth’s Belmont Park with Little Hero on 19 July 1989, but it has been the champion Northerly that has confirmed his reputation as a thoroughbred trainer. Kersley trained Northerly to victory in the Group One listed 2000 WA Railway Stakes and three months later won the Australian Cup in Melbourne, running the fastest time recorded over 2000 metres.
The Melbourne Spring Carnival of 2001 saw the Kersley-Northerly combination again cross the border, with four starts for four emphatic victories. The campaign culminated with triumph in the Cox Plate. At Moonee Valley, the victory that Kersley himself rates as the best of his career because of the classic status of the famous weight-for-age race.