Best Australian Racing Stories

by Jim Haynes

  All right, well, you want a horse with balance, with some symmetry between height and length, one who gives the impression that it all hangs together, a horse like Beau Zam. Todman, who was greater than Beau Zam, always seemed too long for his height; he also had a shambling walk. Emancipation, the crack mare, sometimes looked as though she had been assembled from the pieces of three horses, with a mule donating the ears. Oh dear. All right, well, what about the legs? Legs are everything. At the gallop each leg has to take the full weight of the horse and jockey for an instant. You want to be able to drop a plumb line that passes through the centre of the knee, cannon bone and joint. You don’t want these legs turned in or out.

  It is undesirable for a yearling to be turned in. Biscay was turned in; so was Galilee. Forget that, then. To be turned out is much worse: the ‘winging’ legs tend to strike each other. Seattle Slew was slewed out in one leg: he won the US Triple Crown.

  All right, well, what about being back at the knee? That’s inexcusable, isn’t it? Yes . . . except that some Grey Sovereign-line horses are a little back. And there was this yearling in America who made only $1100 because, apart from his unfashionable blood, he was back at the knee. On the track he won $6 million. They called him John Henry.

  Compromises, compromises. There are a few matters we can surely be dogmatic about. All good horses, regardless of size or shape, seem to possess a big sloping shoulder (the greater the slope the greater the reach), a deep girth, and a good length of rein. A true champion must also have the quality you cannot see at the sales—courage.

  And, despite the irritating exceptions above, it is better to stick with the probabilities. You do want good legs and balance—because for every John Henry there are countless cripples, because horses with bad legs break down before horses with good legs. But you still have to make little compromises: it is, after all, the world of the occult.

  Personally, I got around this ‘athletes’ business long ago. I wait until some beast pokes his nose out to take the Tancred or the Cox Plate. At this instant, and with a flair for the obvious which is contemptible, I turn to whoever is dim enough to be standing next to me and pronounce: ‘Now, there’s an athlete!’ Oh, it’s cowardly, I know—but I usually get it right.

  18 January 1988

  PART 2

  The Humour of

  the Track

  A lesson in laconic

  JIM HAYNES

  THE RACETRACK SEEMS TO inspire humour, especially in Australia. Racing is such a part of everyday life in the ‘Land Down Under’ that racing stories, anecdotes and jokes abound in our oral tradition.

  In the stories and verses which make up this section, the humour ranges from amusing reflections on childhood by footballer Crackers Keenan to the tall-tale-telling of famous poet Barcroft Boake, who was able to write far-fetched humorous tales like ‘How Babs Malone Cut Down The Field’ in spite of the chronic depression which caused him to hang himself with his stockwhip at 26 years of age.

  Also included are a few of the ‘delightful and insightful’ tongue-in-cheek pieces written about racing by C.J. Dennis for the Herald-Sun, and a series of wry anecdotes by Banjo Paterson.

  Banjo’s memories of racetrack skulduggery in the ‘old days’ are wonderful glimpses into a time gone by, and yet they also remind us that little has changed as far as racetrack characters go. His anecdote about Breaker Morant is a favourite of mine.

  I have also included a verse and a story about Banjo’s fictional, but very realistic, pub full of sporting men that he called simply ‘Mulligan’s’. In the first poem Mulligan and his crew outwit the forces of authority with a clever ‘con-trick’ and, in the story, justice is perhaps done as they become victims of a cleverer con-artist on a trip to Randwick. These yarns have long been favourites of mine and demonstrate just how well Banjo knew bushmen of all types!

  Certain kinds of racing characters have almost become clichés or caricatures in Australian humorous literature. The cunning old trainer (often a battler from the bush), the hardened old punter, the insensitive bookie, the unlucky jockey and ‘mugs’ of all shapes and sizes.

  One of the most common types of racetrack joke is that where fate conspires to spoil what seems to be a sure-fire tip based on inside information, or perhaps some divine or supernatural prescience.

  One such example is the story of the man who bumps into a neighbour on the tram going home.

  ‘Hello, Bill,’ says the friend, ‘where have you been?’

