by Jim Haynes
His trainer, Cecil Godby, and his big-betting owner, Jack Corteen, knew better and the betting ring was hammered in a well-planned coup as Purser was backed in from 20 to 1 to 5 to 1 within seconds of betting opening on the race. He won by a length and a half.
The Easter Yearling Sales began the following day at Inglis Sale-yards and the money won by Corteen the previous day was used to purchase a chestnut colt from the second crop of the imported stallion Valais, out of imported mare Chersonese.
Valais raced only seven times for a win in the Windsor Stakes and two placings in top-class races in England, but he carried the blood of Bend Or on both sides of his pedigree.
The Bend Or bloodline was the most popular and successful in the world at that time, producing stallions which topped the sires lists in Britain, France, USA and Australia. In fact there was so much of the bloodline available in Britain that the Moses brothers, of Arrowfield Stud, had been able to purchase Valais for 2000 guineas after he had stood for one season in England. They also purchased Chersonese, who had the Bend Or bloodline through her grandsire Cyllene, who was also the grandsire of Valais.
This close in-breeding to Bend Or produced the colt that Corteen and Godby were so keen to purchase. They were cashed up and kept bidding until the colt was knocked down to them for 1800 guineas, the highest price paid at the sale. They named him Heroic.
Few horses in turf history have had a more sensational career than Heroic. The powerful chestnut was rarely out of the headlines for all the wrong reasons.
A docile animal at home, he was a barrier rogue with shocking manners on the racetrack. At two years of age he overcame a nasty eye infection which almost ended his career before it began by threatening to permanently blind him. The problem was solved by veterinary persistence and he won the Breeder’s Plate easily at his first start and, in spite of his shocking performances at the barrier, won six of ten starts to establish a new stakes-winning record for a two-year-old in Australia. In doing so Heroic humped weights that are unimaginable for a two-year-old today. In carrying 10 st 2 lb (64.5 kg) to victory in the Alma Stakes at Caulfield, he set a weight-carrying record for a two-year-old, which was not broken until 1954. He finished off 1924—his first season—by winning the AJC Champagne Stakes carrying 9 st 6 lb (60 kg).
Heroic began his three-year-old season in Sydney in typical fashion by putting on a shocking display at the barrier and pulling throughout to run ninth, as favourite, in the Warwick Stakes.
As a Melbourne horse he was soundly booed and jeered that day by Sydney punters. A week later, however, many of those same racegoers happily cheered him, as the ‘local horse’, when he defeated the New Zealand champion Gloaming over 9 furlongs in the Chelmsford Stakes at Randwick.
Gloaming had been beating Australia’s best for years and the parochial Aussie racegoers took Heroic to their hearts immediately when he broke the race record in defeating the New Zealand owned and trained champion.
Heroic’s finest moment and one of his worst displays of bad manners occurred in the same race, the AJC Derby of 1924. The Derby was then run in the spring and Heroic started raging favourite at 10 to 9. The only two others considered to have any hope were the great stayer Spearfelt and the Rosehill Guineas winner with the delightfully politically incorrect name of Nigger Minstrel.
As Sydney racegoers know, the Derby starts in the straight at Randwick, where the leger enclosure, now long gone, was once filled with massive, noisy crowds. In 1924 the crowd was huge and it upset Heroic, who bucked and kicked as his long-suffering jockey, Hughie Cairns, attempted to get him into line behind the barrier wires.
When the barrier went up Heroic buckjumped and headed to the outside fence. Cairns attempted to straighten him and take him to the inside rail, but the strong-willed chestnut kept running out. The result was that the field raced away around the first turn as the Derby favourite zigzagged down the famous Randwick straight in a display more reminiscent of a Keystone Cops comedy sequence than a classic thoroughbred race.
In an oddly run race the field travelled at snail’s pace behind a runaway leader, Sir Dighlock. Heroic, many lengths last at the mile, was able to sustain a huge run into second place at the half-mile, 20 lengths behind the tearaway leader.
The famous rise at the top of the Randwick straight took care of Sir Dighlock, who quickly compounded when Heroic raced past him. The two other fancied runners then attacked the champion chestnut, who gallantly held them off to win by a head from Nigger Minstrel, with Spearfelt another head away in third place.
Heroic was then rushed home to Melbourne for a crack at the VRC Derby and, only a week after his truly heroic victory in the AJC Derby, started favourite at 6 to 4 on a bog track in the Caulfield Guineas.
Once again the barrier rogue put on a display of bad manners, digging in his hooves and refusing to go into line until the clerk of the course cracked a stockwhip at his rump. He dwelt at the start when the barrier went up, but raced around the field to win the mile race by 3 lengths being eased up.
Heroic once again made the headlines when he was barred from running in the VRC Derby of 1924.
His owner, Jack Corteen, raced all his other horses in partnership with owner George Tye. The two owners had combined their resources and stables and had their horses all trained by Cecil Godby at his private training establishment at Alandale, out of Melbourne.
