Betty Klimenko: the unlikely heiress revving up motor sport

Normal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text size

Something comes over Betty Klimenko at motor-racing tracks. She sniffs the high-octane fuel, hears the throaty roar of a V8 engine and feels transformed. "I'm a different person," she says. "Well, not a different person. I'm just a little bit more … me."

Klimenko, 58, is among the wealthiest women in Australia, and the only one to have her own professional car racing team, Erebus Motorsport. Last October, in front of 50,000 spectators at Mount Panorama and a television audience of 2.7 million, Erebusdriver David Reynolds flashed first across the finish line of the nation's most famous car race, the Bathurst 1000. The win took Klimenko's breath away – she literally struggled for air during the last few laps ("I was having an anxiety attack") – and stunned the many who had dismissed her as a dilettante. "It was an incredible victory," says respected motoring journalist Bruce Newton. "You don't win Bathurst by accident. You win it because you've got a very good team."

Klimenko is short and stocky, with a big personality. She swears, she smokes, she has a lot of tattoos. At home in Vaucluse, one of the ritziest of Sydney's expensive eastern suburbs, she is conscious that her style and interests set her apart from most of her neighbours. As we drink coffee in her upstairs living room, she says her husband, Daniel Klimenko, likes to tell her, "Sweetheart, you live in an area where they think V8 is a vegetable juice." Not that this bothers Betty. "I actually love being the eastern suburbs bogan," she says. "It sits well with me."

We next meet at Sydney Motorsport Park, a 4½- kilometre circuit in the city's sprawling west, an hour's drive from the carefully tended lawns of Vaucluse. It is hot, it is dusty, it's noisy as hell, but Klimenko greets me with a spring in her step and a gleam of excitement in her eye. She is wearing torn blue jeans and a lot of jewellery: four diamond studs in one ear, two in the other, a whopping ring, a glittering jangle of bracelets. Forceful in any setting, she seems to have an added sense of purpose out here. It is as though, after seeing a species of wildlife in captivity, I have come upon it in its natural habitat. "For me, it's not about the speed," she says of the hold that motor racing has over her. "It's not the winning, either. It's that it is so hard to win."

Erebus competes in the Supercars Championship, an annual series of 16 race meetings for custom-made cousins of road-going sedans. Propelled by 5.0-litre V8 engines – so-called because of their two rows of four cylinders in a "V" configuration – these deceptively ordinary-looking vehicles (this year a mix of Holdens, Fords and Nissans) compete in a series of races ranging from 100-kilometre sprints to 1000-kilometre endurance tests. Klimenko, who is never happier than in the company of fellow rev-heads, relishes the carnival atmosphere at the meets. Each year at Bathurst, she puts on a tutu and spends a couple of hours whooping it up in the rowdiest section of the crowd. Reynolds, her star driver, remembers his first impression of her: "I thought she looked a bit wild, a bit fun."

About the racing, though, Klimenko could not be more serious. Since her cars first lined up on the Supercars grid five years ago, she has spent tens of millions of dollars trying to win a series. The Bathurst triumph and her team's impressive recent results in other races have only sharpened her resolve, and the Erebus garage hums with the controlled intensity of a war room on this preseason test day in mid-February. Out on the track, cars from the 16 teams in this year's competition are being put through their paces. In here, at a row of computers along one wall, four engineers study data transmitted from the two Erebus cars. Everything from lap speeds to throttle positions and tyre angles are displayed in columns of numbers, graphs and coloured charts. When the cars pull briefly into the garage, mechanics swarm around them, swapping tyres and fine-tuning.

Advertisement

Erebus, named after the Greek god of darkness, is a lean operation: just 23 employees, compared with more than 50 in some other teams. "These boys would do anything for me," says Klimenko, whose role is part commander-in-chief, part den mother. One minute she's telling someone to put on his safety goggles, the next she's plonking a huge platter of burgers onto the lunch table. "She treats everybody in our team like they're family," says Erebus general manager Barry Ryan.

