by Jim Haynes
There cannot be much pleasure even in backing a winner when your fingers are almost too cold to hold the money, and it must be indeed a dreary occupation to be out ‘in the cold’ and backing losers with the thermometer down at zero.
If Fortune be cold to us in Australia we have the consolation of knowing that Nature warms towards us.
It must be very depressing to return from a racecourse with empty pockets and a thaw setting in. Men must have strong constitutions to stand the wear and tear of English racing, season after season, and they earn the money they make.
Racing in the Australian Colonies is conducted under the most favourable atmospheric conditions as a rule, and therefore it is all the more delightful and enjoyable. I doubt if there can be found as much enthusiasm in a race crowd in any part of the globe as there is in Australia. No matter under what circumstances the racing takes place, the people enjoy it, and even the downfall of favourites has not much effect upon them.
Hundreds of men live ‘on the game’ and appear to do well at it. How they live is a mystery to most people. They must have money to bet with, and to pay their expenses, and they always have a pound or two to invest upon anything they fancy. These hangers-on of the turf are a nuisance to trainers, for they are constantly badgering them for tips.
Many of them are friends of the jockeys and no doubt obtain information from them; and jockeys are much more ready to talk on an Australian racecourse than they are in England.
It is a genuine cosmopolitan crowd on an Australian racecourse. The Governor of the Colony appears to forget his office for the time being and to take a delight in mingling with the people. A racing governor is bound to become popular while a governor who has no fondness for sports of any kind has no hold on the affections of the people.
Lord Carrington was one of the most popular governors New South Wales ever had, and so was Lord Hopetoun in Victoria, and both were real good sportsmen.
Class distinctions are not as marked on colonial racecourses as they are in England. There are no reserves for the Upper Ten, as at Ascot, Goodwood and other places in England. The AJC and VRC have reserves for their members, and there is far more extensive and better accommodation provided for the public in Australia. The accommodation at Flemington and Randwick is far ahead of that on principal English courses.
Racing in the sunny south is far more of a pleasure than a business. Thousands of people are not cooped up in small rings, as though they were so many sheep crowded into a pen. There is plenty of elbow-room, even on a Melbourne Cup Day there is ample room for the ladies to promenade on the spacious lawn, although there are fifty to eighty thousand people present on the course.
Ten thousand is a small crowd for a great race meeting in Australia, although it does not meet this number at suburban meetings, unless it be an exceptional day.
It is this feeling of freedom and comfort that makes turf life in the colonies so pleasant and enjoyable. There is so much geniality and goodwill about it. Although men are keen on making money, and occasionally indulge in sharp practices, most owners are not averse to the public knowing what their horses can do and what chances they have of winning.
The best part of the day, in my opinion, is the early morning, and many a pleasant hour have I spent on the training track watching the horses at work. There are no restrictions placed upon the members of the sporting press watching horses do their gallops.
Australian jockeys have a different style and appearance to the English. They are, as a rule, neat in their dress and it is an exception to see a slovenly jockey. There are some fine riders on the turf in Australia, such men as Hales, the Delaneys, the Cooks, Lewis, Kelso, Parker, Huxley, Harris and Martin Gallagher.
A good yarn is told about Martin Gallagher. At Rosehill he rode a certain horse, and he was called upon to explain its running. The chairman had a horse running in this particular race.
‘You could have been much nearer to the winner,’ said the chairman.
‘Yes,’ said Martin, ‘but I could not have won.’
‘Why did you not ride your horse out?’ asked the chairman.
‘I got jammed in,’ said Martin with a smile, ‘one horse kept me in all down the straight; in fact, this horse was “shepherding” me all through the race.’
‘And whose horse was that?’ indignantly asked the chairman.
‘Yours, sir,’ was the quiet but very effective reply.
Nothing came of that inquiry.
Jockeys are often accused of pulling horses when they are not at fault. I am sorry to say, however, I have seen horses deliberately stopped.
In the majority of cases the men who instruct the jockeys how to ride races are to blame. If a jockey does not carry out the instructions he receives, he does not get many mounts.
It is a pernicious practice for an owner to put a jockey up and give him orders not to win, and yet this is done by men who ought to know better.
I once asked a popular jockey why he did not decline to ride a horse when he was given orders not to win.
‘If I did I should never get another mount from him,’ he answered, naming a well-known owner. ‘Not only that, but he would influence other owners against me.’
Accidents will happen during races, but many could be avoided if mere lads who know no more how to ride a race than they know how to fly, were not put up in the saddle. These youngsters have no fear because they are unaware of the danger.
Tom Corrigan and Martin Bourke were killed, one a few days after the other. Corrigan, about the best steeplechase rider in the colonies, was killed by his horse Waiter falling in a steeplechase at Caulfield.
Martin Bourke was killed while schooling a horse over hurdles at Flemington. Bourke was the most fearless rider, and the number of falls he had was remarkable. I think he had nearly every bone in his body broken at one time or another.
