The Big Book of Australian Racing Stories

by Jim Haynes

  Mary was sobbing beside the bed, cursing the fence and the money that had brought him to grief. At last, in a tone of satisfaction, he said, quite clear and loud: ‘I know how it was . . . there couldn’t have been any dead man in that hearse!’

  And so, having solved the mystery to his own satisfaction, he drifted away into unconsciousness, and woke somewhere on the other side of the big fence that we can neither see through nor over, but all have to face sooner or later.

  LOUIS THE POSSUM

  JIM HAYNES

  One of the strangest true stories of the Australian Turf concerns the uncanny punting ability of a Chinese market gardener, Jimmy Ah Poon. It is believed that he came to Australia for the last major gold rush in Victoria, the Berringa Gold Rush, which started in 1897. The odd thing about this story is that, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, Jimmy only ever backed one horse, and only when he won.

  You see, Jimmy Ah Poon’s appearance on Sydney’s racetracks coincided with the career of the mighty champion Poseidon in the early years of the twentieth century.

  As a three-year-old Poseidon won eight times and ran second three times. His wins included two Derbies, two Caulfield Cups, the Melbourne Cup, and the AJC and VRC St Legers, and it seems that Jimmy backed him on every one of the eight occasions that he won as a three-year-old, but never when he ran second. He invested all of his winnings every time and never backed other horses.

  Jimmy’s first bet on Poseidon was at his first start at three, a handicap over the Randwick mile, which the horse duly won at 3 to 1—Jimmy’s stake was £50. He then invested all his winnings when Poseidon won another race in the lead-up to the AJC Derby and did the same when the horse won the Derby at 7 to 1.

  When Poseidon started in the Metropolitan, racing against older horses for the first time, Jimmy was not seen at the racetrack. Poseidon ran second. His trainer Ike Earnshaw then took him to Melbourne to win the Eclipse Stakes, Caulfield Cup, VRC Derby and Melbourne Cup in the Spring, and the St. Helier Stakes, VRC St. Leger and the Loch Stakes in the Autumn. Jimmy invested every cent of his winning every time. When the horse ran second in the VRC Champion Stakes over a mile, however, Jimmy was not at the track!

  Back in Sydney Poseidon won the AJC St. Leger at the prohibitive odds of 25 to 1 on! Jimmy wagered over £33,500 to make his total winnings on the horse over £35,000. Jimmy was never seen again. Legend has it that he returned to China and lived like a Mandarin for the rest of his days on the fortune he acquired due to his uncanny prescience—or was it luck?

  With Jimmy nowhere to be found, Posiedon ran second in his last start as a three-year-old, his total prizemoney earnings for that year was £12,000.

  Jimmy, from the Sydney suburb of Bankstown, was known as ‘Louis the Possum’ by bookmakers because he could not pronounce the name of the horse which won him an untold fortune. Every time Poseidon was due to win, Jimmy would turn up at the track and ask the bookmakers, ‘What price Possumum?’ Why they called him Louis is anyone’s guess, but probably Jimmy never officially introduced himself and the bookies just chose a name for him.

  Punters used to follow Jimmy around and treat him as kindly as possible to see if he was going to bet or not. I believe this is the origin of that odd saying still heard on Aussie racetracks when a punter cannot pick a winner for love or money—‘My luck’s lousy today, I must have killed a Chinaman.’

  Note: There was a minor gold rush at Tarnagulla, west of Bendigo in 1906, just after the Melbourne Cup. More than 3000 ounces of gold nuggets were mined from a strip of ground 25 metres long. It was named ‘The Poseidon Rush’, after the Cup winner. Seventy years later the nickel boom of the same name caused the minor 1906 discovery to fade into history.

  FRANK MCGRATH

  BRUCE MONTGOMERIE

  Setting out in his career in racing as an amateur jockey, the young Frank McGrath rode his first winner at nine years of age for his father. On his nineteenth birthday he survived the worst race fall in Australia’s history when his horse and fifteen others crashed to the turf in the 1885 Caulfield Cup. One rider died and many were badly injured, including Frank.

  After recovering from his injuries the following year, he returned to race riding. By 1890 McGrath had given up the saddle for the stopwatch and field glasses and had begun a career spanning 65 years in which he produced many champion racehorses and won almost every major race in Australia.

  Frank McGrath, master racehorse trainer of his era, won three Melbourne Cups with two of his outstanding thoroughbreds—Prince Foote in 1909 and Peter Pan in 1932 and 1934.

