Bridgette O'Sullivan

Bridgette O'Sullivan apologises to me if she appears to be a little windblown, it's blustery outside. If she is I can't really tell. Immaculately casual in blue jeans and a turquoise blouse she has a genuine smile and nice manners.
I plan to meet her in the SkyCity cafe at 3:30pm but she is running a little bit late. Only a few minutes. Her life is at it's most hectic leading up to the Melbourne Cup and she seems to cram a lot of admin into her flying visits to Auckland from her home in Matamata.

She apologises for her tardiness, heads up to the counter, orders a coffee, offers me one, and comes back.

Today has been a busy day for Bridgette.

She's just come from a meeting at TV3 in preparation for her role as co-presenter on the Emirates Big Race Series. The show will cover many of Australasia's biggest race days including the Melbourne Cup and Auckland Cup. She's been juggling that with trying to organise her outfit for the Melbourne Cup that Trelise Cooper is making, and most importantly, she's been preparing for next weeks school camp with her daughter. They're climbing Rangitoto, and looking around the Auckland Museum among other things.

Married to retired champion jockey-come-highly acclaimed horse trainer Lance O'Sullivan and brought up riding, Bridgette has racing in her genes and has been the ambassador for Ellerslie Racecourse over the past three years.

"I'm from a horse racing family," says Bridgette "My great grandfather was one of the first bookmakers in New Zealand when bookmaking was legal. We've always had horses and I'm very familiar with the game. I've lived and breathed it and my family still live and breathe it, and our kids love it. It must be in the blood."

They live at Wexford Stables in Matamata where the kids have their ponies in the backyard and know all the horse's names that come and go. Caitlin (10) and Georgia (8) love school and the hustle and bustle of the life that Bridgette and Lance have made for them amongst the rolling paddocks and green grass of New Zealand's official answer to Hobbitton.

"It's beautiful. We have green grass everywhere and it's very peaceful. But it's also very art deco and groovy. We love living there; the people who live on the farm and work for us are very down to earth and genuine people. Our kids love it and they are very happy at school there because they're very enthusiastic wee poppets, but they especially love coming home and riding as well."

We are disrupted by a phone call from Trelise Cooper's assistant halfway through our meeting which she must take. Time is running short for her fitting before the Melbourne Cup and it may mean that the outfit may have to wait until another race meeting. Bridgette isn't too fazed as it may give her an excuse to buy a new hat when she goes to Melbourne. She, like most girls who attend, LOVES dressing up for the races. It goes part and parcel with the spectacle of it all.

"It's fun! And it's tradition. Racing and fashion is synonymous and it always has been. Racing has always been about dressing up. When you look back at photographs from the 1800's, all the ladies were wearing hats and beautiful garments. And that has just carried on. You look at Melbourne now and Ascot and fashion is just such a big part of the whole carnival. The boys get into it as well. Especially now we have all these metro sexual men," she giggles.

Life has always been busy for the O'Sullivans. Her and Lance were contestants, and eventually winners on the 2005 reality TV show Treasure Island: Couples at War. She spent the first three days on the island in shock and lay awake in bed (the ground) thinking there was no way she would last three weeks on the island to win the title.

"Life on Treasure Island was interesting. It was very different to what I expected. I thought the whole sleeping on the ground and going without food thing was a bit of a myth. But it actually really does happen. In our food kit we had rice and flour and oil. And that was it. We invented some pretty interesting recipes with coconuts and flour and rice. Early on I thought to myself 'Whoever wins this thing, good on them because they will have to be here for three weeks.' And it ended up being us. I never thought we really had a chance, apart from the fact that Lance is really competitive."

Define competitive?
"He used to have a sign on the back of his car when I first met him that said: It's not whether you win or lose, until you lose." She laughs, "So that sums up Lance and how he was on the island."

Bridgette seems to enjoy her role at Ellerslie and is pleased that racing is becoming a more high profile event amongst the youth, despite the fact there are not a lot of younger people involved behind the scenes in the industry. She has had fun with the job and has seen the effort and initiatives Ellerslie has implemented starting to bear fruit. It seems like the place she should be. Racing, horses, the track. Lance's horse Pentaine is racing in the Melbourne Cup so it's a big ask for her to concentrate on presenting the Emirates Big Race Series at the same time.

"We have video footage of when Pentaine won the Auckland Cup in March and our kids always rewind it back and watch it because I was going crazy and screaming and a whole group of our friends and family were there and my mum was hitting Lance's mum with her race book. It's just funny watching what people do and don't realize. We won and Lance and I jumped up and hugged each other and my hat fell off. It really is exhilarating."

Nothing like a big golden cup to bowl the hat off your head eh? Fingers crossed she needs to have it tied on for Melbourne!

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