There is a vast difference in the way races are ridden in Australia to the old country. Waiting tactics are not often resorted to, and it is generally a hot pace the full distance. The severe 2 miles of the Melbourne Cup course is run at full speed, and there is not much chance of waiting on the road. This system of riding is in a great measure due to the time test. If a horse is timed to run 2 miles in say 3.29 or 3.30, then he has to do it in the race if possible.
A slow-run race is an exception. I mean, as a rule the horses go at their top, but they may not be fast enough to make good time.
It would surprise many people to see the rate at which horses go over hurdles and steeplechase fences. In a hurdle race horses very often go as fast as they do on the flat. Steeplechasers are often ridden at a breakneck pace, which says more for the pluck than the judgement of the riders.
The same superstitions exist as in the old land, and racing men are wont to regard certain signs and omens with an amount of awe not understandable to ordinary mortals. Some men invariably back the first horse they see upon entering the paddock and others back the mount of the jockey whose colours they first come across.
I was seated in a tramcar one morning when a particular friend of mine stepped in and sat down. Suddenly, without a word of warning, he jumped up and rushed out again.
I looked under the seat to see if a dog had been secreted there, and had gone for his calves, but there was nothing to cause alarm in that direction.
Much to my surprise I saw him come in at the other side of the tram and quietly sit down.
‘What is the matter?’ I asked. ‘Too much whiskey last night?’
‘No,’ he replied, ‘it’s race day, you know, and I got in the wrong side of the tram. It’s unlucky.’
* The AJC Derby was run in Spring until 1979, when it was moved to the Autumn.
THE CAB HORSE’S STORY
C.J. DENNIS
Now, you wouldn’t imagine, to look at me,
That I was a racehorse once.
I have done my mile in—let me see—
No matter. I was no dunce.
But you’d not bel
ieve me if I told
Of gallops I did in days of old.
I was first in—ah, well! What’s the good?
It hurts to recall those days
When I drew from men, as a proud horse should,
Nothing but words of praise.
Oh, the waving hats, and the cheering crowd!
How could a horse help being proud?
My owner was just as proud as I;
I was cuddled and petted and praised.
My fame was great and my price was high,
And every year ’twas raised.
Then I strained a sinew in ninety-nine,
And that’s when started my swift decline.
I was turned to grass for a year or so;
Then dragged to an auction sale.
And a country sport gave me a go;
But how could I hope but fail?
‘A crock,’ said he. And I here began
To learn of the ways of cruel man.
A year I spent as a lady’s hack—
I was growing old and spent—
But she said that the riding hurt her back;
So we parted; and I went
For a while—and it nearly broke my heart—
Dragging a greasy butcher’s cart.
Then my stifle went. And I, proud horse,
Son of the nobly born,
The haughty king of a city course,
Knew even a butcher’s scorn!
So down the ladder I quickly ran;
Till I came to be owned by a bottle man.
And my bed was hard and my food was poor,
And my work was harder still
Dragging a cart from door to door—
The slave of Bottle-oh Bill.
Till even he, for a few mean bob,
Sold me into this hateful job.
As I dozed and dreamed in the ranks one day,
Thinking of good days past,
I heard a voice that I knew cry, ‘Hey!
Say, cabby, is this horse fast?’
And he looked at me in a way I know.
’Twas the man I’d loved in the long ago.
’Twas my dear, old master of ninety-nine,
And I waited, fair surprised.
But ne’er by a look and ne’er by sign
Did he show he recognised.
Then I heard his words (’twas my last hard knock):
‘Why don’t you pole-axe the poor old crock?’
And he turned aside to a low-bred mare
That was foaled on some cockie’s farm,
And he drove away. What do I care?
I can come to no more harm.
In a knacker’s yard I am worth at least
Some pence for a hungry lion’s feast.
APPRENTICES
A.B. ‘BANJO’ PATERSON
Apprentice riders are supposed to be hardened little citizens, above the weakness of displaying any emotion; but, after all, they are only small boys of about 15 or so, prone to the excitability of other small boys of their age.
As Kipling says of soldiers, they are ‘single men in barracks most uncommonly like you’.
The small apprentice Lightfoot, having ridden his first winner in the two-year-old race at Moorfield, burst into a storm of tears of excitement as he rode back to the weighing yard. It added a human touch to the proceedings.
It is a great thing for a small boy to ride his first winner while still at a weight at which he can get plenty of riding.
This boy Lightfoot is a son of the once well-known rider Joe Lightfoot, a jockey who weighed about as much as a box of matches, but had such wonderful ‘hands’ that he could hold any horse at any pace in any company. The trouble with Joe Lightfoot was that he had an incurable habit of looking round while leading in a race; in all other respects he was one of the best natural horsemen at his weight ever seen on our turf.
Without knowing anything of the circumstances of the case, one may be permitted to hope that this youngster may turn out as good a horseman as his father without suffering from the looking-round complex.
The handling of racehorses by six-stone-seven boys is one of the wonders of the world. The average grown-up man, though he may figure with distinction on a hack, could not hold a racehorse for half a minute; but these midgets can put him anywhere, and do anything with him, without exerting any physical strength at all. They are the elect out of hundreds that go into apprenticeship, only to find that 95 per cent of them will never make horsemen. It is a case of survival of the fittest, and those that do survive are entitled to all the money they make.
