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GREG HALL UNFILTERED

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Greg Hall on losing everything, suicide, addiction and fighting back

Greg Hall with his great mate Brent Thomson last Saturday. Picture: Stephen BrasselGreg Hall with his great mate Brent Thomson last Saturday. Picture: Stephen Brassel
 

Greg Hall is off the drink!

“Yeah, I’ve heard that before” sings a chorus of doubters that the larrikin former jockey concedes may well and truly be liable to do so without question.

But “The G” is now four months sober.

But he is not here to prove anything to anyone else right now, but to himself.

He owns nothing, living in a rented apartment, serviced once a week.

Well, it’s better than the caravan park where he tried to commit suicide, or the weeks spent penniless and cold living on the streets opposite the Queen Victoria markets with other down and outers like him in a forgotten society.

The $7000 Zegna suits, $500 Hermes ties, $2000 Bally shoes. The Porsches, the Mercs, the BMWs, even the back slapping friends, the trappings of an amazingly successful career in the saddle all well and truly gone.

There is not even a trophy or a piece of memorabilia that remains.

Jockey Ron Hall (sitting on horse) with Ron Jr, 15, Greg, 11, Ron's father Bob and brother Brian. Hall family. Racing.

Greg Hall as an 11-year-old.

‘The G’ owns nothing! But he owns himself.

The self-reporting alcoholic – “I’m an addict, it’s a disease” — recently finished his fourth rehabilitation (at Hader Clinic in Geelong) but this one was with a difference.

“This one was for me, the others I have done for someone else,” Hall tells me in a no holds barred one-on-one interview last Saturday.

The G is not asking you to believe any of this, proof will be of his own making, but he is just starting to believe in himself again.

This is a very raw story.

But that’s The G.

It moves quickly from being taken away from his mother in Adelaide aged 2, to being shipped around various families in Victoria then leaving school aged 12 to eventually land back at Chiquita Lodge at Flemington.

“My dad was a jockey his dad was a jockey, he had seven brothers who were jockeys, two sisters married jockeys,” Hall says.

Jockey Ron Hall (sitting on horse) with Ron Jr, 15, Greg, 11, Ron's father Bob and brother Brian. Hall family. Racing.

Greg Hall’s father Ron (sitting on horse) with Ron Jr, 15, Ron's father Bob and brother Brian.

“That’s all I wanted to be. I reckon I was 10 going to Merbein State School near Mildura, when I was stealing ponies off Jack Castleman up at Mildura and riding them; it was the best days of my life.”

Hall makes some frank accusations of his youthful time in racing stables about being raped, tarred “up the arse”, thrown in horse dung pits, having Deep Heat rubbed on his testicles, having horse testicles from castrated colts hung around his neck when tied to a post.

None of this is to be used as an excuse for alcoholism but he says such things were always ignored at the time and his experiences remain, tormenting him today.

So, what is this about?

“Do I like going to rehab, no I’d rather go to jail. But I will be the happiest bloke in the world if I can share my message, that no matter wherever you came from or how you got there, I’ve got regrets for sure, but if my story can save just one person, I live for that.” Hall says.

“I was a kid with a dream. I could dream of Elle Macpherson and wake up in the morning and she wasn’t there, but I dreamed of winning the Melbourne Cup and I achieved that and so much more than I ever expected or wanted.

“If I had a regret, it is that not understanding with the fame and success came a price I never knew at the time. It wasn’t money, it was the fame, I was shipped around like a trophy.

“I was just a young bloke who rode around with a St Christopher in my skull cap, super-glued it in, said a prayer before I went out, I was an alter boy but not religious, the other jockeys would ask what I was doing, I was just saying a prayer before a race, not asking for success, just a safe journey, that’s all I wanted.

“I’d give it all back, not to be famous or well known, that’s my regret today but that’s not an excuse.”

Of course, Greg is first to put his hand up to being the total pest he became when drink was his breakfast, lunch and dinner, he understands why friends became fair-weather.

Greg Hall (winning jockey of the 1992 Melbourne cup) holds the 2008 Emirates Melbourne Cup above Queenstown during the tour, New Zealand.

Greg Hall holding the 2008 Emirates Melbourne Cup above Queenstown during the tour of New Zealand.

He’d sit in his current car, a $9000 manual Subaru that his once estranged (not now) son jockey Group 1 winner Nicholas (now known as Anal Vimalkirti or Vimal for short), bought for him, in the basement of his apartment block in view of the MCG, drinking mid-strength beers at 7am in the morning listening to racing radio, making endlessly unanswered calls.

But then Steve Cain called him.

