by Jim Haynes
The smoke from cigarettes would curl up in lazy blue-grey layers to the caverns in the roof where brilliant lanterns hung in clustered thousands, and after a bit these would grow dim blood-red in colour, or hazy emerald-green, or faint old-rose. The jungle beat in the music thrust and throbbed relentlessly on the eardrums of the dancing multitude until they postured and grimaced and genuflected like a herd of mesmerised buffoons.
But you didn’t succeed in a place like that because of coloured lights and mass hypnosis. You knew that among these multitudes there would be people who came to prey on lads and lasses out for fun. They didn’t come to listen to the music. You had to keep the liquor out of crowds like these; I would as soon have nitro-glycerine in a place like that as sparkling wine. So you had your private army to guard your patrons from marauders, to rule your dance hall with an iron hand, and you knew you’d often have to use them in the hectic midnight hours when your famous dancing rendezvous exploded in your face.
I’d brought the best of them with me. I’d given them each one-eighth of all my money and their wages, and the funds I had borrowed on my car, my race glasses and on any other mortal thing I could get my hands on. Then, half an hour before the race, I gave each of my lads a square of bookmakers to work on. They were to commence to bet at a given signal. These bookmakers are hard to trap, especially at Menangle, but there were things that favoured me. I heard two of them talking before the race started.
‘Tom, what’s this Firecracker?’
‘Firecracker?’ Tom echoed.‘Oh, ’im. Some goat that fellow Bendrodt trains.’
‘What! Trains ’im, does ’e? Well, wouldn’t that rock you! What next will ’e do? ’E couldn’t train a rabbit to run up a burrow.’
‘Naw,’ said Tom. ‘’E’s got Cook riding ’im.’
‘What!’ the other fellow said in pained surprise. ‘Cook! Why, ’ow did ’e get ’im to ride it, I wonder?’
‘Friend of ’is, I guess,’ said Tom. ‘Anyway, we needn’t worry about Firecracker, ’e’s never had a run. Gold-digger is a certainty.’
When betting opened, Firecracker was at 10 to 1 and, when the money flowed for Gold-digger, I took my hat off and ran my fingers through my hair and, in a flash, eight good men commenced to bet as one.
In 90 seconds Firecracker was at 5 to 1 and, in 90 more, you had to fight to get the bookies to lay you 6 to 4. And no wonder. My lads were old in this game, and they had bet a lot of money—for Menangle. The vouchers they carried in their pockets would keep the Palais Royal going for a decent time to come if Firecracker won. But could he?
I legged Bill Cook up and said to him, ‘Now, Bill, this is serious. So pay attention to what I tell you. This fellow’s got to win, because, if he doesn’t, five minutes afterwards I’ll just be passing Suva going strong. No foolin’, Bill, you’ve got to win it.’
And Bill, who rarely paid attention to anything I said, or for that matter to anything that anybody said, looked down at me and asked in consternation, ‘But, boss, what’s he done? He’s never had a race. I can’t come home without the horse, you know, it isn’t done.’
‘Quit fooling, Bill,’ I said. ‘Firecracker is a little peculiar.’ Then, as alarm spread over his face and I saw him take a tighter grip on the reins, I hastened to add, ‘But he’s fast, Bill, very fast. He’s only peculiar because his mother was Persian Nan, and she was a wee bit mad, so they tell me. You talk to him going to the post and get his confidence. Don’t hit him for heaven’s sake, or you’ll need a parachute to bring you down. And be careful at the barrier, Bill, because that’s where he really gets peculiar. He’ll only go for 5½ furlongs and then he’ll stop as if he’s hit a wall. So hug the rails as if you loved them, and don’t make him go an unnecessary yard. Out and home, Bill, that’s the ticket.’
‘Aw, for God’s sake,’ Bill replied morosely. He clucked at Firecracker and Firecracker obediently erupted through the gate onto the course and disappeared into the distance, with Bill Cook doing stunts that would have turned a Cossack green with envy.
They didn’t have announcers back in the days I write about, and I couldn’t see the start without my glasses. But the track was dry and sandy, so I knew when a bunch of horses travelled in a cloud of dust to a turn a quarter of a mile or more away. But I couldn’t see the colours, and I didn’t hear the crowd. I knew a sort of dull, sick feeling, and it seemed that every second was a year.
