by Jim Haynes
Author Frank Hardy later wrote that Mulley told him, ‘There was a mystery about the sale. Over the years, at parties, listening to various conversations, I gathered that certain important people in Sydney had arranged the sale and that apparently the original Queensland owner still retained a half-interest in the horse.’
Whatever the secret manoeuvrings away from public view, Bernborough was sold at public auction in October 1945 for 2600 guineas and duly arrived at the Randwick stables of trainer Harry Plant, a former Queensland buckjump champion and one-time professional horse-breaker. Bernborough had previously raced on only one track—Clifford Park, Toowoomba.
Part 3 A true champion
At his first Sydney start, in a Flying at Canterbury on 8 December 1945, Bernborough met severe interference and finished on the heels of the placegetters. Plant, who’d trialled the horse in secret and knew he had a champion, had told Romano to plunge heavily. Romano backed the horse to win a proverbial fortune, lost the lot, and insisted Plant replace jockey Noel McGrowdie.
Then followed Bernborough’s legendary sequence of 15 straight wins under huge weights, ridden by Athol George Mulley. The sequence began with a Sydney treble in the Villiers Stakes with 9 st 2 lb (58 kg) by 5 lengths; the Carrington Stakes, with 9 st 6 lb (60 kg); and the Australia Day Handicap, with 9 st 5 lb (59.5 kg).
Mulley was 21 when he first rode Bernborough to victory in the Villiers at Randwick on 22 December 1945. He had begun riding less than four years before, at age 17.
‘I was approached to ride Bernborough just for the one race and I took the ride only for one simple reason—I didn’t have a riding engagement for the Villiers,’ Mulley later recalled. ‘I didn’t know I was taking the ride on a champion. I rode him in trackwork at the old Victoria Park course before the Villiers and he was a big strong horse. He had beautiful shoulders. He measured 17 hands and 1 inch, the same height as Phar Lap, but he was better balanced than Phar Lap. Bernborough’s conformation was perfect.
‘I found out afterwards that he measured 67 inches from his ears to the top of his withers, and exactly the same from the top of his withers to his tail; that is a perfectly balanced measurement.’ Later Bernborough’s full galloping stride was measured at 27 feet (8.2 metres), 2 feet longer than Phar Lap’s stride.
‘That first day at the track I noticed how well balanced he was and that as a walker he was terrific,’ Mulley said, ‘and he had a marvellous temperament for a stallion. But if I told you I knew how good he was, I’d be telling a lie. Nobody knew then.
‘I obtained my first feeling that Bernborough was a champion when I won on him in the Villiers. There were no starting stalls in those days, it was a stand-up start. He was second last on settling down and about eighth at the turn and, when I called on him, that’s when I first noticed how he dropped his off-front shoulder. I pulled the whip, but I didn’t use it, just waved it at him, and a furlong out he leapt straight to the lead and won by 5 lengths. And I knew I had ridden a champion racehorse.’
Mulley was given the mount again for the Carrington Stakes, over 6 furlongs, which Bernborough won carrying 9 st 6 lb (60 kg) in 1 minute 10.25 seconds.
And so it went on, 15 consecutive times, until Bernborough and Mulley were household names throughout Australia.
After his three Sydney wins Bernborough headed for Melbourne and the big autumn races. He won the Futurity Stakes by 5 lengths carrying 10 st 2 lb (64.5 kg) and the Newmarket Handicap with 9 st 13 lb (63 kg). Mulley later told how he was offered £5000, a fortune in those days, to ‘pull’ Bernborough in the Newmarket.
After the Futurity triumph Romano rushed up to the 21-year-old Mulley and declared, ‘Georgie, my boy, I am proud of you. Name anything you like and I’ll get it for you. I will even let you marry my daughter!’
Twenty-five years later Mulley told Frank Hardy, ‘Bernborough’s greatest performance, in my opinion, was his Newmarket win at Flemington. He had had a very hard race in the Futurity a week or so before and he carried 9 st 13 lb (63 kg) in the Newmarket and beat a field of class sprinters, including Versailles ridden by Scobie Breasley. Coming back from the 7 furlongs of the Futurity to the 6 furlongs of the Newmarket was Bernborough’s greatest feat. Ordinary horses can increase their distance from 6 to 7 furlongs, 7 to a mile and so on, but only great horses can come back in their distances in top-class company.’
