by Jim Haynes
Holt’s friend, rival trainer James Scobie, had the good New Zealand stayer Pilliewinkle, and the two men wanted to try for the Newmarket–Australian Cup double with their two horses.
Kellow agreed—he needed to recoup many thousands lost on Heroic through the spring—and the plan was put into action. Holt’s stable jockey, Billy Duncan, had had enough and was happy to step aside and allow Heroic’s former jockey, Hughie Cairns, who had served out his one-year riding ban, to take charge of the horse again.
For once Heroic jumped away with the field and charged home to win the classic sprint, his only win in eleven starts between October 1925 and April 1926. Pilliewinkle fulfilled his part of the deal by winning the Australian Cup, and Kellow recouped huge amounts to restore his bank balance.
Back in Sydney, for the autumn of 1926, Heroic decided he would start in the Cumberland Stakes that year and duly won the race, but failed carrying 9 st 7 lb (60.5 kg) in the Sydney Cup, as he did the following year carrying even more, a hefty 10 st (63.5 kg).
Heroic showed his true class when he went on a winning spree at the Victorian Spring Carnival of 1926, taking out six races in a row: the Underwood and Memsie Stakes, the Cox Plate, and the William Reid, C.F. Orr and St George Stakes.
Two weeks after his St George Stakes win he was unplaced attempting to win the Newmarket sprint for a second time, carrying a whopping 10 st 2 lb (64.5 kg).
Heroic’s final victory saw him win at 2 miles for the first time in his career, in the Governor’s Plate at Flemington in March 1927. After four unplaced runs at the Sydney Autumn Carnival he was retired, aged five, to start his career at stud in the spring of 1927.
More sensations were to follow as Heroic went on to be the nation’s leading sire for four consecutive seasons. From nine crops he sired 184 winners of 964 races. Among his progeny were the mighty Ajax and Melbourne Cup winner Hall Mark.
Another sensation followed when the champion sire suddenly became impotent after nine seasons of great results at stud. Nothing could solve the problem and Heroic lived on for another six years until his wayward behaviour finally took its toll. A bolt of lightning in a sudden storm caused the old horse to gallop wildly across the paddock and slip over on the wet grass in December 1939. He broke a leg and was put down at the age of eighteen. His record of 21 wins, eleven seconds and four thirds is no real indication of the erratic champion’s true ability.
THE GOLDEN AGE: 1924–1926
JIM HAYNES
In the history of Australian racing there has probably never been such a golden age as that which occurred in the mid-1920s.
Heroic, The Hawk and Gloaming were all racing and winning major races, and four other great champions in Spearfelt, Windbag, Manfred and Amounis joined them during this time.
Spearfelt was a small horse who was bred in the Goulburn Valley in Victoria in 1921 but raised at Widden Stud in New South Wales after his mother died while being transported there with her foal at foot. He may well be the only bottle-raised horse to win the Melbourne Cup, and the little champ-to-be was purchased cheaply, for a mere 120 guineas, by Mr D.C. Grant, who was looking for a cheap colt with Carbine bloodlines to be trained by his friend, Melbourne trainer Vin O’Neill.
Spearfelt was a grandson of Spearmint, an Epsom Derby winner and son of Carbine. He won five races at two, then took the VRC Derby before starting favourite in the Melbourne Cup of 1924. The little colt ran into interference and finished an unlucky third behind Backwood.
The following year he won the VRC St Leger and the King’s Plate, but fell heavily in the Sydney Cup and then contracted pneumonia. He was still not fully recovered and was racing below his best when he ran mid-field in the Melbourne Cup that year behind Windbag.
He was fully recovered by the spring of 1926 and won the AJC Spring Stakes before finishing third behind Manfred in the Melbourne Stakes.
Trainer Vin O’Neill thought Spearfelt was poorly ridden in the Melbourne Stakes and replaced jockey George Young with Hughie Grant for the Melbourne Cup three days later. Manfred pulled up sore after his Melbourne Stakes victory and was scratched from the Cup, which Spearfelt won, equalling Windbag’s record time of the year before, 3 minutes 22.75 seconds.
The record crowd of 118,877 at the Cup that year remained an Australian record for a sporting event for 43 years, until broken by the Carlton–Essendon Grand Final crowd in 1968.
