Best Australian Racing Stories

by Jim Haynes

  He hypnotises the client, who soon gets the suggestion that he must back Paleface, it would be absolutely chucking a chance away not to have a good punt on Paleface, 6 to 1 is a real gift about Paleface; after they have conversed for a while the client would eat a tallow candle and swear it was milk chocolate if the whisperer offered it to him.

  It was once said of a really great whisperer that he could talk a punter off a battleship into a canvas dinghy in mid-ocean.

  Like horse taming, it is all done with the eye and the voice. Having hooked his fish, the whisperer now pilots him up to a bookmaker and sees the money put on, and they go off to watch the race.

  The favourite runs wide at the turn and loses his position and never quite gets into the fighting line, but Paleface hugs the rails and comes away in the straight and wins easily. The whisperer and his client go off together to draw £120 of the best and the whisperer, if he handles his client properly, should get at least £20 for himself out of it. More than that, the client will be good for more betting, certainly until the hundred is gone, and probably a bit more on the top of that.

  Some of these whisperers do really well when money is plentiful and sportsmen generous, and they build up quite a connection with country punters. Some of them keep the same clients for years. No one has ever actually heard of a whisperer selling his business or floating it into a company, but that may come later on. They deserve all they make, too. Do you think, oh most astute reader, that you could make a living by going to the racecourse and finding out winners and then inducing perfect strangers to back them and give you a share of the proceeds?

  Like most other professions, whispering tends to be overcrowded. Practically every ex-jockey or stablehand with the necessary brains has his little circle of punters, and some of the boys in the stables learn to ‘whisper’ winners before they can see over the half-door of the stable. It takes a really good judge of racing and of human nature to keep his clientele together for long; and sometimes even the masters of the art make mistakes, as the following absolutely true tale of the trainer and the whisperer will illustrate.

  It was when things were dull in Melbourne but booming in Sydney that a crowd of Melbourne followers of racing came up to Sydney on the track of the money. One of the Melbourne visitors was an expert whisperer and he had not long been on the Sydney course before he saw a genuine bushman, bearded, cabbage-tree-hatted, sunburnt and silent.

  Bearing down on the ‘bushie’, he told him the old tale, and said that he had a friend in Layton’s stable and that one of Layton’s horses was ‘a certainty if they backed it’. Layton, it may be mentioned, was a leading Sydney trainer.

  After the usual spellbinding oratory on the part of the whisperer, the ‘bushie’ agreed to put £10 on the horse and went away to see some friends, arranging to meet the whisperer after the race. The horse won all right and the whisperer was at the meeting place bright and early.

  He had not long to wait. Up came the bushman, smiling all over, and the whisperer expected a very substantial ‘cut’ out of the winnings. ‘Did you back it?’ he said. ‘What price did you get?’

  ‘I got fives—£50 to 10.’

  ‘You won fifty, eh? Well, what about a tenner for me, for putting you on to it?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Why should I give you a tenner? I’d have backed the horse whether I saw you or not.’

  The whisperer tried persuasion and even pathetic appeal: he reduced his claim to ‘two quid’, but even at that the pastoral individual was adamant. At last the whisperer lost his temper.

  ‘You’d have backed it without me telling you! You, you great yokel! What do you know about racehorses?’

  ‘Well, I ought to know something. My name is Layton. I train that horse. I’ve just been away for a holiday in the bush. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give you two pounds if you can point me out any man in my stable that told you to back it.’

  As he finished speaking, as the novelist says, ‘he looked up and found himself alone.’

  How Babs Malone Cut Down the Field

  Barcroft Henry Boake

  Now the squatters and the ‘cockies’,

  Shearers, trainers and their jockeys

  Had gathered them together for a meeting on the flat;

  They had mustered all their forces,

  Owners brought their fastest horses,

  Monaro-bred—I couldn’t give them greater praise than that.