  McGrath also prepared Melbourne Cup placegetters—Abundance, third in 1902, Antonius, second in 1906, and Beau Vite, third in 1941.

  After being well conditioned by McGrath, Abundance developed into Australia’s top three-year-old of the 1901–02 season, winning six of his twelve starts—the Tattersall’s Club Hampden Stakes at Randwick, the Chelmsford Stakes, the AJC Derby, the VRC Victoria Derby, the VRC St Leger Stakes and the AJC St Leger Stakes.

  Abundance broke the Australian record when he won the 1902 VRC Victorian Derby in 2 minutes 36.2 seconds.

  The colt’s second in the VATC Caulfield Stakes on October 10 helped make him 4 to 1 equal favourite for the 1902 Melbourne Cup. The horse was to give McGrath his first placing in the great race. Walter Jennings, McGrath’s apprentice, rode the colt at 7 st 6 lb (47 kg). McGrath later told the Press that ‘Walter did not have the strength to finish the race strongly after the battering he suffered in the race.’

  Abundance had been knocked from pillar to post throughout. McGrath always felt the colt would have won if he had had a stronger rider aboard to cope with the interference. Entering the straight Lieutenant Bill led with Abundance in fifth place just behind The Victory, who went on to win by a neck from Vanity Fair with Abundance a half-length away third. The other 4 to 1 equal favourite, The Persian, beat four home.

  As Abundance was nearing the end of his racing career, another top-liner stepped in the stables. As a two-year-old Antonius won four of his starts and was even more prominent as a three-year-old, winning eleven of his fourteen starts during the 1906–07 season including the 1906 VRC Sires Produce Stakes.

  McGrath thought he had broken his Melbourne Cup drought when Antonius went into the Cup at 9 to 4. Antonius made a mighty effort to tumble Poseidon, who as a three-year-old was fresh from winning the AJC Derby, the Victoria Derby and the VATC Caulfield Cup. Antonius was beaten into second place by 1½ lengths.

  Antonius had some great duels with Poseidon, with one of his best efforts a fast-finishing second by a length-and-a-quarter in the 1906 VRC Victoria Derby. He also ran third to Poseidon in the 1906 AJC Derby.

  In 1909 McGrath at last achieved his ambition with a racehorse that pundits claimed was too small to win a Derby or Melbourne Cup. He was Prince Foote, the 15.1 hands high three-year-old who ran all over his opposition in the 1909 AJC and VRC Derby double. Prince Foote’s effort was all the more remarkable when it was found that he had raced with a damaged heel in the Victoria Derby, winning it by 6 lengths, and had suffered two checks during the AJC Derby. His exceptional season continued with wins in the AJC and VRC St Legers, AJC Sires Produce Stakes, AJC Doncaster, AJC Cumberland Stakes and AJC Plate. Prince Foote’s victories in his lead-up to the Melbourne Cup included the first of his two Tattersall’s Chelmsford Stakes.

  Jockey Billy McLachlan thought during the running of the 1909 Melbourne Cup that he was destined to lose the race. After the Cup McLachlan described his mount as a fine racehorse but a ‘lazy bugger’.

  McLachlan lost all hope when Prince Foote was at the rear of the field and not responding to the whip. It seemed an impossible task.

  McLachlan said: ‘I couldn’t get him to shift for a long time and I began to get anxious. I got away pretty well but I couldn’t see much chance by the time we reached the turn near the saddling paddock. I was lying somewhere near last. There was plenty of bumping. I got knocked back but I didn’t give up hope. I
started to make up ground along the back-stretch near the river. I looked out for a position and after trying hard I could not gain a yard. Prince Foote would not answer to the spur and I knew it was only his laziness.

  ‘He brightened up a bit and I improved my position. I was on the outside and it was just as well because if I had been inside I would have been bumped and never got out. I saw a chance and I didn’t waste time. It was the ride of my life. Just after the turn into the straight Alawa and Trafalgar were six lengths clear. I was still on the outside and about three furlongs from the finishing post. I got out the whip and you would have thought it was another horse.

  ‘As soon as I touched him he started to sprint. He went past Alawa and Trafalgar like a flash. I don’t remember anything else except that stretch of course between me and the finishing post. He’s a beauty to go when he likes and is one of the gamest horses I have ridden in my life.’

  Although Prince Foote was not a big horse he had a huge heart. Winning by 3 lengths, he was the fifth three-year-old to win the Melbourne Cup, recording 3 minutes 27.2 seconds and running a second faster than Carbine’s 1890 Cup time. At last Frank McGrath had his first Melbourne Cup . . . and there were more to come.