Spearfelt’s career was blighted by sickness and injury and he won only nine races, but he was a brilliant champion. He was also a success at stud, counting many good horses among his progeny, including the 1943 Melbourne Cup winner Dark Felt.
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Windbag was bred at the famous Kia Ora Stud in New South Wales in 1921 by Percy Miller and was by the imported English stallion Magpie, who would go on to be Australian Champion Sire in 1928–29. His dam was the New Zealand mare Charleville, a granddaughter of St Simon, which meant that St Simon was on both sides of Windbag’s family, as Magpie was St Simon’s great-grandson.
Windbag was a ‘bad walker’ and was famously knocked down at the Inglis Yearling Sales to agent Ian Duncan for 160 guineas. Duncan then decided he couldn’t take the horse due to his poor gait and Clive Inglis graciously cancelled the sale and convinced the breeder’s brother, Robert Miller, to race him.
From this embarrassing start Windbag became the Sydney champion horse of his day, winning eighteen races in his career and a Melbourne Cup.
In fact, he had a very unusual Melbourne Cup preparation. He started racing in July 1925, winning over 6 furlongs at Randwick, and stayed in training right through the winter and spring, taking the Spring Stakes, Craven Plate and Randwick Plate at the Sydney Spring Carnival before heading to Melbourne, where he ran third behind Pilliewinkle in the Melbourne Stakes before winning the Melbourne Cup.
The 1925 Melbourne Cup was history-making as it was the first to be broadcast on radio, by the ABC. Manfred led for most of the race and the pace was hot, but Windbag outstayed his younger rival to win by half a length in record time with Pilliewinkle, the Australian Cup and Melbourne Stakes winner, a close third. Spearfelt also raced in the Cup that year, but was not well and finished well back.
Windbag didn’t sire a Melbourne Cup winner, but he did sire many good horses including Chatham, the outstanding miler who won two W.S. Cox Plates in the 1930s.
Although Windbag, the older, tougher stayer, beat the three-year-old Manfred in the 1925 Cup, the younger horse was a strong-minded individual whose effort to win the AJC Derby in 1925 eclipsed Heroic’s effort of the previous year.
Manfred shared a few things in common with Heroic. Both were sired by Valais, both were notorious barrier rogues, and both put up unbelievable efforts to win the AJC Derby.
In the AJC Derby of 1925 Manfred, who had won the Champagne Stakes at two, refused to start until the clerk of the course rode at him with his whip. He finally set off, seven seconds after the barrier had risen, and trailed the field by a good half furlong before settling for jockey Billy Duncan, who did not attempt to fight the horse but allowed him to settle at his own pace. He caught the field at the mile and raced level with Frank McGrath’s champion Amounis before racing clear at the top of the straight to win easily.
Manfred also counted the Cox Plate, VRC Derby, Caulfield Cup, Caulfield Stakes, Melbourne Stakes and October Stakes in his tally of eleven career wins—an impressive resume.
Manfred had Bend Or on both sides of his bloodline, and his dam was a great-granddaughter of St Simon via his brilliant son Persimmon. He was a great success at stud and sired many winning horses, including The Trump, who completed the Caulfield Cup–Melbourne Cup double in 1937.
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Amounis was an unlucky horse in some ways; he ran into Manfred at his best and later Nightmarch and then the mighty Phar Lap. Yet Amounis had the distinction of beating Phar Lap in the VATC St George Stakes of 1930, when Phar Lap was three and Amounis was seven. He also stopped Phar Lap’s great winning streak of 24 victories by de
feating the ‘Red Terror’ by a head in the Warwick Stakes of 1930. He was the only horse to beat Phar Lap twice.
Like Windbag, Amounis was bred by Percy Miller at Kia Ora and was by Magpie. His dam, Loved One, was a great-granddaughter of St Simon, giving Amounis the familiar champion’s bloodlines of ‘St Simon on both sides’.
In Sydney Amounis won two Epsom Handicaps, a Rosehill Guineas, Chipping Norton Stakes, All-Aged Stakes, Craven Plate and Warwick Stakes and, in Melbourne, three Linlithgow Stakes, two Essendon Stakes and two Cantala Stakes, as well as a Cox Plate, and the Futurity and St George Stakes. He then won the Caulfield Stakes and the Caulfield Cup at eight. In fact, Amounis has the distinction of having won at least one race that would today be a Group 1 event in every year of his career from age three to age eight.