Mulley had ridden Bernborough in three races in Sydney, but the Futurity at Caulfield in February 1946 was the jockey’s first ride ever in Melbourne.
‘In the Villiers at Randwick,’ Mulley recalled, ‘I had to make up some ground on the turn into the straight and, coming into the turn he dipped his off-front shoulder. I’d say, without exaggerating, it was at about a 45-degree angle. I’ll never forget it: in all my experience I never rode a horse with that peculiarity before or since. He dropped his shoulder and he got tremendous speed once he did that and could continue his run right to the post. He had a run of 2 to 2¼ furlongs. You had to judge it and he liked to begin it in the middle of his turn or near the end of his turn.’
There was no turn, of course, in the Newmarket, which is run down the ‘straight six’ at Flemington.
‘There was more than one horse in that race whose jockey’s job was to down Bernborough,’ recalled Mulley. ‘I know that because to pull Bernborough in the Newmarket I was offered £5000. I refused, of course, and a man pushed his way into my hotel room and threatened me, and he told me Bernborough wouldn’t win anyway, because there were jockeys scouting for him.’
The record shows that Bernborough was cannoned into by two horses as soon as the barrier went up; and after travelling 2 furlongs he received another bad check.
‘I pulled Bernborough to the centre of the track about 2¼ furlongs from home,’ explained Mulley. ‘He dropped his shoulder and unwound his famous cyclonic run . . . and then the “accident” happened. A horse veered out and came at us but luckily Bernborough was such a great horse and so strong that he just hit him on the shoulder and knocked him away and he never even lost his stride.’
Bernborough continued his mighty finish and got up in the last stride to collar the good sprinter Four Freedoms, ridden by Bill Cook and carrying 2 stone less in weight, right on the line.
‘It turned out that Bernborough had run the last furlong in ten seconds,’ Mulley later recalled, ‘and won by half a head. It was his greatest win.’
To that point Bernborough had strung together five sensational wins on the trot in major races and Romano revealed that he’d already been inundated with hundreds of letters from all over Australia. He responded by sending out 300 photographs of the horse to the fans.
Back in Sydney in April 1946, Bernborough won the Rawson Stakes, Chipping Norton Stakes (beating Flight and Russia) and the All-Aged Stakes.
Bernborough then headed north to the Brisbane Winter Carnival where, on successive June Saturdays, he added to his record with wins in the Doomben Ten Thousand, carrying 10 st 5 lb (65.5 kg), and the Doomben Cup with an incredible 10 st 11 lb (68.5 kg). Romano and stable followers collected £40,000 from winning wagers on the two races and through the feature doubles.
Although Mulley named Newmarket as Bernborough’s greatest race, many turf aficionados rated his Doomben Cup win superior. Bernborough began slowly, as usual, and was 14 lengths from the lead at the mile post. He eventually caught the leaders right on the finishing line; having humped 10 st 11 lb (68.5 kg) to victory in a top feature race and carrying 28 lb (12 kg) in dead weight.
‘That was Bernborough’s secret,’ Mulley explained years later. ‘I always felt he could race as fast with 10 stone as he could with 7 stone—weight made no difference to him. That’s what made him a champion, his ability to carry big weights.’
Veteran Brisbane race-caller Keith Noud claimed: ‘Bernborough’s Doomben double in 1946, a feat yet to be duplicated, were the two great performances above all others used to underline the argument that he was the greatest horse, up to 2000 metres, yet to ra
ce in this country. The full force of that opinion is based on the massive weights he carried in those races.’
After the sensational Brisbane triumphs Romano, who had a photo of Bernborough that he always carried with him and described as his ‘lucky mascot’, presented Bernborough’s silks to Mulley at a special function.
Now a seven-year-old, Bernborough won his next five starts, all at weight-for-age. They were the Warwick Stakes, Chelmsford Stakes and Hill Stakes in Sydney, and the Melbourne Stakes and Caulfield Stakes in Melbourne. As a result he was allotted an incredible 10 st 10 lb (68 kg) for the 1946 Caulfield Cup and 10 st 9 lb (67.5 kg) in the Melbourne Cup.
