John ‘Patto’ Patterson, who personally led in at least 44 Melbourne Cup winners and worked as clerk of course for 50 years at Flemington, died on Wednesday aged 86. Racing people from Bart Cummings to Group 1 jockeys regarded Patto as the horseman’s horseman – but they weren’t the only ones. He was respected and much loved by horse people from every discipline, all the way from pony clubbers to the draught horse breeders for whom he educated horses, including the famous Carlton United Brewery team of Clydesdales.
Herald Sun associate editor Andrew Rule published a feature on beloved Patto on September 28. ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ Flemington’s longest-serving Clerk Of Course John “Patto” Patterson a true original By ANDREW RULE It’s 1940 and a three-year-old boy at Coleraine in country Victoria watches his father, in uniform, walk off to catch the train to a war from which he never returned. It’s 1951 and that fatherless boy catches a train to Flemington to be apprenticed as a jockey to help support his mother.
He finishes his apprenticeship, outgrows race riding and becomes a drover at Newmarket saleyards — and a horse breaker. It’s 2010 and that kid from Coleraine is now a grandfather and Flemington’s longest-serving clerk of the course, one of the vigilant riders in red who patrol the track on race days to help riders with toey gallopers. On a stormy day at the autumn carnival, a valuable stallion prospect has just won the Newmarket Hcp, one of the worl.