gee gee girl

A lot of girls have a passion for horses early in their lives and imagine it's going to be a life vocation for them but this wasn't exactly how Laverne got interested in the gee gees!

"At 12 I had never been near a horse - let alone a horse racing track," laughs Laverne, "but my mother was and still is a gambler and it was the gambling aspect of horse racing that appealed to me - not the look or the smell of horses!"

"I wanted to make money - lots of it - and I believed that I could do a lot better than my mother if I applied my smarts to it."

"My mother's style of gambling is impulsive - and more often involves a pin and closed eyes than anything else," laughs Laverne, "and the gee gees appealed to me because there was a form guide I could follow."

"I didn't have a computer at that time," sighs Laverne, "so I did all the math computations by hand and it took hours and hours of my time!"

"I got my mom to place the bets for me and I made a lot of money with my first try."

"I kept my initial stake money and from then onwards I'd play only with my winnings - I wasn't playing for fun, I was playing to make money."

"My mom opened a bank account for me and it wasn't long before I had more money than she did - and yes, she ended up borrowing from me!"

"During high school my passion for gambling on horse racing got transferred to the stock market," says Laverne, "and now I am working in stocks and shares!"

"I actually attended my very first horse race when I was 17," says Laverne, "but by then I wasn't interested in gambling on the gee gees - or following their form. I did place a bet that day at the track and lost the lot!"

"Going to the races these days is more a social event than a money-making exercise," laughs Laverne, "and like the stock market it is rife with insider trading of information."

"When I apply what I know now with what I knew when I was 12 it is amazing that I ever made any money on the horses."

"It was pure beginner's luck but it was definitely a vocational thing - a good training ground for what I do now."