One of W. Kelso’s apprentices, on joining the stable, borrowed a book on race riding and started to copy it out in handwriting. It is not known whether he ever finished it—it was a large book—but at any rate he copied out enough of it to make himself a very successful rider, who at the age of 20 was earning more money than most barristers of 50.
The racing business is rather overcrowded just now, but somehow there always seems to be room at the top.
ONLY A JOCKEY
A.B. ‘BANJO’ PATERSON
Paterson was a crusader for better treatment: better conditions, religious instruction and education for apprentice jockeys. He wrote this poem in 1887 after the Melbourne Wire Service reported: ‘Richard Bennison, a jockey, aged fourteen, while riding William Tell in his training, was thrown and killed. The horse is luckily uninjured.’
***
Out in the grey cheerless chill of the morning light,
Out on the track where the night shades still lurk;
Before the first gleam of the sungod’s returning light,
Round come the racehorses early at work.
Reefing and pulling and racing so readily,
Close sit the jockey-boys holding them hard,
‘Steady the stallion there—canter him steadily,
Don’t let him gallop so much as a yard.’
Fiercely he fights while the others run wide of him,
Reefs at the bit that would hold him in thrall,
Plunges and bucks till the boy that’s astride of him
Goes to the ground with a terrible fall.
‘Stop him there! Block him there! Drive him in carefully,
Lead him about till he’s quiet and cool.
Sound as a bell! Though he’s blown himself fearfully,
Now let us pick up this poor little fool.
‘Stunned? Oh, by Jove, I’m afraid it’s a case with him;
Ride for the doctor! Keep bathing his head!
Send for a cart to go down to our place with him—’
No use! One long sigh and the little chap’s dead.
Only a jockey-boy, foul-mouthed and bad you see,
Ignorant, heathenish, gone to his rest.
Parson or Presbyter, Pharisee, Sadducee,
What did you do for him?—bad was the best.
Negroes and foreigners, all have a claim on you;
Yearly you send your well-advertised hoard,
But the poor jockey-boy—shame on you, shame on you,
‘Feed ye, my little ones’—what said the Lord?
Him ye held less than the outer barbarian,
Left him to die in his ignorant sin;
Have you no principles, humanitarian?
Have you no precept—‘go gather them in?’
Knew he God’s name? In his brutal profanity,
That name was an oath—out of many but one—
What did he get from our famed Christianity?
Where has his soul—if he had any—gone?
Fourteen years old, and what was he taught of it?
What did he know of God’s infinite grace?
Draw the dark curtain of shame o’er the thought of it,
Draw the shroud over the jockey-boy’s face.
THE GREATEST RACEHORSE THE WORLD HAS EVER SEEN
JIM HAYNES
Carbine, always known affectionately by the racing public by his stable name of
‘Old Jack’, was foaled at Sylvia Park Stud near Auckland in 1885 and had multiple crosses on both sides of his pedigree back to two great eighteenth-century horses, Eclipse and Herod. His dam was the unraced imported mare Mersey, and he was the last foal of the good sire Musket, who won the Ascot Stakes and eight other races before being sent to stand at stud in New Zealand.
Musket, who died at age eighteen, was a very successful sire of stayers; his son Martini-Henry won the 1883 Melbourne Cup.
Carbine won 33 of his 43 starts and was unplaced only once, when suffering from a cracked hoof. He won fifteen races in succession, and seventeen of his last eighteen races.
After five wins in New Zealand he was sent to Melbourne for the VRC Derby in 1888. Carbine finished second; his jockey, New Zealander Bob Derrett, dropped a rein in the tight finish and Carbine was beaten by a head by Sydney-trained horse Ensign, carrying the famous blue and white colours of Mr James White and ridden brilliantly by Tom Hales.
Carbine’s owner, Dan O’Brien, lost heavily on the derby and decided to sell Carbine, who had won the Flying Stakes over 7 furlongs and the Foal Stakes over 10 furlongs in the week following his narrow defeat in the derby.
At the auction at the end of the carnival, VRC committeeman Donald Wallace, who had made his fortune in the Broken Hill minerals boom, urged on by Melbourne trainer Walter Hickenbotham, reluctantly paid 3000 guineas for Carbine, having failed to secure the horse he really wanted to buy at the sale.
Being the under-bidder on that previous lot—a now long-forgotten horse called Tradition, which sold that day for 3050 guineas—was to be the best piece of luck in Donald Wallace’s life.
Walter Hickenbotham now took over training Carbine, who then ran third in the Newmarket Handicap and second in the Australian Cup to the champion Lochiel. He then went on a winning spree, taking first place seven times from his next eight starts as a three-year-old, at distances from 7 furlongs to 3 miles, including the Sydney Cup in which he carried 12 pounds (5.5 kg) over weight-for-age.
As a three-year-old Carbine won four races in four days during the Sydney Autumn Carnival in 1890, including the Sydney Cup on the second day. The next day he won the All-Aged Stakes over a mile and the Cumberland Stakes over 2 miles, and two days later he won the AJC Plate over 3 miles.