The life of the party, Stephen said his father had a large circle of friends and would leave a smile on everyone he met. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe was born and raised in Matamata and everyone knows him here,\u201d Stephen said. \u201cHe was a bubble of energy, he had a lot of mates everywhere. Wherever he went, he made mates.\u201d <\/p>\n
The son of a blacksmith, Bob followed his father into a similar vocation as a farrier and his skills were utilised by many in the racing industry. <\/p>\n
Bob also inherited his father\u2019s passion for racing, shadowing him at the training track and races as he prepared a couple of horses. He took out his own licence as a young adult while also competing on the track as an amateur jockey. <\/p>\n
\u201cHis father was a blacksmith and trained the odd horse, and Dad came along and he started training horses when he was quite young and was a successful amateur rider as well,\u201d Stephen said. <\/p>\n
Bob particularly enjoyed riding on the East Coast at Gisborne and Wairoa, where he met his wife, Gloria. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s where Mum\u2019s side of the family lived, so he had a reason for going down there quite often,\u201d Stephen said. \u201cWe always went to the races down there.\u201d <\/p>\n
While Bob had success in the saddle as an amateur jockey, his biggest achievements came as a trainer, particularly in jumping. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe has won most of the big jumping races, he has won Great Northerns, Wellington Hurdles and Grand Nationals,\u201d Stephen said. <\/p>\n
His early victories over fences included training Foxonewa to win the 1969 Great Northern Hurdles and Destino to win the 1973 Wellington Steeplechase. <\/p>\n
His top-flight jumper Cuchulainn dominated the New Zealand jumping scene in 2003, winning the Wellington Steeplechase, Koral Steeplechase and Grand National Steeplechase all in succession, before returning a year later to win the Great Northern Hurdles. <\/p>\n
Bob also experienced success on the flat, including with his Group 1 performer Al Dwain, who he campaigned in Australia, 1975 Winter Cup winner Kaurere Lad, and Group 1 winner Olga\u2019s Pal, who he trained in partnership with his late son Toby.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has been to Aussie a few times and he took a pretty good horse called Al Dwain over there and he won a Bendigo Cup and Sandown Cup and was third in a Caulfield Cup,\u201d Stephen said. <\/p>\n
Bob Autridge\u2019s funeral will take place at Matamata Racecourse on Thursday at 1pm. <\/p>\n
\u2013 LOVERACING.NZ News Desk <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The life of the party, Stephen said his father had a large circle of friends and would leave…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444922,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[18919,95,227035,49147,10703,8458,634,7126,92140,2454,5836,3025,111,139,69,7566,187406,3512,8244,213,102],"class_list":["post-444921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-aged","tag-and","tag-autridge","tag-bob","tag-characters","tag-colourful","tag-death","tag-dies","tag-horseman","tag-industry","tag-lost","tag-most","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-outstanding","tag-patriarch","tag-racing","tag-recent","tag-sports","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}