  ’Twas a lovely day in Summer—

  What the blacksmith called ‘a hummer’,

  The swelling ears of wheat and oats had lost their tender green,

  And breezes made them shiver,

  Trending westward to the river—

  The river of the golden sands, the moaning Eucumbene.

  If you cared to take the trouble

  You could watch the misty double,

  The shadow of the flying clouds that skimmed the Bogong’s brow,

  Throwing light and shade incessant

  On the Bull Peak’s ragged crescent,

  Upon whose gloomy forehead lay a patch of winter’s snow.

  Idly watching for the starting

  Of the race that he had part in,

  Old Gaylad stood and champed his bit, his weight about nine stone;

  His owner stood beside him,

  Who was also going to ride him,

  A shearer from Gegederick, whose name was Ned Malone.

  But Gaylad felt disgusted,

  For his joints were fairly rusted,

  He longed to feel the pressure of the jockey on his back,

  And he felt that for a pin he’d

  Join his mates, who loudly whinnied

  For him to go and meet them at the post upon the track.

  From among the waiting cattle

  Came the sound of childish prattle,

  And the wife brought up their babe to kiss his father for good luck;

  Said Malone: ‘When I am seated

  On old Gaylad, and am treated

  With fairish play, I’ll bet we never finish in the ruck.’

  But the babe was not contented,

  Though his pinafore was scented

  With oranges, and sticky from his lollies, for he cried,

  This gallant little laddie,

  As he toddled to his daddy,

  And raised his arms imploringly—‘Please, dad, div Babs a wide.’

  The father, how he chuckled

  For the pride of it, and buckled

  The surcingle, and placed the babe astride the racing pad;

  He did it, though he oughtn’t,

  And by pure good luck he shortened

  The stirrups, and adjusted them to suit the tiny lad,

  Who was seemingly delighted,

  Not a little bit affrighted,

  He sat and twined a chubby hand among the horse’s mane:

  His whip was in the other;

  But all suddenly the mother

  Shrieked, ‘Take him off!’ and then ‘the field’ came thund’ring down the plain.

  ’Twas the Handicap was coming,

  And the music of their drumming

  Beat dull upon the turf that in its summer coat was dressed,

  The racehorse reared and started,

  Then the flimsy bridle parted,

  And Gaylad, bearing featherweight, was striding with the rest.

  That scene cannot be painted

  How the poor young mother fainted,

  How the father drove his spurs into the nearest saddle-horse,

  What to do? he had no notion,

  For you’d easier turn the ocean

  Than stop the Handicap that then was half-way round the course.

  On the bookies at their yelling,

  On the cheap-jacks at their selling,

  On the crowd there fell a silence as the squadron passed the stand;

  Gayest colours flashing brightly,

  And the baby clinging tightly,

  A wisp of
Gaylad’s mane still twisted in his little hand.

  Not a thought had he of falling,

  Though his little legs were galling,

  And the wind blew out his curls behind him in a golden stream;

  Though the motion made him dizzy,

  Yet his baby brain was busy,

  For hadn’t he at length attained the substance of his dream!

  He was now a jockey really,

  And he saw his duty clearly

  To do his best to win and justify his father’s pride;

  So he clicked his tongue to Gaylad,

  Whispering softly, ‘Get away lad’;

  The old horse cocked an ear, and put six inches on his stride.

  Then, the jockeys who were tailing

  Saw the big bay horse come sailing

  Through the midst of them with nothing but a baby on his back,

  And this startling apparition

  Coolly took up its position

  With a view of making running on the inside of the track.

  Oh, Gaylad was a beauty,

  For he knew and did his duty;

  Though his reins were flying loosely, strange to say he never fell,

  But held himself together,

  For his weight was but a feather;

  Bob Murphy, when he saw him, murmured something like ‘Oh, hell!’

