Vale Arthur Robertson: The jockey known as Scrooge has passed

Some jockeys make their reputation through winning a string of Group 1 races. Arthur Robertson was not one of those. Instead, he gained his reputation through sheer graft as well as a storyteller who would keep his audience entertained with his natural likeability and wit.

Arthur Robertson started as a jumps hoop

After arriving from New Zealand, it was riding over jumps that got his career started in Australia. Working hard to get his weight down saw him try his hand on the flat. That was around the tracks in the Gippsland area, riding winners at a rate that saw him claim riding premierships around there.

He would ride in more than 4,700 races during his career but it was his trackwork regime that set him apart from so many. Six days every week he would be at Cranbourne to ride work, no matter the weather. The first to arrive and the last to leave every day saw his reputation grow as a reliable and hard working rider.

Entertaining those around him with his stories will be the way that he will remembered by so many. A lot of those stories were embellished but that was said to be part of the charm of Robertson. He was such an entertaining man to listen to that the odd bit of artistic license was easy to forgive.

The Scrooge nickname was one that was given to his dad, also a jockey. He enjoyed reading comics in the jockey’s room, especially Scrooge McDuck and the name stuck. Robertson would be called Scrooge junior when he first started riding and once more, the nickname stayed with him.

A trackwork accident saw him miss eight years

In 2010, Robertson suffered an injury to his leg. To call it an injury is doing it a misjustice as he shattered a leg so bady that he spent six months in hospital having his leg operated on 12 different times. He then had to learn how to walk again before he could ever think about getting back on a horse.

It was at Geelong on the opening day of October 2018 that Robertson finally saluted again. A maiden contest over 1240m saw Free Settler home in front for trainer Noni Shelton. Sent off at $8 on the betting sites, it was the only time that the mare ever got her head in front in a career that spanned 19 races.

The 2020 King Island Cup was his last win

A four-year-old mare called Frites was the last winning horse that Robertson rode. He ended the winning part of his career by saluting in the King Island Cup on the opening day of 2020.

The race was only worth $4,000 in total but the first race meeting of the year in Tasmania still has a sense of occasion, if only with the locals rather than the majority of the Australian horse racing community.

Robertson would keep riding intermittently for the next two and a half years. Unable to pick up any further success, he was riding in work almost up to the point where he was diagnosed with cancer. He was not until about three months ago when a point was reached where he could no longer do so.

July 24, 2022 was the last time that Arthur Robertson rode in a race. That was at Sale on Set For Success for Ben Buckley. He could only finish 9th of 11 runners at massive roughie odds of $201. Vale Arthur Robertson.