Best Australian Racing Stories (2 page)

Australia's first popular champion racehorse was a gelding called Jorrocks, who raced in the 1840s.

Jorrocks (foaled 1833)

Jorrocks was the first horse to attain popularity and champion status in Australia. His sire, Whisker, was by the English Derby winner of the same name and had been the colony's best racehorse, winning the Governor's Cup at the very first Randwick meeting in 1833. Jorrocks' dam, Matilda, had been the colony's best race mare and the mating between the two contemporary champions produced Jorrocks. Both his parents traced their lineage back to the mighty Eclipse, and his bloodline on his dam side contained a fair dose of Arab as well as English thoroughbred.

What is odd is that, despite his excellent racing pedigree, Jorrocks didn't race until he was five. This was probably due to the sale of the property where he was bred at South Creek and his transfer to another farm near Mudgee, where Jorrocks was used as a stock horse until winning a sweepstakes at Coolah at the age of five, when he was sent to be trained at Windsor by noted trainer Joseph Brown.

His ownership changed hands many times over the years but Richard Rouse, who saw him in Joseph Brown's stables before his career had properly begun, famously bought him. The price paid by Rouse was eight heifers, valued at £40.

Jorrocks clearly had strong legs and a steely constitution and became known as the ‘Iron Gelding'. He was the first racehorse in Australia to have his picture in the newspaper and poems written about him. He stood 14.2 hands—tiny by today's standards—and was a long, low animal with an amazingly deep girth and fine Arab head.

Jorrocks raced in an era when most events were decided on the best of three heats, often over 2 or 3 miles each. He probably started more than 100 times; the true figure is hard to estimate due to the three-heat system of races. We do know that he won the AJC Australian Plate five times and the Bathurst Town Plate four times. He was also victorious twice in such races as the Homebush Champion Cup, Cumberland Cup, Metropolitan Stakes, Hawkesbury Members' Purse and Town Plate.

Jorrocks began racing seriously as an eight-year-old, and at the age of 17 he started eight times for four wins. His last hurrah came at the grand old age of 19.

The Australian Jockey Club had abandoned Randwick in 1842 for the Homebush course, which became Sydney's headquarters of racing until the AJC returned to the improved Randwick course in 1860. So it was at Homebush that Jorrocks won his major victories and ran his final race, finishing tailed off last in the Metropolitan Stakes of 1852.

Jorrocks was finally retired to live out his days on a farm at Richmond, about an hour northwest of Sydney. His grave is marked by a plaque and is situated on what is today the Richmond Airbase. He set the trend for champion racehorses becoming much-loved ‘public figures' with the Australian press and general population.

Racing during Jorrocks' time was a very different affair to the racing we know today. Races were started by a man on a pony whose job it was to attempt to muster the contestants into a reasonably straight line before dropping a large white flag. Races were most commonly run over the best of three heats and the winner was the horse with the best overall result. There was a large pole situated on each racecourse, sometimes about a furlong from the winning post or near the turn. This was known as the ‘distance' and horses that did not ‘make the distance' in a heat were ‘out of the running' and could not compete in the subsequent heats.

If the judges considered a finish too close to call, the heat was declared ‘dead' and the horses that figured in the close finish would ‘run off ' over the same distance again to decide the winner. So, in those days, a ‘dead heat' was not a result, but a ‘non result' which required another heat to be run.

There were no saddlecloth numbers until the 1870s and official colours were not compulsory for jockeys until the AJC introduced that rule in 1842. After each race the contestants would line up in front of the judges' box. The judges then looked at each horse and rider and checked the horses' looks and jockeys' colours against the ‘official entries' list. The judges then announced the place-getters, who returned to scale to be weighed-in.

By the 1860s a new era of racing had dawned. Racing clubs had begun to regulate racing in the colonies, with the AJC taking the lead, and the famous Admiral Rous had standardised the rules of racing in Britain and established the weight-for-age system where horses of each sex carry a set weight at a certain age over certain distances. His close personal friend, Captain Standish, had left England following a rather disastrous betting plunge in the Derby, to become Chief Commissioner of Police in the colony of Victoria.

Standish has two claims to fame in Australian history. He led the rather inept hunt for the Kelly gang and, as chairman of the Victoria Turf Club, he is credited as being the man who ‘invented' the Melbourne Cup.