  But Gaylad passed the filly;

  Passed Jack Costigan on Chilli,

  Cut down the coward Watakip and challenged Guelder Rose;

  Here it was he showed his cunning,

  Let the mare make all the running,

  They turned into the straight stride for stride and nose for nose.

  But Babs was just beginning

  To have fears about his winning,

  In fact, to tell the truth, my hero felt inclined to cry,

  For the Rose was still in blossom,

  And two lengths behind her Possum,

  And gallant little Sterling, slow but sure, were drawing nigh.

  Yes! Babsie’s heart was failing,

  For he felt old Gaylad ailing,

  Another fifty yards to go, he felt his chance was gone.

  Could he do it? much he doubted,

  Then the crowd, oh, how they shouted,

  For Babs had never dropped his whip, and now he laid it on!

  Down the straight the leaders thundered

  While people cheered and wondered,

  For ne’er before had any seen the equal of that sight

  And never will they, maybe,

  See a flaxen-haired baby

  Flog a racehorse to the winning post with all his tiny might.

  But Gaylad’s strength is waning,

  Gone in fact, beyond regaining,

  Poor Babs is flogging helplessly, as pale as any ghost,

  But he looks so brave and pretty

  That the Rose’s jock takes pity,

  And, pulling back a trifle, lets the baby pass the post.

  What cheering and tin-kettling

  Had they after, at the ‘settling’,

  And how they fought to see who’d hold the baby on his lap;

  As President Montgom’ry,

  With a brimming glass of ‘Pomm’ry’,

  Proposed the health of Babs Malone, who’d won the Handicap.

  PART 3

  The Cup is More Than

  a Horse Race

  The Cup is more than a horse race

  LES CARLYON

  ‘MORT FROM CHICAGO’—THAT’S how he introduced himself to me in an hotel dining room four years ago in Lexington, Kentucky. If the name sounds Runyonesque, Mort wasn’t. He was that peculiarly American creature, the urban horse investor. From the big city, he sent his money to Kentucky where thoroughbreds ate it, but in a tax-effective way.

  Mort owned pieces of several swish yearlings to be sold in the pavilion across from Blue Grass Airport, where the Arab buyers had already parked in their jets much as we park Commodores. After we had been talking half an hour, Mort suddenly said: ‘Yeah, I bred a Melbourne Cup winner once.’ It was less than a boast—more like you or I confessing to having once kicked a goal for Mount Pleasant seconds.

  Years earlier, Mort and his partners had sold a yearling to Sheikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum of Dubai, dreaming the colt would make them famous in the Derby at Epsom, England, or the Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp, France. The colt ran second in a big German race and third in the Rome Derby before being bundled off to Australia. As At Talaq, he won the 1986 Melbourne Cup. Mort felt things could have turned out better.

  I told him that while the Cup wasn’t as famous as the races he coveted, it was a lung-buster, perhaps the most honest staying race in the world, and never won by a soft horse. Cup day, I told him, was one of the world’s great booze-ups, a public holiday no less. Then I hit him with the clincher: kids from Moonee Ponds went along dressed as the Pope. Mort didn’t say much. I’m sure he thought it was Mt Pleasant seconds.

  It’s hard to explain the Cup to an outsider. Most of the turf ’s fabled events were got up by racing insiders for themselves. The Epsom and Kentucky Derbies are about the supremacy of genes and the buying power of the ruling classes. The public is allowed to join in for the crowd scenes. The best colt of the year usually wins and is hustled off to the breeding shed. Sheikh What’s-His-Name doesn’t get too excited about the stake money because he’s worth a couple of billion anyway. Besides, he spent $20 million on yearlings that year, so he’s still behind, but who’s counting?

  Our Cup is quirky. Got up for people, it is: a cross between a horse race and a folk festival. And it mocks good order because it’s a handicap. This gets rid of the preordained factor: just about any runner can win. It’s the best sporting idea anyone ever had in this town—if only because racing is international and AFL footy isn’t.