What made those huge handicaps all the more remarkable was that eight months before the weights for the Cup were issued, very few racegoers in Australia had even heard of Bernborough. Moreover the horse was now at an age when most thoroughbreds are considered past their prime. At that time the weight-carrying record for the Caulfield Cup stood to the credit of Amounis, who had won with 9 st 8 lb (61 kg) in 1930.
‘His weight-for-age wins were never as impressive as his handicap wins,’ Mulley later said. ‘But Bernborough should have been reserved for weight-for-age races in the spring of 1946. He’d had a lot of hard racing and his legs were bound to give out under handicap weights in big fields. He should never have run in the Caulfield Cup. But they wanted him to run in everything. They would have run him in the Stawell Gift, only it had been cancelled during World War II.’
A sport-loving, hero-worshipping nation just out of war needed an idol. And the massive, heart-stopping Bernborough filled the role precisely. He was indifferent to distance, and no weight the handicapper gave him seemed to dull his strength. Most importantly, he always won with a blistering finish that brought crowds roaring to their feet. No matter how far back he was at the furlong, everyone knew Bernborough would mow down his rivals.
‘There was something special about the horse,’ Frank Hardy wrote, ‘the balance, the giant strides, the will to win. And about the way Mulley rode him, allowing him time to settle down and timing his paralysing finishing run to the split second.’
Bernborough became the greatest drawcard racing had ever known. That’s why 107,167 patrons streamed to Caulfield racecourse for the 1946 Caulfield Cup. The press made great play of the fact that one woman, a mysterious ‘woman in black’ who turned out to be an Estonian woman, Miss Joanna Taks, had bet her winnings ‘all-up’ 15 times in a row on the champion and intended to do so once again.
The day after the race the Melbourne Truth newspaper reported:
Taks, who took Melbourne by storm with her huge bets on Bernborough in the Melbourne Stakes and Caulfield Stakes, risked her money once too often yesterday and lost £6000. Miss Taks said last night that she would not back Bernborough again. ‘I’m going straight back to Sydney and will retire as a punter,’ she said. ‘I backed Bernie because he looked so lovely, but he lost, and now I have the big headache.’ Had Bernborough won, Miss Taks would have collected £13,250 from four bookmakers.
Romano himself was reported to have amassed about £110,000 in winning bets from Bernborough’s phenomenal run, as well as the considerable stake money. On the eve of the Caulfield Cup he told the press, ‘If only he can win, I shall be the happiest man in the world.’
Bernborough started 2 to 1 favourite after a wild betting spree and bookies gambled heavily against him. The race has since been repeatedly tagged ‘the most controversial race ever run in this country’.
His winning streak finally came to an end when he finished fifth behind Royal Charm. Bernborough missed the start slightly and, after severe interference, flashed home from an impossible position in the straight. Carey shifted sharply from close to the rails as Bernborough came flashing down the run home, and the flying favourite cannoned into his rump.
Bernborough was stopped in his tracks, lost his momentum and staggered. Mulley balanced him quickly but the others were too far ahead and the post too close. Across the line it was Royal Charm, Columnist, Two Grand, Carey, and Bernborough fifth, still coming strong at the finish.
The race report noted that ‘Bernborough was gathering the opposition in swiftly as they passed the post.’
Romano and Plant were so upset at Bernborough being such a long way back during the run that they replaced Mulley with ‘Bustling’ Billy Briscoe for the horse’s next start in the LKS Mackinnon Stakes. Plant and Mulley never spoke to each other again.
After the Caulfield Cup defeat Romano received 200 letters imploring him to scratch Bernborough from the Melbourne Cup. This was not only because of the champion’s huge weight, but also because Romano had stated, as far back as the previous March after his sensational Newmarket victory, that Bernborough would have ‘only a few more handicap races’ and then be reserved for weight-for-age events.
‘He belongs to the public now,’ Romano had declared then. ‘I’ve got back what I paid for him and we are not going to ruin him by racing him under fantastic weights in handicaps.’
The Mulley–Romano–Plant rift after the Caulfield Cup became one of the most notorious aftermaths to any major race in Australian turf history.
Almost 40 years later Mulley told Bert Lillye of The Sydney Morning Herald:
I am the only one still alive to tell. Owner Romano, trainer Plant and stable foreman Ned Cullen have all gone . . . I will tell you something that I have not revealed before. There was always a meeting between Romano, Plant and myself to plan Bernborough’s race programme. Mister Romano and I were both against starting Bernborough in the Caulfield Cup but we were overruled by Plant. I argued that no horse could win with that weight and that Bernborough should be restricted to weight-for-age races. Romano agreed with me.