With a record of 33 wins, eleven seconds and eight thirds from 79 starts, Amounis was the ‘iron gelding’ of his era.
AUSTRALIA’S FAVOURITE HORSE
JIM HAYNES
Phar Lap’s spectacular career has been continually documented and mythologised in books and films for 80 years, and his tragic end has been analysed and debated again and again.
In spite of his iconic status, it would be hard to imagine any champion whose career had less auspicious beginnings than the ‘Red Terror’.
Both his sire and dam were failures on the track and, in breeding terms, both were outcasts, unwanted even by breeders of mediocre racehorses at the poorer end of the racing game.
In researching the breeding history of Phar Lap’s sire Night Raid, his dam Entreaty and granddam Prayer Wheel, the phrase I came across most frequently was ‘got rid of ’.
Night Raid was bred in England but was not a well-conformed horse when young and, although he was well bred, his breeder ‘got rid of’ him for a mere 100 guineas as a yearling. He was trained by a good trainer named Tom Hogg but only ever ran third in a poor-class ‘selling’ race, so Hogg ‘got rid of’ him to Australia, where he was trained in Sydney by Peter Keith and managed one win in a restricted race at Randwick, and even that was a dead heat.
Keith then ‘got rid of’ him to breeder Paddy Wade, who stood him at stud in Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, but the horse could not even attract mares from local owners, so Wade decided to ‘get rid of’ him to New Zealand breeder A.F. Roberts and sold him for half what he had paid for him.
Phar Lap’s dam, Entreaty, had an even worse history. Her dam Prayer Wheel was a failure on the track and a failure at stud and was culled from the breeding stock of Trelawney Park, aged fifteen, and sold for 20 guineas. It was not even known if she was in foal at the time, but she was, to the imported stallion Winkie.
Prayer Wheel was sold again before giving birth to a black filly. Named Entreaty, the filly was put into training but damaged a shoulder and raced once only, at five, and performed poorly. She was left in the paddock and forgotten by her owners until they heard that Roberts was looking for second-rate mares to be served by outcast stallion Night Raid, so they promptly ‘got rid of’ her to Roberts for 60 guineas. Phar Lap, born in 1926, was her first foal, from Night Raid’s second crop.
More than anything, Phar Lap’s success demonstrates the importance of being able to see potential in bloodlines and ignore racetrack results and preconceptions.
Harry Telford had the ability to do just that—and he didn’t have the budget to do much else!
If we ignore results and look at breeding we see, as Telford did, that Night Raid was a grandson of both Bend Or and Spearmint and had Galopin blood on both sides and St Simon and Carbine (and thus Musket) blood. Prayer Wheel had Musket blood on her dam side and Entreaty had St Simon and Galopin blood via her sire. It was a potent mix.
Telford was a battler, a Sydney trainer who was born in Ballarat but grew up in New Zealand. He was obsessed by bloodlines and spotted the chestnut colt—lot 41 in the catalogue for the 1928 Trentham Sales—and implored his brother in New Zealand to buy the colt ‘if he was sound’. His ‘limit’ was a paltry 200 guineas.
Telford’s main problem was that he didn’t even have the 200 guineas to back his judgement and had to convince one of the owners he worked for to pay for the horse.
The owner Telford decided to ‘convince’ was David Davis, who ran a successful import business in Sydney. Davis was born in Russia into a Jewish family who emigrated to the USA and was a US citizen, which partly explains the decision to race Phar Lap in the States five years later.
Davis agreed to fund the purchase and Telford’s brother Hugh was in the sale ring at Trentham when the last lot of the day, lot 41, was led in. Hugh was not quite alone; one other bidder was present, but he was acting as agent for a buyer who had gone home and was unsure about his limit, so the colt was knocked down to Hugh Telford for 160 guineas on a day when 2300 guineas had been paid for a previous lot and prices on average were between 1000 and 2000 guineas.
Not only were Phar Lap’s immediate family poorly performed, the colt himself was gangly and ungainly, well over 16 hands as a yearling (big even by today’s standards) and a slow developer.
On the journey across to Sydney on board the Wanganella, Phar Lap became seasick and did not eat; he also broke out in pimples, which covered his face. He arrived looking more like a cartoon horse than a racehorse.