When Klimenko entered Supercars, she was widely expected to hire a crack race crew, then retire to the corporate hospitality suite to drink champagne. "But she's not that sort of person," Ryan says. "She's always in the garage. During race meetings, she's bonding with everybody. Crawling under the cars with the mechanics, trying to learn what she can."

When not doing laps, the four Erebus drivers remove their helmets, unzip their protective suits and stand around looking antsy, like knights waiting impatiently for the next joust. A new recruit this season is 22-year-old Anton de Pasquale, who strikes me as improbably glamorous even by racing-driver standards. He has dark hair, high cheekbones and a profile straight off a Roman coin. Catching his eye, Klimenko smiles and says: "You're a funny little bunny, aren't you?"

Klimenko inherited her fortune from her adoptive father, John Saunders, co-founder of the Westfield shopping centre empire. Possibly some of her chutzpah, too. Saunders, born Jeno Schwarcz, survived Nazi concentration camps, then fled the postwar Communist regime in his native Hungary before migrating to Australia with his wife, Eta, in 1950.

In Sydney, he opened a hole-in-the-wall delicatessen in the Town Hall railway station underpass. There he met another European immigrant, Frank Lowy, who delivered smallgoods to him. The two went into business together, opening a delicatessen and coffee shop in the western Sydney suburb of Blacktown in 1954. By the end of the decade, they had moved into property development and built their first shopping mall, Westfield Place, also in Blacktown.

Eta was unable to have children. According to Klimenko, her parents almost took home someone else when they visited the adoption nursery at Sydney's old Crown Street Women's Hospital in 1959. The selection was made – "They'd picked a boy" – when Saunders asked to have a look around the room. Spotting seven-week-old Betty, who was making a laughing sound, he said, "I like this one. She's got a sense of humour." Klimenko says Saunders told her this story not long before he died in 1997, leaving her keenly aware that her good fortune had come at another child's expense. "Can you imagine?" she says. "The poor boy."

Advertisement

Klimenko knew from the age of about nine that she and her younger brother, Mark, who had a mild intellectual disability, were adopted. She says her family was at the Lowys' place one day when one of Frank's sons blurted out the truth during an argument with her. She ran to Saunders, who casually confirmed it and returned to his conversation. His nonchalance rubbed off on her: "It didn't seem to matter." The traumatic event of her childhood was the sudden death in 1970 of Eta, aged just 42. "She committed suicide," says Klimenko, who was then 10.

From the beginning, Saunders was a frequently absent parent – the burgeoning Westfield business took almost all his time – but in his grief over losing Eta, he withdrew still further from family life. "He threw himself into work even more than he already had," says Gabriel Kune, his longtime friend and author of the 1999 biography Nothing Is Impossible: The John Saunders Story. Klimenko was 15 when in 1974 Saunders married his second wife, Klara Koch, a former croupier 25 years his junior. Four years later, Saunders and Koch had a daughter, Monica. In 1979, the family bought the grand Mediterranean-style house on the waterfront at Point Piper that is now the home of Malcolm Turnbull.

Klimenko, who loved her father, tells me he treated her and the much younger Monica very differently.

"On my 18th birthday, I got a pushbike," she says. "My sister, on her 18th birthday, got a Peugeot." Klimenko's first car? "A third-hand Torana."

Her garage in Vaucluse contains a Lamborghini, two Mercedes, a Fiat and a vehicle Klimenko claims is the only Holden in the eastern suburbs. It is an HSV GTS W507 – not only one of the fanciest Holdens money can buy (priced at about $110,000), but one of the most powerful cars ever designed and built in Australia. "It is a beast," she says. "I turn it on and it's like, 'Yeah, this is my baby!'