  One racehorse who should have won a Melbourne Cup for McGrath was his ‘warrior’, Amounis—the toughest and best galloper he ever trained. Amounis completed an incredible seven full seasons winning up to a mile-and-a-half with great staying power.

  Amounis won 33 of his 79 starts. His busiest season was when he won ten races as a seven-year-old. These victories included the VRC Cantala Stakes, the VRC Linlithgow Stakes, the VRC C.B. Fisher Plate, the VATC Futurity Stakes and the AJC All-Aged Stakes. As an eight-year-old he won the VATC Caulfield Stakes and the VATC Caulfield Cup.

  Amounis beat Phar Lap twice in weight-for-age races—a great achievement as Phar Lap was beaten only four times in 32 weight-for-age contests. Amounis beat him into third place in the 1930 VATC St George Stakes and into second place in the 1930 AJC Warwick Stakes.

  Frank McGrath knew he had a colt of enormous promise the minute Peter Pan walked into his Doncaster Avenue stables in January 1932. He fell in love with the long-legged, two-year-old chestnut. It was this thoroughbred who was to respond to McGrath’s handling and go on to win two Melbourne Cups. While McGrath would be the seventh trainer to complete the feat, the other six trainers had won their Cups in consecutive years, not in alternate years, as Peter Pan was to do.

  Frank McGrath came close to having another Melbourne Cup winner when the champion New Zealand stayer, Beau Vite, was sent to his Kensington stables. Beau Vite was the best racehorse in Australia at the time. He had won the 1940 STC Hill Stakes, the AJC Colin Stephen Stakes, the AJC Metropolitan Handicap and the AJC Craven Plate. Taken to Melbourne he won the Moonee Valley W.S. Cox Plate as a lead-up to the Melbourne Cup.

  As a result of gangster tactics of unknown gunmen, Beau Vite came close to missing his place in the 1940 Melbourne Cup field. On the Wednesday before the Cup, two intruders stalked the rear of the box stabling Beau Vite’s stablemate, El Golea, and pushed a gun through a hole in the wall.

  Both horses were of similar colour and both wore white bridles and rugs. The gunmen mistook El Golea for Beau Vite and shot him in a rear leg. The veterinarian called to assist both horses found that no real damage had been caused to El Golea and left the bullet in his leg. El Golea had two weeks before being the 9 to 2 favourite in the Caulfield Cup.

  Beau Vite, the 7 to 4 favourite, finished fourth in the 1940 Melbourne Cup after carrying 9 st 7lb (60.5 kg). The following year El Golea, the 11 to 2 favourite, was unplaced in the race.

  Beau Vite came back for the 1941 Melbourne Cup as 9 st 10 lb (62.5 kg) top-weight and ran a brave third to the winner, Skipton, who carried 7 st 6 lb (47 kg).

  As well as training the winners of almost every major flat race in Australia, Frank McGrath excelled at training steeplechasers and hurdlers and won two VRC Grand National Hurdles, two VRC Grand National Steeplechases, two VATC Australian Steeplechases and the Moonee Valley Hurdle.

  When he died in 1947, Frank McGrath had trained the winners of three Melbourne Cups, two Caulfield Cups, three AJC Doncaster Handicaps, four AJC Derbies, two VRC Derbies, three AJC Epsom Handicaps, three AJC St Leger Handicaps, two AJC Metropolitan Handicaps, two AJC Sires Produce Stakes, three L.K.S. Mackinnon Stakes, three VRC Cantala Stakes and three Moonee Valley W.S. Cox Plates.

  Frank McGrath—a truly remarkable life in racing.

  This story is compiled from excerpts from Bruce Montgomerie’s book, Frank McGrath—A Champion’s Life—published 2015.

  JIM BENDRODT

  DAVID HICKIE

  While Bernborough’s owner, Azzalin the Dazzlin’ Romano, advertised his famous nightspot Romano’s restaurant as the swishest eatery in Sydney during the 1930s and 1940s, his great competitor, the equally flash Jim Bendrodt, ran Prince’s restaurant on the opposite corner at Martin Place.

  James Charles ‘Jim’ Bendrodt—lumberjack, radio announcer, sailor, soldier, actor, champion athlete, professional dancer and restaurateur—was one of Sydney’s most colourful entrepreneurs for 50 years, running dancing halls, skating rinks, nightspots and a string of racehorses.

