3 days ago
Doctor Bernie Spilsbury retires from Sunshine Coast Turf Club
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Legendary jockey Chris Munce credits him with being the first person to detect his potentially-deadly throat cancer.
Dr Bernie Spilsbury has helped countless other jockeys and trainers and been there for some of racing's magic and also most tragic moments since starting as the Sunshine Coast Turf Club doctor almost four decades ago.
The retiring doctor, who has also been a long-time Sunshine Coast Turf Club board member, will get a fitting farewell with the Dr Bernie Spilsbury 3YO Handicap (1000m) named in his honour on Caloundra Cup day on Saturday.
Munce, the champion jockey who is now a two-time Group 1 winning trainer, fears what might have been if Spilsbury had not intervened when Munce's 'tonsils were swollen up like golf balls' not long after he rode All Too Hard to be runner-up in Ocean Park's 2012 Cox Plate.
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'I rode that horse in the Cox Plate and two weeks later I was brushing my teeth and I saw one of my tonsils was like a golf ball in the back of my mouth,' Munce recalls.
'I went to the doctor and they just gave me antibiotics, I then went back a week later when it hadn't improved so they put me on a stronger dose and it still didn't improve.
'I was at Caloundra races one Sunday and I asked Dr Bernie to have a look.
'Within one second he told me, straight up, that I had cancer.
'It was a lot for me to digest in one afternoon, so I went home in a bit of shock I didn't tell (wife) Cathy or anyone.
'The next morning, Dr Bernie rang my house number and Cathy picked up the phone and it all went from there.
'Thank goodness that Dr Bernie spotted it, because it would have just kept spreading through my lymph nodes and God knows how far it would have got to.'
Dr Bernie Spilsbury, who retires after having been the club doctor at the Sunshine Coast Turf Club for almost four decades, being farewelled by jockeys, racing officials and club staff. Picture: Grant Peters, Trackside Photography.
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Munce successfully beat cancer and Sunshine Coast club officials say Dr Spilsbury has been instrumental in warning other jockeys about some unusual symptoms that later turned out to be cancer.
Sadly, Dr Spilsbury was also there at the scene of a heartbreaking tragedy when jockey Desiree Gill died following a race fall at a twilight meeting at the Sunshine Coast in 2013.
'It was shocking,' Dr Spilsbury recalls.
'I was there and she came down head first.
'I am sure she was dead the moment she hit the ground, but I went to try to work on her to see if she could be saved.
'But in my own heart I knew she had passed away.'
Dr Spilsbury has long loved the racing game, breeding horses himself as he followed in the racing footsteps of his father and his grandfather.
He is looking forward to heading to Caloundra Cup day on Saturday and hopes he can turn a small betting profit in the race named after him.
'My mantra is, you bet small and you lose small,' Dr Spilsbury said.
'A $6 boxed trifecta is my go and that's what I will be doing on Saturday.
'I am a very low key person, but it is a humbling honour to have a race named after me.'
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Sunshine Coast Turf Club chairman Peter Boyce hailed Dr Spilsbury's contribution to the club as both a medical professional and a board member.
'He will be missed by us, as he is the most kind and compassionate man I know,' Boyce said.
'His care for fellow human beings is second to none and all done a very low key and unassuming way.'
Originally published as 'He told me straight up I had cancer': Sunshine Coast Turf Club's legendary racing doctor Bernie Spilsbury retires