Klimenko's house is an exuberant blend of architectural influences and decorating styles. If a burglar ever made it past the security gate and the 80-kilo rottweiler, snuck up the stairs and turned on the light, he would realise immediately that he was in the home of a funster. The room where Klimenko and I talk has a sweeping view of Sydney Harbour but I am distracted by the almost full-size replica of a brown bear crouched beside my chair. That, and the near-to-life-size model of a zebra standing on the other side of the coffee table. Sofas are festooned with cushions covered in sequins and fur. A stool is upholstered in what appears to be the fleece of a long-haired sheep.

Advertisement

"I probably am on the verge of being very eccentric," says Klimenko. It is hard to argue with this, especially when I notice the skull on the side table. But it is equally clear she is a formidable operator. As she puts it: "I just don't take no for an answer." Of her impact on the world of motor racing, journalist Bruce Newton says, "Betty getting involved sort of hit like a bomb."

John Saunders was a fan of Formula One – the elite international class of auto sport in which cars compete in grands prix around the word. (This weekend it's the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne, where the program will encompass the second meet in the 2018 Supercars series.) As a kid, Klimenko watched races on TV with her father. Hooked, she later ventured into the junior ranks of Australian motor sport, never driving herself – hurtling around the track made her queasy – but entering cars in amateur and semi-professional race categories for 15 years.

Then, in 2013, she stepped up to the premier league, Supercars. Newton has no doubt the adjustment was difficult. Supercars has a reputation as the hardest-fought touring car championship in the world, he says. "Whether or not that's true, the racing is at a very high level and the competition is cut-throat." Teams poach one another's sponsors, drivers and technical crew: "They're always at each other. A race meeting is three days of politics, chicanery and nastiness, then for two hours there's sport out on the track."

Klimenko got a cool welcome from some members of the Supercars fraternity. "They treated me exactly how they would treat any new owner," she insists. But others wonder whether being the first woman to solely own a team worked against her. "This is a very, very, very male-dominated sport," says Eugene Arocca, chief executive of the Confederation of Australian Motor Sport. It seems to Bruce Newton that both Klimenko and Arocca are right: "Not only is there deep-seated misogyny in pit lane, there is no respect for the newcomer. You have to earn your stripes."

Klimenko devoted her first three years in the competition to what can safely be called a failed experiment. Supercars teams traditionally raced custom-made Holdens or Fords. Klimenko shook things up by introducing Mercedes-Benz to the mix. She did this despite opposition from Mercedes-Benz Australia-Pacific, which Newton says protested to head office in Germany that V8 racing was a sport for yobbos. Though Klimenko spent money hand over fist, Erebus languished at the back of the field in most races. Eventually, she pulled the plug, switching to Holden in 2016. Barry Ryan, who has headed her Supercars team since then, says she has stopped haemorrhaging funds. "It's easy for someone with wealth to get into a bit of trouble with the wrong management," Ryan says. "I run the business like it's my business, and make decisions like it was my arse that was on the line."

When Klimenko collected an award for the Bathurst win at the Supercars presentation night late last year, she seized the opportunity to talk to the audience about something that had been bothering her. "I actually grabbed the microphone out of the host's hands," she admits. Her complaint, politely but powerfully put, was aimed at the Supercars media team, which she argued had always focused too strongly on promoting the two or three biggest and most successful teams, leaving smaller outfits like hers struggling to make themselves known and attract sponsors. Eugene Arocca congratulated her afterwards. "She blew 'em away," he says. "The looks around the table!"

Advertisement

Klimenko suspects she scares some people. "I can be a little intimidating," she says. "I think it's because I had to defend myself against my father my whole life. He was a very intimidating man." Saunders may not have been home for much of her childhood, but his control over the household was absolute. "You did not breathe without him knowing what you were doing … Everything was, 'Yes Daddy'."

Among his wealthy and powerful friends – people like prime minister Bob Hawke and NSW premier Neville Wran – Saunders was known for his charm and generosity. An unstinting benefactor, he spent $6 million founding the Sydney Jewish Museum, which opened in 1992, then paid another $1 million every year to support it. But in Klimenko's telling, some of his gifts to her were almost comically stingy, particularly compared with those bestowed on her sister.