Then in the distance I could hear their hooves thudding on the hard dry ground as the field swung towards the furlong pole, and I could see a tall black horse skimming along the rails with a golden chestnut close behind him, and the rest 10 lengths away. And then I became a cold stone statue, and the world a place where nothing seemed to focus.
Then a smashing blow hit me between the shoulder blades, and an Irish voice roared joyously, ‘By the holy saints, it’s Firecracker! It’s the feckless loon himself, so help me Bob!’
Lonhro never liked Moonee Valley
JIM HAYNES
‘AND LONHRO STANDS MOTIONLESS, gazing off into the distance as he so often does before a race . . . he’ll be the last to be loaded.’
It was April 19, 2004.
As the course commentator’s voice echoed across from the stands, Lonhro gazed towards the traffic crawling endlessly along Alison Road, then turned his head for a last long look across the wide expanses of Royal Randwick towards the NSW University buildings to the south.
On nine of the 11 occasions Lonhro had raced here at Randwick he’d been victorious. Today was to be different, but somehow it hardly mattered.
It was Queen Elizabeth Stakes Day, last day of the Autumn Carnival, and the feature race was to be Lonhro’s swan song, the final curtain call in a magnificent and well-orchestrated racing career. It was a race in which he had nothing left to prove, but it was an opportunity for the AJC to bring much-needed media attention to racing. It was also a chance for those who had watched and loved the horse for four glorious racing seasons to say farewell.
It was, in fact, uncannily similar to his father’s farewell day at Randwick seven years earlier. There was to be a real sense of déjà vu.
Both he and his famous sire, Octagonal, finished their racing careers in the Queen Elizabeth Stakes. On both occasions the AJC made the day into a carnival and promoted it as a chance to farewell a champion. On both occasions the party was spoiled and the fairytale ending denied when the retiring champion was defeated, finishing second in the feature event.
Yet, in both cases, it hardly mattered—the race itself was simply a coda to a great career.
Octagonal had nothing left to prove when the AJC put on a party for his farewell in 1997. Having passed his target of winning an Australasian record of more than $6 million in prize money several weeks before, the ‘Big O’ could have simply headed off to stud. There was really no reason to risk running the champion again in the Queen Elizabeth Stakes when he had nothing left to prove and was worth many, many millions as a stallion.
Indeed, a reporter asked Jack Ingham that very question after Octagonal won the Tancred Cup at Rosehill: ‘Why risk the horse now, when he has achieved his goal and everything you ever expected of him?’
With typical Inghamesque logic, Jack simply looked the reporter in the eye and asked, ‘Don’t you want to see him race again?’
As an AJC committee member Jack was also no doubt aware that he was giving the club a chance to attract much-needed support and media attention—he was a gracious man, Jack Ingham.
Octagonal was defeated in his farewell race by a useful stayer called Intergaze, who would go on to win an Australian Cup.
And then here we were, seven years later, watching his illustrious son stand at the 2000-metre start, gazing off into the distance before taking his position in the barrier, only to be defeated by Grand Armee, a very good horse trained by Gai Waterhouse, which had also defeated Lonhro in a Doncaster Handicap.
Grand Armee’s cause was helped to an extent by an atypical poorly judge
d ride by Darren Beadman, who allowed the winner to get away with a slow pace and an easy lead, giving Lonhro no real chance of running him down in the straight.
Unlike his father Octagonal, who crept up on the racing world through his two-year-old season, Lonhro had lived his entire life in the spotlight. Being the first foal of Octagonal’s first crop he entered the world in a blaze of publicity. His mother, Shadea, had won the Group 3 Sweet Embrace Stakes and had been placed in both the AJC Sires Produce and Champagne Stakes.
As soon as he was born at the Inghams’ Woodlands Stud, his anxious owners asked for a firsthand report and were told that the foal was ‘small but perfectly formed’.