  Jim’s father was a Danish sea captain who joined the Hudson Bay Company during its pioneering days around the remote coastal areas of Canada and ferried miners to the northern Arctic during the Yukon goldrushes.

  Jim was born in 1896 and raised in the town of Victoria in British Columbia. As a teenager he learned to use his fists around the lumber camps of the Canadian backwoods, and boxed professionally. As a youngster he won titles at boxing, ice-skating and sculling, and played lacrosse at a high level as well as some semi-pro rugby.

  Despite his obsession in later years to always appear among the best-dressed men in Sydney, with a red carnation in his buttonhole, he was also renowned for his ability to bounce even the toughest drunks from his nightspots.

  In 1913, at age 17, Bendrodt had taken a job shovelling coal in the stokehold of a ship headed for Australia. He landed with a £5 note, one suit, one hat and a pair of boots. Within a fortnight of his arrival he was earning £30 a week as a roller-skating champ. He and partner George Irving performed a duo act described as ‘two daring young men with flying legs on roller-skates who entertained patrons of the Tivoli as they raced, tumbled and twisted to a climax like whirling dervishes’.

  Bendrodt had held Canadian titles from 3-mile to 24-hour events and the roller-skating craze was just catching on in Sydney. Eventually he was matched against an imported US Champion named Echard in a 24-hour race billed as the ‘world championship’ at Sydney’s Exhibition Building. Bendrodt bet all his savings on himself but lost by a mere 40 yards.

  When war broke out in 1914 he was the 198th man to enlist in the initial 1500-man force, which was given eleven days’ training and sent to annex German New Guinea. He was netting £200 a week from a dance hall, but within a fortnight he was a six-bob-a-day private on a troop ship in the Pacific.

  A friend from those days later recalled:

  Jim was a dandy—always the best dressed man in town, with that red carnation in his buttonhole. All Jim’s mob were shoddily dressed in woeful looking uniforms, made in a hurry for soldiers in a hurry. But not Jim; he’d had his uniform tailor-made, and was a picture of sartorial elegance as he sailed away.

  When he returned to Australia in 1915 Bendrodt felt he hadn’t yet done enough for the Allies’ war effort. He sold everything to buy a first-class passenger ticket on the RMS Makura, bound for Vancouver, and sailed off to Canada to join the Royal Flying Corps.

  On his return from military service he marched into J.C. Williamson’s one day and said he could act. They believed him and he landed small parts in several plays starring Madge Fabian, Lou Kimball and Link Plummer. He later recalled that he was a lousy actor but discovered he was a terrific showman.

  He used that showmanship running dance halls in Sydney in the 192
0s and 1930s, became a professional dancer and married his partner Peggy Dawes. He also ran a dancing school in Pitt Street. Bendrodt’s enterprises included the Palais Royal dance hall at the showground and the Trocadero in George Street. By the late 1930s he’d switched to ice-skating and transformed the Palais Royal into the Ice Palace. He told reporters he had learned to ice-skate on the frozen Canadian lakes in his youth.

  He also became a noted campaigner against cruelty to animals, was a prominent and vociferous member of the RSPCA, and bred German Shepherd dogs.

  Bendrodt wrote several books about horses and dogs and his short stories regularly featured in major American magazines. Two of his most famous stories concerned horses named Gay Romance, a filly that won him a fortune, and ‘Irish Lad’, which was in fact the story of his horse Spam who cost backers a fortune when he failed in the Melbourne Cup. Professor Walter Murdoch called Bendrodt ‘the Poet Laureate of the horse and dog’.

  During World War II Bendrodt began his famous campaign in the press and on radio deploring the slaughter of pet dogs, given up by their owners to be gassed during the days of meat rationing. His plea began: ‘Why did you kill him, Mister? Why did you kill your friend?’ The response was so amazing that newspapers and radio stations refused to charge him for the advertisements.

  Bendrodt soon became a leading owner-trainer of racehorses, with stables at Kensington and a 150-acre model stud, Prince’s Farm, at Castlereagh on the banks of the Nepean River, 40 miles west of Sydney.

  In line with his obsession with kindness to animals, the facilities at the stud incorporated the ultimate in comfort for his horses, one visitor describing the stud as being ‘run on the lines of a first-class hotel for horses’. Bendrodt objected to jockeys using whips on horses and other trainers often declared his kindness prevented him from working his horses hard enough to get them into racing condition. They were appalled by his habit of feeding them apples and chocolate.