Staff Profile | Joanna Smyth
She has treated the Queen’s foals and was a finalist in the Young Farmers National dance competition – meet Joanna Smyth, Waikato Stud’s new Assistant Vet.
Q What is your role at Waikato Stud?
A I am the Assistant Vet.
Q Tell us a bit about your background with horses and how you got to where you are now?
A I grew up on a farm in England and have always had horses. After vet school, I worked in a farm and equine practice for 3 years before spending two years doing an internship in an equine hospital in Newmarket.
Q Where are you from and what bought you to New Zealand?
A I have lived in the UK all my life before coming here – NZ is somewhere I’ve always wanted to work and I like foals and stud work so coming for a season sounded like a good plan.
Q What would you say is the greatest achievement in your career to date?
A Probably when the Queen came to visit one her sick foals at the hospital – and it survived.
Q What is something that not many people know about you?
A I went to the Young Farmers National Dance Finals where we danced a routine to ‘Uptown Funk’.
Q What would you consider to be your greatest achievement?
A Making my sister’s multiple tiered-wedding cake from scratch.
Q What aspect of your personality adds the most value to the world?
A I’m quite optimistic and laid back so I’m pretty calm in a crisis.
The Corner with Garry Chittick
I keep on proposing my retirement from the burden of a weekly Corner. I make the excuse it is hard to be credible, hard to let the two of you know about anything in our sport that hasn’t been covered before.
Read More
WS-bred On The Lash scores at Sha Tin
Twenty-four hours following the final WS Cox Plate meeting run on the Moonee Valley track of old before it shuts for two years to make way for a new precinct, the race’s 2004 winner, Savabeel, continued his roll of runners, and this time it was via five-year-old On The Lash (ex Candelabra) at Sha Tin.
Read More