The Cup began in 1861, the same year that the AJC introduced the Australian Derby, and a new era of racing developed around it.

The rival clubs of Victoria put aside their differences and merged into the VRC in 1864. Meanwhile, in Sydney, the AJC, having returned to a new and improved Randwick in 1860, soon attempted to emulate the success of their Melbourne counterparts.

In 1866 the AJC introduced four new races, the Metropolitan Handicap, the first official Sydney Cup, the Champagne Stakes and the Doncaster Handicap. And along with the new races came a new champion.

The Barb (foaled 1863)

The Barb was a small jet-black horse who became known in the press as ‘The Black Demon'. Bred by the pioneering Lee family at Bathurst, he was famously stolen by bushrangers as a foal at foot.

A large group of valuable horses was taken by the bushrangers from the Lees' farm and driven south. One of the family, Henry Lee, followed the bushrangers to Monaro, where police apprehended them and all the horses except one were recovered.

The missing horse was a black colt foal that the kindly, horse-loving bushrangers had left with a farmer at Caloola when it went lame and could not travel. The loss was reported in the press and the farmer returned the foal to its rightful owners a few weeks later. The foal grew up to be The Barb.

The year that the new races were introduced at Randwick, 1866, saw The Barb winning the AJC Derby. His sire, Sir Hercules, also sired the winner of the first Sydney Cup, the mighty Yattendon, and Bylong, who won the first Metropolitan Handicap.

In the true spirit of intercolonial rivalry the Victorian colt, Fishhook, was purchased for a record sum at the dispersal of Hurtle Fisher's Maribyrnong Stud by his brother, C.B. Fisher, and sent to Sydney to win the Derby.

Fishhook was from the last crop of the great English sire Fisherman, imported into Victoria to ensure that colony's superiority in the racing game. He finished a poor third to The Barb, giving the colonial-bred New South Wales champion sire, Sir Hercules, a major victory over Victoria's imported bloodlines.

Having accounted for the Victorian colt in the Derby,The Barb's trainer, ‘Honest' John Tait, decided to take him to Melbourne and rub salt into the wounds by winning the Melbourne Cup.

The Barb would go on to win the Sydney Cup twice, as well as the AJC St Leger, the AJC Queen's Plate and the other ‘new classic' race, the AJC Metropolitan Handicap. He travelled successfully to win the Melbourne Cup aged three, and took out the VRC Port Phillip Stakes and the Launceston Town Plate in Tasmania as a four-year-old.

The Barb's Melbourne Cup victory, as a three-year-old, in 1866 was the first of Tait's four Cup victories. It was a controversial Cup. There were two horses named Falcon engaged. One of them, also trained by Tait, finished third behind The Barb but the judge would not declare a third place, as the colours carried by the ‘Sydney Falcon'— yellow jacket and red cap—did not match any of the entries given to the judges on the official race card.

Tait had substituted a red cap on his second runner to differentiate the colours from those carried by The Barb, but evidently he didn't notify the judge officially. The following day at 4 p.m. the stewards declared ‘Sydney Falcon' had been placed third, but many bookmakers refused to pay out on the horse, arguing that only the judge had the power to ‘place' horses officially.

Before the registration of names was properly controlled, different horses often raced with the same names. There were three Tim Whifflers in the Australian colonies in the 1860s: one was an imported stallion who sired the 1876 Melbourne Cup winner –Briseis, and the other two Tim Whifflers both raced in the Melbourne Cup of 1867. ‘Sydney Tim', trained by Etienne de Mestre, won the Cup and ‘Melbourne Tim' ran fifth!

After his Melbourne Cup victory as a three-year-old The Barb went on to win 16 of his 23 starts. In one of his Sydney Cup wins he carried the biggest winning weight in the race's history: 10 st 8 lb (67 kg). He was virtually unbeatable at weight for age and was unbeaten as a five-year-old. One of his defeats was actually a win. He defeated de Mestre's Tim Whiffler in the Queen's Plate but weighed in 2 lb light.

When entered for the Melbourne Cup of 1868, The Barb was given the biggest weight ever allotted—11 st 7 lb (73 kg)—so John Tait decided to retire him to stud. He stood at stud until his death in 1889 and produced some useful horses, but no champions.