  ‘I’ve been to the races,’ Bill replies.

  ‘You don’t usually go to the midweek meetings, do you?’ says the neighbour.

  ‘No,’ says Bill, ‘I only went today because I had a very vivid dream early this morning. I saw sunshine through fluffy clouds and a voice kept repeating “number seven . . . number seven . . . ”. So I looked in the paper and there was a horse carrying saddlecloth seven, coming out of barrier seven, in the seventh race at Sandown, at seven to one. So I went to the track and put $777 dollars on it.’

  ‘What happened?’ asks the neighbour.

  ‘It ran seventh,’ replies Bill.

  Stoicism is a common element in racetrack humour. Another of my favourite stories concerns the old battling punter who heads off to the races with $20 in his pocket.

  The old battler, let’s call him Jim, backs the first winner at 10 to 1 and then goes all up on the next three favourites, who duly salute the judge, giving him a bank of $500 when the fifth race comes around.

  Now, Jim has done the form carefully on this race and has a ‘special’ which opens at 6 to 1 and drifts out to 8 to 1. Unperturbed, Jim steps in, backs his ‘special’ and watches it win with his hands in his pockets and no emotion on his face.

  Two more all-up bets on successful favourites take Jim’s bank to almost $20,000 before the final race on the card.

  This race features Jim’s second ‘good thing’ for the day, a track specialist named Wire Knot, third up from a spell over his pet distance.

  Jim extracts a $50 note from his wad, tucks it into his back pocket and puts the rest on Wire Knot, on the nose at 3 to 1.

  Wire Knot misses the kick, flies down the outside late and it’s a photo finish. The judge calls for a second print before awarding the race to the rank outsider, Mitre Guest. Wire Knot misses by a nose.

  On his way to the bus stop Jim meets a mate who says, ‘Hello Jim, how’d you go today?’

  ‘Not bad,’ says Jim, deadpan, ‘I won $30.’

  This stoic acceptance of the cruel hand of fate is a common feature of many racing anecdotes. Another common situation is that in which one character underestimates another’s knowledge, or overestimates their own.

  The Western Districts of Victoria are a great area for racing. This story was told to me by a great old yarn-spinner at Port Fairy, near Warrnambool.

  It seems that an old cocky once turned up at a jumps meeting with a tough old steeplechaser, but with no jockey to ride it.

  As the lad he had engaged for the ride didn’t show up, the old trainer approached one of the professional city jockeys and asked if he would take the ride.

  The jockey looked the old bloke up and down with a bored expression on his face and said, ‘All right Pop, I’ll take him around for you I suppose, the moke I was booked for has been scratched and it will warm me up for the important races later in the day.’

  As the old bloke legged the jockey aboard, he whispered urgently, ‘Now listen carefully, this horse will win easily if you remember one thing.’

  ‘I’ll do a good job on him, Pop,’ the jockey said impatiently. ‘Don’t worry, I do know how to ride, you know.’

  The old trainer persisted, ‘This is important, listen. As you approach each jump you must say, “One, two, three—jump”. If you do that, he’ll win.’

  The jockey was already moving the horse away from the old trainer as this advice was given. ‘Sure, Pop, it’ll be all right, don’t you worry,’ he called back over his shoulder.

&n
bsp; Of course the smug city jockey took no notice of the old trainer’s advice. Away went the field and the tough old chaser was up with the leaders as they approached the first fence. When the horse made no preparation at all to jump, the jockey desperately attempted to lift him. The horse belatedly rose to the jump, struck heavily and almost dislodged the startled ‘professional’.

  This incident caused them to fall right back through the field, the horse being lucky to stay on his feet and the jockey using all his skill to stay in the saddle. The jockey’s mind was now racing to remember the old man’s advice and, at the next jump, he succeeded in calling, ‘One, two, three—jump!’ and the horse easily accounted for the fence.

  The jockey repeated the process at each jump and the horse jumped brilliantly, making up many lengths, but just failing to catch the winner at the post.

  On his return to the enclosure, the jockey was confronted by the old trainer who said, ‘You didn’t listen to me, did you? You didn’t say, “One, two, three—jump” at the first fence.’