After the great betting plunge that enabled Corteen to buy Heroic at a record price, the old stayer Purser had revitalised his career to win the AJC Winter Stakes in 1923 and the All-Aged Stakes in 1924. He then returned to Melbourne and was entered for the Caulfield Cup, along with another very good horse owned by Corteen–Tye, named The Monk.
It was given out that The Monk would run in the Caulfield Cup and Purser, an eight-year-old who had been given 9 st 5 lb (59.5 kg) for the race, would not. Purser ran very poorly in the Coongy Handicap. Although Hughie Cairns claimed he had been hit in the face by a clod, the horse only plodded in to finish 11th, and he would have to set a weight-carrying record to win the Caulfield Cup.
Both horses were accepted for the Caulfield Cup, however, and it wasn’t until after 2 p.m. on race day that The Monk was a late scratching and Purser, to be ridden by Gloaming’s regular jockey George Young, was sensationally backed in from 50 to 1 to 15 to 1. The old horse, who carried St Simon blood close up on both sides of his pedigree, was up to the task and won easily, setting a new weight-carrying record for the famous mile and a half race.
A hostile demonstration after the race was followed by an enquiry the following week and the shock announcement that owners Tye and Corteen, trainer Godby and jockey Cairns, who had ridden Purser in the Coongy but not in the Caulfield Cup, were all banned from racing for a year.
This meant that all horses owned by Tye and Corteen were also banned. Heroic, the VRC Derby favourite, was thus unable to start in the Derby or the Melbourne Cup and bookmakers pocketed many, many thousands of pounds.
More sensations were to follow. Appeals were heard and dismissed, Heroic was spelled, and then sold to Corteen’s good friend Martin Wenke for 14,000 guineas. The VRC questioned both men and refused to accept that the sale was legitimate, and Heroic was then sold at a public auction and knocked down for the record price of 16,000 guineas.
Heroic was purchased by a colourful character in Charles Kellow, a well-known former champion cyclist who had made his fortune selling those new-fangled motor cars in the first two decades of the century and performing entrepreneurial stunts such as delivering newspapers to country towns by motor car during the rail strike of 1903, and setting a record in 1908 for driving from Melbourne to Sydney (25 hours and 40 minutes!).
No horse in Australian history made as many headlines as Heroic—at least headlines that didn’t concern racing results—and every move in the saga was reported in the press and devoured eagerly by his adoring public.
Kellow sent Heroic to Jack Holt to be trained and the task must have aged the great trainer c
onsiderably. The horse won only three of his first 15 starts for Holt and his barrier manners became even worse than before. At the Randwick Autumn Carnival of 1925 he won the Autumn Stakes, and four days later was entered in two classic races on the same day, the All-Aged Stakes over a mile and the Cumberland Stakes over 14 furlongs. The record books show him as ‘unplaced’ in both races, but the truth is that he simply refused to start both times and took no part in either race!
Heroic won the Memsie Stakes and Caulfield Stakes in 1925 but was as erratic as ever, placing and finishing unplaced all through the spring. At wit’s end with the erratic champion, Jack Holt proposed a daring plan to Kellow. He would train Heroic to sprint and attempt to win the 1926 Newmarket Handicap with the wayward champion.
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 11 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, Cox Plate and William Reid, CF 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 18. His record of 21 wins, 11 seconds and four thirds is no real indication of the erratic champion’s true ability.
*This is not the STC we have today, which was formed by the NSW Government in 1944 to run what had been ‘proprietory’ or privately owned racetracks.
The ‘Age of Champions’: 1924–26
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 (foaled 1921)
Spearfelt was a small horse who was bred in the Goulburn Valley in Victoria 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 amongst his progeny, including the 1943 Melbourne Cup winner Dark Felt.
Windbag (foaled 1921)
Windbag was bred at the famous Kia Ora Stud in New South Wales 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 grand-daughter 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 18 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 WS Cox Plates in the 1930s.
Manfred (foaled 1922)
Although Windbag, the older, tougher stayer, beat 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 al
lowed 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 11 career wins—an impressive resume.
Manfred had Bend Or on both sides of his bloodline, and his dam was a great-grand-daughter 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.
Amounis (foaled 1922)
Amounis was an unlucky horse in some ways; he ran into Manfred at his best and later Nightmarch and then the mighty Phar Lap. He 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 defeating the ‘Red Terror’ by a head in the Warwick Stakes of 1930.
Like Windbag, Amounis was bred by Percy Miller at Kia Ora and was by Magpie. His dam, Loved One, was a great-grand-daughter of St Simon, giving Amounis the familiar champion’s bloodlines of ‘St Simon on both sides’.
In Sydney Amounis won two Epsoms, a Rosehill Guineas, Chipping Norton, 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 WS Cox Plate, and 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, 11 seconds and eight thirds from 79 starts, Amounis was the ‘iron gelding’ of his age.
In the century since Jorrocks was the darling of racegoers, many great horses had stirred the hearts of the Australian racing public. By 1930 radio, newsreel film and improved travel and communication made it easier to follow the exploits of the great inspirational champions of the turf, and the Australian appetite for racing and champion horses had grown even greater. The stage was set for the most loved champion of them all.