Cindy Alderson - 2026 Country Achiever Award winner

Alderson Racing has been operating for more than 50 years, spanning two generations. Cindy’s father Colin Alderson OAM received the Medal of Australia for Sporting Achievement in 2000 and was instrumental in establishing the world-class facilities at the Cranbourne Training Centre. He held his training license from 1966 until his retirement in 2016, and Cindy obtained hers in 1990. Between them, they have given horses under their care, the best possible chance for half a century.

But numbers alone don’t tell the story. Cindy Alderson’s connection to horses began long before any license – at the age of three, in fact, when she was put on a horse’s back under the watchful eye of her father. The racing industry was simply the world she grew up in, and the world she chose to stay in.

She has said that her greatest satisfaction in this industry comes from sharing the thrill of racing with her owners, family and friends, and it is that instinct – to bring people along on the journey – that has run through her career.

A life built around horses

Alderson’s path to thoroughbred training was not completely linear. A gifted equestrian in her teenage years, she competed successfully across multiple disciplines and won state-level championships. After completing a teaching diploma in 1987, she spent two years working in stables across the UK, USA and New Zealand, gathering experience and perspective that would inform her training philosophy for decades to come.

Cindy held her trainer’s license for 10 years before she went into full-time training in 2000, having spent the intervening years working in industry roles at Victoria University and Racing Victoria. The breadth of that background – equestrian, educational, administrative, international – shows in the way she approaches her horses. Each one, she believes, requires its own understanding.

“Each horse trained by Cindy benefits from her strength of horsemanship, experience, innovative ideas and uncanny understanding of the equine psyche,” is how Alderson Racing describes its philosophy. In practice, that means reading the animal in front of you rather than applying a formula – a skill that can be taught only so far, and the rest must simply be lived.

A champion at heart

Among Alderson’s career highlights is the 2009 Australian Hurdle win of Hooker Road – a horse she trained in partnership with her father, which made it all that more special. For all her individual accomplishments, the collaborative nature of racing – the owners, the team, the family – is where she finds her deepest satisfaction.

In 2022, the industry formally acknowledged her contribution when she was named the Wakeful Club Lady of Racing, joining an honour roll that includes Michelle Payne, Jamie Melham and Amanda Elliott. For Alderson, the recognition was humbling, but she chose to highlight the efforts of women in the industry as a whole.

“The transformation over the last five to ten years has been amazing,” she said of the racing industry.

“When I started out there were virtually no lady trainers, no lady jockeys, and now I don’t think it will be long until we take it over. The thing I love about the racing industry and women is that we can compete on an equal playing field. We don’t have to ask for a handicap – and I think that’s a fabulous place to be.”

Jigsaw: the ride of a lifetime

If there is a horse that demonstrates everything Alderson brings to her craft, it is Jigsaw. The seven-year-old gelding – a veteran of 40 starts – has won races in Melbourne, New Zealand and Perth, where his seven-in-a-row streak culminated in a gutsy victory in the $5 million The Quokka at Ascot.

Alderson watched from near the winning post, out of her usual zone of calm. “At about the 100 metres I started to cheer,” she admitted, “which is not normal for me.”

She had turned down a lucrative offer to send Jigsaw to Hong Kong, backing her own judgment instead. It paid off in the best way. “I told Marcus (Price, co-owner) that I think this is a nice horse, and we’ve just had the ride of a lifetime,” she said after the Quokka win. “This just feels like the ending of it all, because how could you go any better than this?”

Jigsaw will head towards the spring as a leading sprint contender, having won his last seven starts, taking his career tally to 16 wins and his prizemoney to just shy of $5 million.

So, while Jigsaw continues to offer excitement to Cindy and her team, she quietly continues a family legacy, writing her own chapter and showing no signs of slowing down.