  ‘Yes, I did, Pop,’ lied the jockey, ‘but perhaps I didn’t say it loudly enough. He didn’t hear me, he must be deaf.’

  ‘He’s not deaf, you bloody fool,’ replied the old trainer laconically. ‘He’s blind.’

  The kind of humour displayed in the stories that follow ranges from the mild and gentle wit of realistic anecdotes to the outrageously unrealistic humour of tall stories.

  Some of the humour of times gone by seems insensitive and politically incorrect by today’s standards, while other stories from the past are based on characters and incidents that we would not be surprised to encounter on a modern-day racetrack.

  Many larger-than-life characters have been part of the history of Australian racing, and a source of humour and tall tales. These characters range from great conmen like Robert Standish Sievier to small-time battlers like the mysterious Jimmy Ah Poon.

  Sievier, also known as Robert Sutton, was the man who invented the role of the bookmaker as we know it today, being the first bookie to ever carry a bag and spruik his odds on a platform, at Flemington in the 1880s. He was, among other things, a soldier of fortune in the Zulu Wars, stage actor, racehorse owner, flamboyant bookmaker, criminal cardsharp and three times bankrupt.

  Jimmy Ah Poon’s appearance on Sydney’s racetracks coincided with the career of the mighty Poseidon.

  No one knows for sure but it seems Jimmy was a Chinese market gardener from Bankstown who had an uncanny knack of only backing one horse, Poseidon, and only when he won.

  Poseidon won 18 times from 26 starts as a three- and four-year-old. 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 occasion that he won but never when he ran second or worse.

  Jimmy 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?’

  Jimmy disappears from Australian racetrack history after Poseidon’s four-year-old season. Legend has it that he returned to China and lived like a Mandarin for the rest of his days on the estimated £35,000 fortune he acquired due to his uncanny prescience about the future successes of ‘Possumum’.

  One of my favourite politically incorrect racetrack stories concerns an old stablehand, the iconic desperate old battler, who was a victim of alalia syllabaris—that is, he stuttered.

  This character appears in front of a bookmaker who is frantically writing out tickets and taking money hand-over-fist just before a big race.

  ‘Waddya want, mate?’ asks the bookie.

  ‘I b-b-b-b-b-backed . . .’ stammers the stablehand.

  ‘Come on, mate,’ says the bookie, ‘you backed what?’

  ‘I b-b-b-b-b-backed . . . a f-f-f-f-f-f-f-five t-t-t-t-t-t-t . . . ,’ the flustered stablehand manages to get out, his face growing red in the process.

  ‘Struth, mate,’ says the impatient and insensitive bookie, ‘you backed what!?’

  ‘I b-b-b-b-b-backed . . . a f-f-f-f-f-f-f-five t-t-t-t-t-t-to . . .’ comes the slow stuttering reply.

  ‘Look, mate,’ says the bookmaker, ‘I haven’t got time to hear your story now. You backed a five-to-one winner and lost your ticket or something . . . Here’s $50, I hope that’s near enough, now get out of the way will you?’

  The old stablehand is walking back to the horse stalls when he meets the trainer he works for. The trainer sees the $50 in his hand and asks, ‘Bloody hell, where did you get $50?’

  ‘W-w-w-w-w-w-well,’ replies the stablehand, ‘I w-w-w-w-went t-t-t-t-to t-t-t-t-tell that b-b-b-b-b-bookie, old M-M-M-Mr S-S-S-S-Smith I b-b-b-b-b-backed . . . your f-f-f-f-f-f-f-five t-t-t-t-t-t-ton h-h-horse float over his M-M-M-Mercedes . . . and he gave me f-f-f-f-f-f-fifty b-b-b-b-bucks!’

  Or how about the trainer who is spotted by a steward slipping a pre-prepared ‘speed ball’ to his horse before a race.

  ‘What did you give that horse?’ demands the steward.

  The trainer, who has several more of the pills in his pocket, replies, ‘Oh, they’re just homemade boiled lollies,’ and he pops one into his mouth and goes on, ‘the horse loves them,’ he says, ‘I’m having one myself, here, do you wanna try one?’