John Tait was given his nickname,‘Honest John', because he only ever protested once, when his horse Falcon was blatantly ‘hocked' in the Sydney Cup of 1866. Even then he protested out of a sense of justice, not to gain the race, which was won by Yattendon. When The Barb weighed in light in the Queen's Plate of 1868, he offered £100 reward to anyone who could prove foul play.

Tait was born near Edinburgh and trained as a jeweller before deciding on a new life in Tasmania and emigrating in 1837 with his young wife and daughter at the age of 24. He found Hobart rather slow and moved to New South Wales in 1843, where he ran hotels at Hartley and Bathurst. Tait then moved to Sydney in 1851 to train horses and become licensee of the Commercial Hotel on Castle–reagh Street. His skill in the art of boxing and his sense of fair play helped him to run pubs successfully.

Tait and Etienne de Mestre dominated racing in New South Wales for two decades, being the first trainers to bring commercial principles and good management practices to the sport of racing.

In 1847 Tait had won the New South Wales St Leger at Home-bush with a horse named Whalebone. After a few very successful seasons he sold his horses and visited England to choose breeding stock. On his return he set up stables at Randwick and a stud at Mount Druitt, west of Sydney, and changed his racing colours from black jacket and red cap to the famous yellow jacket and black cap. Perhaps his colours were too close to those of his rival Etienne de Mestre whose horses, including the famous Archer, raced in all black.

Between 1861 and 1878 the two great Sydney trainers won half of the Melbourne Cups contested, with de Mestre taking the Cup five times and John Tait four times.

Australian racing had been through a stage of incredible growth in the 1860s, and the 1870s saw a series of unsavoury scandals involving trainers hiding horses' true abilities.

Two of the worst of these incidents involved horses from St Albans stud near Geelong. A protest was entered the day after the 1873 Melbourne Cup over the uncertain ownership, age and identity of winner Don Juan. A tale of disguised ownership emerged, and the public image of racing suffered even more when a huge Melbourne Cup plunge on the lightly raced Savanaka occurred in 1877.

Savanaka lost the Cup to the Sydney champ Chester, but the unsavoury link between betting and training was damaging the image of racing. The tragic loss in a storm of nine Sydney horses bound for the 1876 Melbourne Spring Carnival on board the steamer
City of Melbourne
was made worse by the celebrations initiated by Melbourne's bookmakers on hearing the news.

Things were on the improve by the 1880s. The decade began with the Melbourne Cup win of one of my favourite champions of the Australian turf.

Grand Flaneur (foaled 1877)

Grand Flaneur holds a unique place in racing history—he is the only Melbourne Cup winner who was never defeated on a racetrack. Added to this is the fact that he was a very successful and influential sire.

Grand Flaneur was by the great colonial sire Yattendon, out of an imported mare, First Lady, a daughter of the great British sire St Albans. Owned by AJC committeeman Mr W.A. Long, he won at Flemington over 5 furlongs as a two-year-old and then was rested until the Sydney Spring Carnival of 1880. He duly took out the AJC Derby and Mares Produce Stakes, and then returned to Melbourne to win the Victoria Derby, Melbourne Cup and Mares Produce Stakes within a week. The Melbourne champion colt, Progress, finished second every time.

Grand Flaneur was also the horse who finally gave the greatest jockey of his time, Tom Hales, his one and only Melbourne Cup win. He defeated Progress again in the 1881 VRC Champion Stakes and VRC St Leger Stakes and ended his career by winning the 1881 VRC Town Plate. Taken back to Sydney for the AJC Autumn Carnival he broke down and was retired to stand at stud.

Bravo, the 1891 Melbourne Cup winner, was from his first crop; Grand Flaneur also sired the 1894 Cup winner Patron and was the leading Australian sire in 1894–95.

Grand Flaneur's son Merman won the Williamstown Cup in 1896 and then went to race in Britain. Owned by actress Lillie Langtry, Merman won the Goodwood Cup in 1899 and the Ascot Gold Cup in 1900, the same year that his sire Grand Flaneur died, aged 22, at the Chipping Norton Stud near Liverpool, southwest of Sydney.

The AJC had taken firm control of New South Wales racing by the 1880s, and the VRC established the Official Racing Calendar in 1882 and declared that all race meetings throughout Victoria had to run in accordance with the VRC rules. Horses competing on racetracks that did not comply were banned from racing at Flemington.