This report gave Suzanne Philcox, who had the task of naming all the Woodlands’ foals, a good pointer towards an appropriate cryptic name for the foal. His name is a deliberate misspelling of the stock exchange code for the London Rhodesian Mining and Land Company, LONRHO. The CEO of this company was the controversial Roland ‘Tiny’ Rowlands, who was always sarcastically referred to as ‘small but perfectly formed’ by the satirical magazine Private Eye, which exposed some of his perfidious activities in the 1980s and 1990s. The misspelling was to avoid possible legal difficulties and enable the thoroughbred registrar to accept the name.
Lonhro finished second at his first start in November 2000 and was then spelled before winning easily over 1100 metres at Rosehill. A trip to Melbourne followed, resulting in an impressive win in the Blue Diamond Prelude and a close fourth, behind True Jewels, in the Blue Diamond itself.
The Inghams and trainer John Hawkes saw Lonhro as a potential weight-for-age horse and took their time with him. He was spelled until July and then contested the Missile Stakes as a two-year-old, finishing third. This was the last time in his entire racing career that Lonhro would lose two consecutive races.
Woodlands’ other champion two-year-old of that year,Viscount, won the AJC Sires Produce and Champagne Stakes while Lonhro was in the spelling paddock.
When he returned to racing, the first son of Octagonal had developed into an impressive big, almost black horse who was to be unbeaten at three. He took out the weight-for-age Warwick Stakes, the Ming Dynasty Quality, the Heritage Stakes and the Stan Fox Stakes one after the other, all at Group or Listed Race level. He was then sent to Melbourne to race against a class field, including stablemate Viscount, in the Caulfield Guineas. He won running away by one and a half lengths.
A minor injury saw Lonhro spelled again, leaving stablemate Viscount to wear the famous all-cerise colours in the 2001 Cox Plate.
Sandwiched between Northerly laying in and Sunline shifting out, Viscount was robbed of a Cox Plate victory in a controversial decision that saw the ‘past the post’ placings upheld after multiple protests.
Lonhro and another Woodlands horse, Freemason, would later avenge to a degree the ‘unfair’ defeat of their courageous stablemate at weight for age. Lonhro famously defeated Sunline in the Caulfield Stakes of 2002, and the dour old stayer Freemason handed Northerly an unexpected defeat at weight for age in the Tancred Cup at Rosehill on Golden Slipper Day in 2003.
Lonhro returned to racing in February 2002 to win the Royal Sovereign Stakes and the Hobartville Stakes, both at Group 2, before a virus saw him put away again until the spring. Amazingly the Royal Sovereign Stakes was the first of 25 consecutive races in his career which saw him start favourite.
Lonhro returned to racing in the spring, once again in the Missile Stakes over 1100 metres. Ridden for the first time by Darren Beadman. He won effortlessly by 4 lengths. Previously he had mostly been ridden in Sydney by Rod Quinn, though Digger McLellan and Jim Cassidy had also won on him. In Melbourne it had been Darren Gauci and Brett Prebble. But from the start of his four-year-old season until he retired, Lonhro was ridden by Darren Beadman and no one else.
The imposing sleek dark horse they were now starting to call ‘the Black Flash’, although he was never ‘officially’ black, was sent out red-hot favourite at his next start in the Warwick Stakes, over 1400 metres.
Perhaps he was a little flat second-up after a long spell, or perhaps the step up from 1100 to 1400 was too much, for he failed by half a head to run down Guy Walter’s good horse Defier.
Lonhro was to finish behind Defier four times in his career, twice in the Cox Plate, although the gelding was easily defeated three times by Lonhro at Group 1 level in Lonhro’s five-year-old season.
Defier was a gallant and unlucky horse who finished second in the Cox Plate twice, in 2002 and 2003. Lonhro finished sixth in 2002, his worst-ever result in a race, and third in 2003.
After the 2003 race Defier’s trainer Guy Walter cheekily quipped, ‘Finished behind us again,’ to John Hawkes in the birdcage at Moonee Valley.
Hawkes famously replied,‘Yes, but ours still has his undercarriage.’
Lonhro was never at home at Moonee Valley and his two Cox Plate runs were probably the most disappointing in his stellar career. The man who knew the horse best, trainer John Hawkes, thought Lonhro never liked Moonee Valley for some reason—perhaps the StrathAyr surface didn’t feel right to the big stallion.