David Davis was so unimpressed on seeing the horse he had been cajoled into buying that he refused to pay for his training. Once again Harry Telford backed his own judgement and arranged to lease the horse for three years, cover all costs and pay Davis one-third of all prizemoney. An Asian friend of Telford’s evidently suggested the Thai word ‘farlap’ meaning lightning flash, perhaps a reference to the colt’s glossy deep chestnut coat when he had recovered his health. The superstitious Telford, with November glory in his mind even then, wanted a seven-letter, two-word name as these had a good Melbourne Cup-winning record. So, the horse became Phar Lap.
Phar Lap was disinterested and lazy on the track and kept growing until he stood at 17 hands, so Telford had him gelded. Even so he ran poorly at eight of his first nine starts as a late two-year-old and early three-year-old. He did show a glimpse of what was to come by winning a Juvenile Maiden at Rosehill at his fifth start, after finishing last at his previous.
He then finished second in the Chelmsford Stakes and went on the first of his great winning jaunts, taking the Rosehill Guineas, AJC Derby, Craven Plate and VRC Derby before being sent out at even money favourite for the Melbourne Cup.
Phar Lap had run the same time for both Derbies and broke Manfred’s record by a quarter of a second. In the Cup, with only 7 st 6 lb (47 kg), he had to be ridden by lightweight jockey Bobby Lewis.
It is often mistakenly stated that Lewis took the mount from Phar Lap’s ‘regular jockey’ Jim Pike, who could not make the weight. The truth is that the colt had been ridden in his first fourteen races by eight different jockeys, although Pike had ridden him in both Derbies and would become his regular jockey, riding him at every one of his sixteen starts as a four-year-old—for fourteen wins. Pike rode the great chestnut 30 times in total, for 27 wins and two seconds.
The ‘Red Terror’ could really be a terror to ride and he refused to settle for Lewis in the 1929 Cup. The jockey said later he just could not get the horse’s head down or stop him reefing and pulling and so reluctantly he let him lead, only to be run down and finish third behind Nightmarch and Pacquito.
Nightmarch, the first good horse to be sired by Phar Lap’s sire, was from the ‘outcast’ stallion’s first crop and was a year older than Phar Lap.
The Phar Lap bubble had burst: the ‘wonder horse’ seemed to be just another ‘good ’un’, especially when he was beaten into third again, behind Amounis, on his return to racing in the St George Stakes in the autumn.
The spring of his three-year-old season would prove to be a mere aperitif to Phar Lap’s career on the racetrack. In the eighteen-month period starting from March 1930, and ending with his eighth placing, carrying 10 st 10 lb (68 kg), in th
e Melbourne Cup of 1931, the ‘wonder horse’ started 32 times for 30 wins and two seconds, winning every major race in Sydney and Melbourne from a mile to 2 miles.
Those wins included the W.S. Cox Plate twice, two more Craven Plates to add to the one he won at three, the Melbourne Cup with ridiculous ease, carrying 9 st 12 lb (62.5 kg), and all the other classic races of the spring and autumn carnivals in both cities.
The great horse won weight-for-age races by 20 lengths and broke the existing records for all distances between 1½ miles and 2 miles.
He started at prices like 14 to 1 on, and it is common knowledge that he remains the shortest-priced horse to win the Melbourne Cup, and the only ever odds-on winner. What some racegoers may not know is that he actually shut down the betting ring on no less than twelve occasions, when no bookmakers would take bets on the races he won. He also travelled to Adelaide and won two classic races there.
Jim Pike always said his greatest victory was when he took on the sprinters and beat them in the Futurity Stakes at Caulfield. On a bog track carrying 10 st 2 lb (64.5 kg), the big-hearted champion missed the start and then took off around the entire field to run down the good sprinter Mystic Peak.
Drama and sensation were part of Phar Lap’s career. He was shot at before winning the 1930 Melbourne Stakes and then hidden away at St Albans Stud near Geelong before winning the Cup three days later. He almost emulated the greats of former eras, like his ancestor Carbine, by winning four major races over eight days, three major races in a week and four major races in a month several times.
Phar Lap could probably have also won the Caulfield Cup of 1930, and the fact that he was left in the field and scratched quite late was controversial at the time. It was, indeed, part of a cunning plan.
Nothing outside the rules of racing took place, but some consider the actions of Telford and fellow Sydney trainer Frank McGrath rather sneaky, while other racing men say it was a stroke of genius.