"On Monica's 21st birthday, she got an investment apartment," she says. "On my 21st birthday, I got a plastic hair comb." She adds that she treasured the comb because she knew her father had chosen it himself rather than sending an underling to do his shopping. "He remembered it was my birthday. He made the driver stop, he got out of the car and walked into the chemist and he bought me a plastic hair comb," she says. "It had little pearly things on it and he probably thought it was beautiful." Listening to the conversation is Klimenko's husband, Daniel, who has taken a seat on the other side of the bear. "He was a hard man," Daniel says.

Saunders and Lowy, once the closest of business partners, grew apart. In Frank Lowy: Pushing the Limits, author Jill Margo says Saunders began exiting Westfield in 1984, selling Lowy his half of their jointly held 40 per cent stake in the public company for $8 a share, a total of $21 million. By 1987, the year Saunders formally resigned as joint managing director, the Westfield share price had soared to $40 and his relationship with Lowy had sunk into acrimony. He set about building his own successful property development company, Terrace Tower Group.

Klimenko met Daniel in a pub in 1989. She was 30 with two sons, Anthony and Ricky, from her first marriage. Daniel was a 19-year-old fitter and turner, employed on the docks at Garden Island. They clicked right away. "When I met my husband I was 110 kilos," says Klimenko. "But what he saw in front of him was a Playboy bunny."

Advertisement

Saunders implacably opposed the match, partly because Daniel wasn't Jewish. When the couple eloped and got married in Las Vegas, he disowned Klimenko, who moved with her boys into Daniel's grandparents' house in the then working-class Sydney suburb of Matraville. They lived on Daniel's modest wage and he introduced her to a world she had never known. "He taught me to cook, to clean, to understand about buses," she says. "Some of the best times of my life were in that world."

Klimenko didn't give up on her father. She says she phoned him every day at work: "The secretary would put me through and I'd tell him about my day. He always took the call and he always listened, but he didn't say one word to me in three years." Finally, when her third son, Matthew, was born, Saunders relented and visited her in hospital. Gradually, Klimenko was taken back into the fold. She worked for her father's company and came to believe that Saunders respected her for having stood her ground. "We had a better relationship afterwards. He'd say 'Jump' and I would say, nicely, 'Yeah, wait your turn.' "

In September 1997, when Klimenko got word that Saunders had suffered a serious heart attack on the Gold Coast, she rushed to the airport in the tracksuit pants she was wearing and caught the first available plane. On arrival, she raced straight to the hospital. "I walked in," she says, "and the first thing he said to me was, 'I don't want to see you here dressed like that again. Go to the shops and get yourself something decent to wear.' " She bought a suit, though she already had a wardrobe full of them. "He wanted me to look like a businesswoman – all the time," she says.

Klimenko tells me she once asked her father why he seemed to be harder on her than on everyone else. "He said, 'Because I don't love them as much.' "

Saunders survived the heart attack but died three months later, leaving an estate reportedly valued at $500 million. Afterwards, the then 38-yearold Klimenko made a bonfire of her business suits. "They weren't me," she says. A decade passed before she got her first tattoo, but once she started, she didn't want to stop. Daniel's arms are covered in them, too. "We're like the terrible twosome," she says. "We actually refer to ourselves as partners in crime."

Both are on the board of the family-owned Terrace Tower Group. Daniel is a non-executive director and Klimenko is joint deputy chairman with her sister, Monica, whose husband, Richard Weinberg, is managing director. The company's assets include two shopping centres in eastern Sydney (the Westfield-managed Eastgardens, and Supa Centre, Moore Park), office towers in Sydney, California and Oregon, and residential developments in NSW. The family ranked 13thon the 2015 BRW rich families list, with an estimated wealth of $993 million.