But then the hint that Romano was not the sole owner of Bernborough came into play. And there the mystery remains.
Mulley married a few weeks after the Caulfield Cup. Despite the success of their association through Bernborough’s magic succession of wins, Romano sent no wedding present, nor was he invited to the ceremony.
For many years Mulley had to suffer the rumours and allegations that he ‘pulled up’ Bernborough in the Caulfield Cup.
After examining the evidence years later, Pat Farrell wrote in the Sydney Daily Mirror, ‘To say that Mulley pulled Bernborough up is the most profoundly ridiculous assertion ever known in a sport where ridiculous assertions abound.’
In any event Bernborough, with replacement hoop Briscoe aboard, tackled the fateful Mackinnon Stakes four days before the Melbourne Cup of 1946 and broke down with an injured sesamoid bone. Romano and Plant raced from the stands to their stricken champion, hobbling in pain at the top of the straight, and the distressed Romano could not speak for an hour after the race, which was won by the great mare Flight.
Bernborough was saved by veterinary surgeons and in December 1946, he was sold to Louis B. Mayer, head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer pictures, to stand at stud in the USA. The price was reported to be £93,000 at the time, but was later claimed to be less. (Mayer’s annual salary of an equivalent to £312,675 was top of the published income lists in the USA at the time.)
Mayer subsequently sold Bernborough to a syndicate of Kentucky breeders.
Many Australians, who regarded Bernborough as their own, were horrified by the whole affair and an uproar followed the sale. Romano remained unpopular with the general public for a long time.
However, after one visit to the USA, Romano reported that his former champion was ‘living like a prince’. He even had a thermometer in his palatial stall to ensure a comfortable temperature.
In the USA Bernborough sired the winners of more than $4 million in prizemoney. His progeny included many stakes winners, most notably Bernwood, who ran a mile in 1 minute 33.8 seconds to set a new national record.
BOBBY AND SAM
JIM HAYNES
Tommy Smith had an eye for a horse.
He came to Sydney with his first horse, Bragger, in 1941. He had bought the reject
out of the paddock in Wagga Wagga in spite of the owner telling him the colt was mad and would never make a racehorse.
Tommy and Bragger lived side by side in two boxes at Kensington racetrack until Tommy and the horse had proved his previous owner wrong. It was touch and go for a while, though; Bragger bolted at his first barrier trial at the old Victoria Park track, threw the jockey, hurdled a fence and ended up on the beach at Botany Bay before Tommy managed to catch him.
Bragger went on to win thirteen races, including the Rosehill Cup, and set Tommy on the path to success as a trainer.
Tommy’s eye rarely let him down. He famously bought Playboy for Sydney owner E.R. Williams, who later raced good horses such as Pride of Egypt and dual Cox Plate winner Hydrogen, and was annoyed when Williams said he didn’t like the horse.
Williams later decided to take Playboy, but Tommy’s nose was well out of joint and he refused to sell him, raced him in his own colours, and won the AJC Derby with him in 1949, along with the AJC St Leger, Craven Plate and C.B. Fisher Plate.
Tommy Smith was well established when Tulloch came along, but it is perhaps true to say that Tulloch stamped him as a great trainer and Kingston Town capped off his career.
The two champions had much in common, as well as some obvious differences. Tulloch and Kingston Town were both brilliant middle-distance horses that could stay, but they inherited that ability in different ways.
Tulloch was bred at the famous Trelawney Stud in New Zealand. He was from the handy staying mare Florida by King George VI’s galloper Khorassan, who was bred by the Aga Khan and had bloodlines back to Nearco (and thus Carbine). Tulloch was bred to be dour, but was also born with brilliance aplenty.
Kingston Town, on the other hand, was bred to be brilliant and go over distance when required. His sire was Bletchingly, a son of Biscay and a grandson of Star Kingdom, and his dam, Ada Hunter, was a granddaughter of Italian legend Ribot, who had multiple St Simon blood and was unbeatable over a mile and a half, literally. In fact, Ribot was never beaten at any distance, winning all sixteen of his race starts, from 1000 to 3000 metres and including the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe twice.