  And the Cup is folksy. Ray Trinder, the Tasmanian owner who won in 1972, was seen outside the course holding the Cup in a cupboard box and trying to hail a cab. It doesn’t go like this at Epsom or Longchamp. In Melbourne, the script is by Shakespeare. The Cup is a saga about horses and the human condition, about lowbrows and highbrows, toffs and villains, irony and rough humour. And the improbable.

  In 1987, Harry Lawton had bought Kensei out of a New Zealand paddock for $15,000. Now the chestnut had won the Cup. ‘Looked like a yak when I bought him,’ said Harry. ‘Had a coat about 3 inches long.’ Harry used to be a fitter and turner, and played footy for Preston at $4 a game. Rosedale, a bay stallion owned in America by Nelson Bunker Hunt, once thought to be the richest man in the world, ran third to Kensei. ‘Tell Bunker I’m sorry I knocked him off,’ said Harry. It only goes like this in Australia.

  As the Cup field paraded last year, the crowd, as it always does, fell silent. When Fraar, owned by the above-mentioned Sheikh Ham-dan, reached the top corner of the yard, a falsetto voice cried out: ‘I love you, Fraar.’

  Next time around, Michael Jackson cried out even louder. ‘I want to marry you, Fraar.’

  Only on such a day can a wag from Werribee, or wherever, make thousands laugh. When, around 15 minutes later, Ireland’s Vintage Crop came back the winner, a joker in white Arabic robes rose, arms outstretched, to welcome him. Here, having a day out, was Lawrence of Nunawading, or possibly Sheikh Akbar Bin Merv of Wagga. In 1992, maybe the same gent came as Batman. Next Tuesday he could be Roseanne. Only in Australia.

  Cup crowds always seem bigger than AFL Grand Final crowds because racegoers need to move around more. Last year I was looking for an old friend, the Irish journalist Robin Park. I couldn’t find him. But when Vintage Crop swooped on the leaders, I heard Robin’s voice. Somewhere in that throng of 80,000, he was yelling as only a patriot with a bookie’s ticket can. I didn’t find his body until an hour later. Robin flushed and short in his action, mainly because of all the money he was carrying.

  One reason the Cup had endured so well is that it keeps reinventing itself. In the early 1980s, it began to look worn. Too often it wa
s won by mere handicappers, game horses but not the stuff of legend. People said the Cox Plate at Moonee Valley had more class. Without fanfare, the VRC began to handicap the Cup as a ‘quality handicap’, which favoured good horses. Up popped winners as classy as Empire Rose, Kingston Rule and Let’s Elope. Then, last year, the VRC attracted two European runners and took the race to the world.

  So it was that in the wind and rain we heard Irish accents at the winner’s stall. Back came Vintage Crop, a long chestnut with a sheepskin noseband and a plaited mane. Hauntingly Irish, it was: the light soft and grey, the grass bruised and squelching, the rain incessant.

  Back, too, came Mick Kinane, Vintage Crop’s jockey, mud spattered across his shoulders, face and crotch. He had struck the chestnut just five times with the whip. He had gone out along its neck, kept his head low, and helped the gelding to the line. Behind him, local jockeys were sitting up, flailing away, and generally demonstrating why Australian jockeys are no longer as popular as they once were in Europe. Vintage Crop changed the nature of the Cup. Kinane’s example may yet change the way Australian jockeys ride.

  As usual, the return to scale made the running of the bulls at Pamplona, Spain, seem dull. Eventually Rod Johnson, the then VRC chief executive, took Dermot Weld, Vintage Crop’s trainer, and some of the print journalists to a bar. Here, we met a chameleon. One moment Weld would talk as clinically as a surgeon, explaining how he had planned the whole thing, which he had. Next, he was a romantic, reciting bush poetry. Can you imagine the winning trainer on Derby day at Epsom holding forth on Michael Magee, who owned a shanty on the outer Barcoo?