Cain, like many in this space, has a backstory.

For one he is the son of Melbourne bookmaker Ron Cain.

But like Greg, has had demons and fought them.

A former high-flying international financier he found himself locked in a Japanese jail cell following an alcohol and drug fuelled bender.

Like Greg, he had lost it all.

Hall had heard Steve Cain tell his story at an event held by his mentor Graeme Alford, an alcoholic for 37 years, jailed for robbing a bank, that he turned around to form 21 Renew, to help people just like Greg and Steve.

“I don’t know how he found me,” says Hall, talking of Steve Cain.

“He asked me to catch up for a coffee, we spoke the same language, but I hadn’t seen him for five years. I’d been locked down with the virus, living on my own, suicidal and he asked me if I’d do another rehab. And I still don’t know why.”

Hall had been “saved” before by Alford, before again falling off the wagon but Graeme remains an unfaltering supporter of Hall without asking the questions that may be harder.

“Graeme always said not to put myself down for who I was. It was like reading a book in black and white, read the black parts, not the white. Accept the fact of who you are was what he taught me, but I never wanted to be famous or well known, if that is anything, that is the regret.” Hall says.

“Did I want to be that kid who rode all those winners. Of course I did – Frankie Dettori, George Moore, Scobie Breasley never rode a Melbourne Cup winner – Miller’s Guide tells you that I did, and the Derbies, the Slippers, the Blue Diamonds, the features races.

“But today I’d give it all up to help just one person with the problems I have been through and the experiences, that would mean so much more to Greg Hall.”

Aust racehorse trainer Lee Freedman with jockey Greg Hall.

Trainer Lee Freedman won a host of Group 1 races with Greg Hall.

So when Hall met with Cain, he had never thought of another rehab, a groundhog day of mid-strength beers in the morning car park shade was easier than the reality of life outside and the glare of “is that Greg Hall”, a man who has then, and still today presents himself with meticulous grooming no matter the change in social standing.

“I told him I couldn’t afford it, he (Steve) said don’t worry about, he knew I was down and out and found me. I reckon it was about $20,000 but I agreed. I can’t thank him enough looking back now,” Hall says.

“I had 15 cans on the way in there (to Hader), it’s like a last chance saloon, I’d done three rehabs before and they tell you there is only one in a hundred who make it. How many 100-1 winners have you backed?

“I came back from six and a half months in Thailand, I stuck that out because of the industry support, and went straight to Young and Jacksons on the way back for a beer. Some don’t even last that long.”

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Greg Hall on the golf course at Royal Adelaide in 1992.

But Hader was different. The attitude was different.

“They couldn’t care if you were Greg Hall, Harry Belafonte or some addict off the streets, most of the case workers are clean addicts and I clicked with a girl called Jackie and for the first time in my life I shut up and listened,” he says.

“You are pumped full of Valium, it takes a week or so to get the alcohol out of the system, but (my case worker) Jackie (no surname allowed and no contact post 28 day course either) said I will turn your life around.

“She asked me if I had ever done anything for myself, it stung me, I said no, I’d done the previous rehabs for the racing industry or supporters because they wanted me to do it, not for me.

“She said ‘I want you to be selfish, do it for yourself’. It’s the first time I’ve listened, I concentrated for 20 days. I didn’t have to do this because who I was, but because who I wanted to be, it took that much weight off my shoulders.”

Hall recalls walking out after the 28-day program.

“It was like a suitcase gone in my stomach, something I’d been carrying around with me, either guilt or shame or a burden. I wasn’t the only person in the world with a burden like mine,” he says.

“There I am with ice addicts or drug addicts carrying on like five-year-olds when they were 65, they all started on alcohol, I could have ended up much worse. It was the first time I saw rehab as a positive.”

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Greg Hall reunites with Subzero at Flemington on Oaks Day 2019. Picture: AAP Image–Vince Caligiuri

Hall found a routine for the first time in his recent life.

There would be morning stretching exercises in his apartment, a long stint at the golf driving range at Albert Park and numerous weekly Alcoholic Anonymous meetings which he embraced, and still does.

It was the next step in the G.Hall life experience.

Not for anyone else but himself.

“I go and do the – ‘I’m Greg’ and I’m an alcoholic’ – stuff, but there were lawyers and judges – it’s a disease with no cure that doesn’t discriminate, but to hear others, their problems, their situations, is exactly what I needed, and still do,” he says.

“I enjoy the AA meetings, I’d go Wednesday and Saturdays, whenever I could, if you could call it enjoyable, but it was just listening to the stories and telling your own that helped.”

But he accepts he remains forever an alcohol, as an addiction and disease.