Perhaps he disliked the closed-in cauldron-like atmosphere. He didn’t stand and stare for long before entering the barriers in his two runs at Moonee Valley.
Although he was never to run to his best in the Cox Plate, he went on as a four- and five-year-old to win 17 of his 23 starts, all at group level, at distances ranging from 1100 to 2000 metres.
There are those who claim Lonhro was a false champion who had many ‘easy kills’ in group races, never won a Derby or a Cox Plate, and failed to prove himself as a handicapper in the Doncaster of 2003.
There is no doubt that John Hawkes had the luxury of being able to pick the champion’s races. Woodlands had other great horses, notably Viscount, racing at the time and could plan complementary campaigns for their horses.
It is also true that Lonhro was never at home at Moonee Valley. It was the only track he ever started on at which he never won a race. His two starts there were perhaps among the worst three or four performances of his career—although a sixth and third in the Cox Plate are not bad for ‘worst ever’ performances.
He carried 57.5 kg top weight to finish fourth in the Doncaster behind Grand Armee, carrying 6 kilos less, on a wet track and, as a sprinter/middle-distance horse, he was never going to run in Derbies or Melbourne Cups.
Those who question the horse’s bravery and stamina, who doubt that he inherited his father’s bulldog determination, should have been at Caulfield Stakes Day 2002.
I travelled out to Caulfield that day to see Lonhro run against Sunline. The Caulfield Stakes that day was basically a match race between Sunline and Lonhro, with a few other very good horses like Republic Lass, Prized Gem, Distinctly Secret and Tully Thunder making up the numbers.
It was a rematch in a sense. Two weeks earlier in Sydney Lonhro had finished fourth, one place behind the mighty mare, in the George Main Stakes won by Defier. It was one of those races in which a small field produces an odd tempo and tactics. Defier, Excellerator and Shogun Lodge managed to keep Lonhro pocketed until it was too late to get out and chase effectively.
Sunline was a freak; at seven she was as strong and robust a horse as I ever saw. She towered over most of her male counterparts and was fit and at her peak for the spring carnivals.
Not many of the crowd seemed to be supporting Lonhro, just the Ingham family and a few others who had strayed south of the border for the spring racing.
Lonhro proved that day that he had inherited his sire’s incredible will to win.
Beadman moved Lonhro up onto the outside of Sunline as they rounded the big home bend at Caulfield and he was a half-length behind her when they straightened.
The famously religious jockey appeared to have faith in his colt’s ability to run a metre faster per furlong than the mare at weight for age. He rode Lonhro out steadily and made ground on Sunline centimetre by centimetre. It was a two-horse war with th
e rest of the field forgotten, a true test of stamina, strength and courage between two champions, with neither horse giving in at any point and each stretched to the extreme. At the post it was a clear victory to the big black horse carrying the famous cerise colours.
Jorrocks the ‘Iron Gelding’, our first popular champion racehorse. (Courtesy of Dianna Corcoran/AJC)
Grand Flaneur depicted on a cigarette card. He was the only undefeated Melbourne Cup winner.
Carbine at age four with trainer Walter Hickenbotham and VRC Chairman R.G. Casey. (Courtesy of ARM)
Carbine wins the 1889 Sydney Cup. This painting hangs in the AJC office at Randwick. (Courtesy of AJC)
The mighty mare Wakeful posing for the camera for an early newspaper poster.
(Courtesy of ARM)
A postcard showing Western Australian champion Eurythmic with F. Dempsey in the saddle. (Courtesy of ARM)
Amounis wins the 1930 Caulfield Cup and sets up the biggest Cups double betting coup of all time. (Courtesy of ARM)
Phar Lap runs away with the 1930 Melbourne Cup, becoming the shortest priced winner in history. (Courtesy of ARM)
Phar Lap wins his last race at Agua Caliente and races into immortality on 20 March 1932.
(Courtesy of AJC)
Jim Bendrodt chats to his good mate, champion jockey Billy Cook. (Courtesy of ARM)
Bernborough leads out the field at Flemington before carrying 63 kg to victory in the Newmarket Handicap on 2 March 1946. (Courtesy of Ern McQuillan/AJC)
Bernborough ridden at trackwork by Athol George Mulley. (Courtesy of AJC)