  ‘Okay,’ says the steward as he takes the pill, looks at it and puts it in his mouth, ‘but I’ve got my eye on you.’

  Minutes later, as the trainer legs him aboard, the stable jockey asks, ‘Are we all set, Boss, everything as planned?’

  ‘Yes,’ the trainer replies, ‘money’s on and he’ll win. And, if anything passes you, don’t worry, it’ll just be the chief steward or me.’

  Corn Medicine

  Harry (‘Breaker’) Morant

  ‘A well-bred horse! but he won’t get fat,

  Though I’ve done the best I can;

  He keeps as poor as a blessed rat!’

  Said the sorrowful stable-man.

  ‘I’ve bled and I’ve blistered him, and to-day

  I bought him a monster ball;

  But, blow the horse! Let me do what I may,

  He won’t get fat at all.

  ‘I’ve given him medicines galore,

  And linseed oil and bran,

  And yet the brute looks awfully poor,’

  Said the woebegone stable-man.

  One glance the intelligent stranger threw

  At the ribs of the hollow weed,

  Then asked, with an innocent air, ‘Did you

  Remember to give him a feed?’

  Racetrack reminiscences

  A.B. (‘BANJO’) PATERSON

  A memory of Breaker Morant

  AMATEUR RACING, for some reason or other, has always had some sort of encouragement from the Rosehill proprietary, and that club is the only metropolitan institution that caters for the ‘lily-whites’. Their annual race at Rosehill is a sort of ‘Custer’s last stand’.

  They used to also run an amateur steeplechase, and one of these was to some extent memorable, for among the riders was Harry Morant, whose tempestuous career was ended by a firing squad in the South African war.

  Plucky to the point of recklessness, he suffered from a theatrical complex which made him pretend to be badly hurt when there was, really, not much up with him.

  Morant was breaking in horses and mustering wild cattle somewhere up in the west, and he had been accustomed to ride after hounds in England.

  Arriving in Sydney at the time of the amateur steeplechase, he set out to look for a mount.

  Mr Pottie, of the veterinary family, had a mare that could both gallop and jump, but she was such an unmanageable brute that none of the local amateurs (and I was one of them) cared to take the mount.

  Morant jumped at the chance, but as soon as they started the mare cleared out with him and fell into a drain, rolling her rider out as flat as a flounder.

  He was carried in, suppose
d to be unconscious, and I was taken up to hear his last wishes.

  The doctors could get nothing out of him, but after listening to his wanderings for a while I said, very loudly and clearly, ‘What’ll you have Morant?’ and he said, equally clearly, ‘Brandy and soda.’

  Weight was right

  Once, years ago, a son of the then Governor of New South Wales secured a ride in a picnic race. Intensely enthusiastic and a very lightweight, this young gentleman turned up, full of hope, to ride his first race.

  He got on the scales with his saddle, and it turned out that he was two stone short of making the weight!

  Not one of the amateurs had a lead bag to lend him, but no one would dream of leaving the Governor’s son out. He was the main attraction of the meeting.

  The officials had never been confronted with anything like this, but the caretaker was a man of resource. He shovelled a lot of sand into a sack and strapped it firmly on the pommel of a big saddle; weight was right, and away the field went.

  It was an amateur hurdle race and, every time that the horse jumped, a puff of sand flew up, like the miniature spouts blown into the air by killer whales.

  Simultaneously jumping and spouting, the vice-regal contender saw the race out, unsuccessfully, it is true; but he got more applause than the winner.

  A-maizing escape

  The most vivid memory that abides with me of South Coast racing is of a meeting held many years ago in the Shoalhaven district.

  The attendance consisted mostly of the local agriculturalists, horny-handed sons of the soil quite formidable in appearance and character. The foreign element was provided by a group of welshers, side-show artists, prize-fighters and acrobats who followed the southern meetings as hawks follow a plague of mice.

  The centre of the course consisted of a field of maize fully ten feet high and when one bookmaker decided to ‘take a sherry with the dook and guy-a-whack’ (a slang expression meaning to abscond without paying), he melted into the maize and took cover like a wounded black duck.