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Subzero and Greg Hall plough through the heavy conditions to win the 1992 Melbourne Cup.

Not that it is an excuse for any behaviour, or the predicament of his life today.

“A reformed alcoholic can’t have just one drink. It can be a binge, one is too many the rest is not enough,” he said.

“There are addictions for social media or ice cream or fast food, gambling. This racing industry survives off punters who are told to ‘gamble responsibly’ because betting is a disease. So if you get told Black Caviar is a $4 chance and unbeatable you have to say no I have done my $50, I have to let it go because I am gambling responsibly.

“There are diseases which are incurable in life like cancer or diabetes or the common cold, we all have to deal with things.

“All I am saying is I am dealing with my disease and I know that my heart is golden and can be here to not just anyone in racing but anyone in life who falls into a place I have been.

“And I wouldn’t want anyone to be there so if I have any redemption, let that be it.”

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PART TWO: Greg Hall on his $300,000 ‘sling’ and years of family trauma

Nicholas and Greg Hall celebrate after Fawkner won the 2013 Caulfield Cup. Picture: AAP Image–Julian SmithNicholas and Greg Hall celebrate after Fawkner won the 2013 Caulfield Cup. Picture: AAP Image–Julian Smith
 
By Bruce Clark 
10:23am • 09 February 2022 

Some of you would know Greg Hall’s best Sportsman’s Night lines.

Like why he never won a Caulfield Cup.

“I only won Cups named after cities not suburbs.”

Boom Boom.

Or talking to owner Kerry Packer as he was about to ride Mahogany in the Victoria Derby. “Have you had a bet?” he asked of the billionaire.

KP suggested that indeed he did, some $1.3m!

“Why don’t you have a real bet” retorted the cheeky G and Mahogany went on to walk in after Kerry had whacked another seven figures on.

PIRATE: Racehorse Mahogany, ridden by Geg Hall winning the Victoria Derby at Flemington. 30 October 1993.  Sport / Turf

Mahogany races away with the 1993 Victoria Derby under Greg Hall.

And there were bags of lollies (money) as gifts for the jockey soon after if you know what he means, and it doesn’t matter that you don’t.

It’s a good yarn to tell no matter what.

Especially when the crowd has a few beers into them.

What’s the most money you have seen Greg? Or the most money you got?

“The most money I have seen, I’ve seen plenty. The most money I got was $300,000 … cash,” he says.

That was his sling for Merlene’s knock ‘em down Golden Slipper and covered the $50,000 steward’s fine for interference and allayed a little of The G’s two-month stint on the sidelines.

Today Greg Hall has nothing but the clothes on his back, bought for him, but it’s enough to still keeping him as stylish and presentable as he can be

His rented room at $350 a week is covered by the National Jockeys Trust and he contributes $100 from his $800 fortnightly disability pension.

That’s right a disability pension for one of the most successful jockeys in Australian racing history.

He laughs talking about it, the pension that is, not the multiple Golden Slippers, Derbies, that famous Cox Plate on Super impose and of course the Cup on Subbie.

It’s a long way from the high life he lived and the shoulders he rubbed.

They are all rollicking yarns and at beer swilled nights they are beauties.

And they suit Greg telling them, no matter how many times he tells them and how many times you have heard them.

As an aside he told me he knew one about being on Packer’s latest boat at a time and naturally was mightily impressed.

“It’s pretty big boss,” I said. “Haven’t you heard about the three F’s son,” the big man said.

No! “If it flies, f…ks or floats, rent it.”

You can imagine the roar from the punters.

Businessman Kerry Packer at Randwick to see his horse Merlene /race. P/R headshot alone 1996 nsw

Kerry Packer watching his filly Merlene win.

But that’s not the story Greg Hall wants to share today.

“I am a great ad libber, take me anywhere I can tell my stories, that’s the fun side of Greg and you’ve heard them all before but there is another side to the pancake,” he says.

And this is where we get back to reality and the charade falls away.

“If I can share the downside of my life and if that can have an impact on just one person and save just one, that is what I want to do. That’s what matters to me. That’s the heart of Greg Hall.

“I can tell the funny stories in a heartbeat, I want to tell the story from my heart. I’ve seen mates like Harry Hillier and Neil Williams go in racing, I’ve been there, but I’m talking to anybody who has a problem, I’ve been there, I’ve been rock bottom. I’ve seen rock bottom, I’ve lost it all.

“I come from an industry that says gamble responsibly when you have a bet … what a load of crap.”

There is nothing held back today talking to Greg Hall.

He remembers driving his drunken father home from the track with two horses in a float behind. He was 12.