Monica Saunders-Weinberg tells me she has long admired Klimenko's independence of spirit: "She's always known what she's wanted, and no matter the hurdles, she goes and gets it." As proof that her sister's instincts are good, Saunders-Weinberg points to Klimenko's happy marriage to Daniel: "He worships her on every level. He calls her out on her shit, don't get me wrong. But he adores her and she adores him."

Klimenko assures me the bike and hair-comb left her with no hard feelings towards Saunders-Weinberg. "My sister and I love each other," she says. I relay this to Saunders-Weinberg, who agrees with a laugh that their relationship is good. And honest: "Betty isn't scared to say, 'I was the f…ing princess till you came.' "

Like their father, the sisters are philanthropists, and Saunders-Weinberg says Klimenko is a hopelessly soft touch – particularly when it comes to children: "Betty's got that whole tattooed persona but she actually has the biggest heart. Whether it's a kid needing a teddy bear or Sydney children's hospital needing a new wing built, she actually doesn't have it in her to say no."

Klimenko was born Catholic but raised Jewish. After her father's death, she discovered she had never been formally converted to Judaism: her parents hadn't got around to it. "The rabbi said, 'Maybe you should go and see a priest, and find out where you belong,' " she tells me incredulously. "I was like, 'Dude?' " The revelation that she was adopted may not have fazed her, but this time she was shaken to the core. "I went down to Double Bay, where my girlfriend had a shoe shop, and got so drunk that I invested in an Indian film."

Very drunk indeed, then? "I was gone. I was plastered. I have never drunk like that ever again."

Another confronting surprise awaited. Klimenko was curious to know about the woman who gave birth to her, so she hired a private investigator to do some research. She says he came back with the name of a former beauty queen who had ended up a drug-addicted prostitute. The investigator led Klimenko to a cousin, who claimed Betty had been conceived in a police cell in Kings Cross police station, and that her biological father was the arresting officer.

Klimenko accepts that this is the truth. "When you're adopted, you have this thing that your mother was a princess and she couldn't keep you for some reason," she says. "You've got the whole fairy tale in your head. And then reality bites." She is convinced that her physical development was stunted by the drugs her mother took during pregnancy. "I'm short from there to there," she says, indicating the distance between elbows and wrists, "and I've got tiny hands." Similarly, the lower parts of her legs, knees to feet, are shorter than they should be. "But because I always wear pants, no one really notices."

According to Supercars' corporate affairs manager, Cole Hitchcock, V8 racing is Australia's third-most popular spectator sport, trailing only AFL and rugby league on crowd sizes and TV ratings. Bruce Newton argues that its reputation as a pastime for plebs isn't deserved. "It has a big working-class base," he concedes. "Blue-collar would be the biggest component, but there's plenty of white-collar. There are plenty of people in the crowd with money."

If only more of them were female, laments Eugene Arocca, whose Confederation of Australian Motor Sport has just launched a program, Dare to be Different, designed to encourage young women to consider careers in motor racing, whether on the track or in the technical and mechanical support crews. "We need to get more women involved in the sport," says Arocca. "We need more Bettys."

In the Erebus camp, there is optimism about the season ahead. "We're proving to people that we're a proper race team and we can mix it with the best of them," says David Reynolds, who earlier in March finished second at the first Supercars meet of the year. Bruce Newton believes Klimenko now has the respect of most team owners: "She's toughened up and got her show performing creditably. Once you do that, they start to take you seriously."

Among fans of the sport, Klimenko has always been popular. On race days, she attracts attention whenever she steps outside the garage. "I get swamped," she says, sounding chuffed. " 'Can I have an autograph?' 'Can I have a photo?' " On the test day it is quieter, and Klimenko and I spend a while sitting companionably in a shady spot. She tilts her head back and asks if I can see a Ninja Turtle in the cloud formation overhead.

To read more from Good Weekend magazine, visit our page at The Sydney Morning Herald or The Age.

Comments disabled

Morning & Afternoon Newsletter

Delivered Mon–Fri.

[contf] [contfnew]

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

[contfnewc] [contfnewc]