“I was peering through the steering wheeling sitting on his lap to see the road,” he says.

He remembers the stable culture of alcohol and sexual abuse.

And still wonders about the influence as much as the neglect from authorities.

But it is his divorce from wife Kim (nee Davis, daughter of trainer Henry, who provided the plunge horses for Mark Read – Getting Closer and High Signal) and mother of Kassy and Nicholas that saw him back on the drink.

1991. Jockey Greg Hall with wife Kim and Nicholas, 4. Nick. (Neg no. 911020/83)

Happier times: Greg Hall with wife Kim and Nicholas aged 4

“I was sober for 10 years, never touched a drink in my prime in the saddle, rode group winners for practice, was taken around like a trophy and lived an incredible life and then Kim left me,” he says.

“I never saw it coming, it hit me hard and I hit the bottle. I went straight to the bar.

“It was like a little bloke tapping on your shoulder waiting for you to crash and I did. They were living in Dubai and I was alone in Melbourne.

“Until I lost Kimmy I never had a drop, when I did, it was all I knew, they cut me off and I couldn’t deal with it without a drink.

“It was the lowest part of my life, I reckon I spent over $400,000 on psychologists, and there have been some low ones. I realised then I was an alcoholic, I came from an alcoholic family. Once an alcoholic, always one. It’s not an excuse, it’s a reality, it’s a disease.”

20/12/1998:  Jockey Greg Hall with his two children, Nicholas and Kassy at their East Malvern home.  p/ /horseracing

Greg Hall with Nicholas and Kassy.

He remains estranged from his daughter but is proudly re-engaged with his dual Group 1 winning son Nick but knows the embarrassment he caused him in trying to celebrate bomb his Caulfield Cup wins on Fawkner and Jameka.

He knows Nick didn’t even attend the Jameka presentation for fear of his father and what shenanigans may follow.

“I know he was embarrassed by his father being a drunk, I’m embarrassed about it. I lost him and I deserved that, he blocked me everywhere,” Greg says.

Hall Jnr gave away riding in 2018 to find “a happy place”.

His body is a temple to tattoos, his mind a shrine to wellness and Anal Vimalkirti (Vimal) is now back in his father’s life.

“We text all the time,” says Greg proudly.

“His new name means pure glory in Indian I think.

“He is in Costa Rica but I found him up at Healesville and I think something triggered him about understanding addiction like his father had and he understood. He’s like me in that we don’t have any trophies of the past,” says Greg as he showed me a text transcript from his son. Touching.

JOCKEY NICK HALL AND HIS TATTS

Nick Hall practising yoga. Picture: Michael Klein

Greg Hall is hoping to get back to his daily routine of stretching, the golf driving range, AA meetings and sharing his story.

Covid has been another enemy, lockdowns and closures an impediment to a return to the G.Hall he wants to be.

“I hate excuses, but I was growing and growing until I was locked out again but I am not alone there,” he says.

“Just things like going to Coles or the supermarket were important steps, much better than sitting in the car drinking mid strength beer, smoking darts and wasting time listening to the radio. I am well past that.”

Horseracing - racehorse Doriemus (outside) ridden by jockey Greg Hall standing in saddle with Might and Power (rails) ridden by jockey Jim Cassidy winning 1997 Melbourne Cup race. a/ct might/and/power /Horseracing/Melbourne/Cup

‘The G’ thought he’d won a second Melbourne Cup on Doriemus in 1997 only to be denied by Jim Cassidy on Might and Power.

Where Greg hopes he is right now is in a positive space, carrying the burdens of a thorough racing life with all its highs and lows and how it balances him up today, despite the addiction.

“I’ve been that low I tried to commit suicide but I wasn’t any good at it, that would be as low as you can go,” he said.

“I’ve been unconscious seven times as a jockey from falls, but no-one is interested in that, not like footballers, what effect did that have on me, I don’t know.

“It is a miracle I am alive but I’m glad that I am. I will always be suffering the disease that is alcoholism but I’m proud of what I have achieved on the track for someone who couldn’t ride when he started to winning all those Group races, from Innisfree for my dad in a Stradbroke, I couldn’t steer, glad he (the horse) could.”

“I’ve got to think I have been lucky for the success but that’s a different era, I am in a different mental space now and hopefully a better one.”

Regrets?

“I wish I never done what I did when I lost Kimmy but I will be the happiest bloke in the world if I can put a message out to help someone, whether it be alcohol, or drugs, don’t think you are the only person on the planet this can happen too,” he says.

“I have fallen off the wagon before, I want to help myself and others stay on it.”

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