The Big Book of Australian Racing Stories

by Jim Haynes

  It’s no good asking your wife, but you do anyway.

  ‘Who won the Metropolitan that year we had lunch in the members with the Davidsons?’

  She muses.

  ‘That grey horse with the funny name with a Z in it ran third that year. It had green and pink silks and Emily Davidson wore that black and white empire-line dress and a red hat . . . don’t know who won . . . sorry. I can’t remember anything that far back, darling.’

  Just how vivid a racing memory is also depends on where your money was at the time.

  I have amazingly sharp memories of an old Tamworth-trained, mid-week horse named Mr Mohican winning the last race at Warwick Farm one day when I managed to get 20 to 1 in the ring from Eric Conlon and also took a box trifecta with the two favourites who dutifully finished second and third. I can see the finish of that race as clearly as I can see my desk and computer right now. I have no idea what year that was, though.

  I’ve been lucky enough to be present to see some great horses race at some great racetracks. Here are a few random reminiscences. These memories don’t include races I merely heard on the radio or watched on television; although you actually see a lot more on television than when you’re on the course. This is all about being there.

  I have a childhood memory of seeing Tulloch carry 63 kilos up the rise and down that Randwick straight to gallant defeat behind Sharply, carrying 48.5 kilograms, in the 1961 Sydney Cup. Handicaps can be cruel to champions, and nobody who roared for Tulloch that day at Randwick loved him any less when he failed to catch Sharply. It was a fairly sombre crowd after the race, though, I remember that, or perhaps it was just that my dad wasn’t saying much.

  Randwick is a track that really sorts out the champs from the pretenders down the straight. True front-runners have to be great horses to hold on up the rise, and it also takes a great horse to come from behind up the rise and pass another good one.

  Which brings us to Sunline’s second Doncaster in 2002. To this day I swear Shogun Lodge won that race. It was certainly a dead heat on the grounds of sheer guts and grit. They raced side by side for two entire furlongs that day. I still can’t believe you could get 5 to 1 about Sunline in the ring when they jumped. And I still can’t believe I didn’t take it!

  I should throw in Private Steer’s 2004 Doncaster victory, although it was really a match race between one amazing horse and the rest of the field.

  I can’t even remember what I backed to beat her, but I distinctly remember being mesmerised as Glen Boss began to weave his way through the entire field like a slalom skier on horseback. They were as good as last on the turn and had no hope, not a hope in the world. Then, as they straightened, Glen Boss just picked her up and balanced her and she sidestepped her way through like a rugby winger against a tiring pack of forwards. I remember seeing the dark blue jacket with the lightning bolt move through the crowd of horses as if it was all being stage-managed by the best stunt director in Hollywood.

  It was never in doubt once the dance began, she moved right through the field and put out her head and won. I was waiting for the pirouette at the end. It was beautiful to watch. It gave new meaning to the cliché ‘poetry in motion’. It was enough to make a grown man cry. In fact, it did make a grown man cry. Private Steer’s big burly owner, after whose grandmother she was named, cried at the presentation and I went a little teary myself; I hadn’t backed her.

  My own stupidity on the punt often brings tears to my eyes. Private Steer would have won the Miracle Mile at Harold Park if they’d held it that autumn and she’d started in it. I should have known that.

  Flemington is the classic course for drawn-out nose-to-nose battles; the long straight there probably produces more of the ‘war of attrition’ type finishes than anywhere else in Australia.

  My top Flemington memory is the Melbourne Cup of 1994. Vintage Crop was favourite but was under an injury cloud. The Caulfield Cup winner, Paris Lane, was also well backed and I fancied a chestnut mare by El Qahira; her name was Alcove and she had won the Oaks at Randwick in the autumn.

  It was a typical Melbourne day with drizzle and grey skies for an hour or so followed by quite pleasant spring sunshine for a while. I love Melbourne but I always lose coats, scarves, pullovers and umbrellas when I’m there. You take clothes off and put them on so often in Melbourne, due to the changeable bloody weather. I tend to leave a trail of lost property in cabs and restaurants, trains and trams.

  I have to admit that I am not a fan of Cup Day on the course, I like racing too much and the holiday revelry gets in the way of my enjoyment. It’s one day when I am quite happy to watch the race on television. In evidence at the Cup in 1994 were the usual loonies, drunks and show-offs. I saw at least five different Elvises, a few Batmans, numerous pink tutu-clad fairies despite the cool weather, and a Phantom or two.

  Having had a good look at the previous year’s winner, that wonderful Irish stayer Vintage Crop, in the exercise yard, I decided the bandages looked rather ominous and plonked heavily on Alcove. As it turned out Vintage Crop could have won his second Melbourne Cup that day. The injury didn’t seem to worry him and was certainly superficial; perhaps Dermot Weld was up to his usual tricks, talking down the champion’s chances.

  What stopped Vintage Crop winning was an eccentric ride by Michael Kinnane. Having attempted to push him across early in vain, the jockey let him race wide for the entire 2 miles and his effort to finish seventh, carrying 60 kilograms and having covered about an extra furlong, was really quite courageous.

  I was standing at the rail about two furlongs out and I have a snapshot of a split-second of that race etched in my memory, a colour photograph of one exact moment.

  You hear commentators talk every year about the ‘wall of horses’ as the Cup field swings the corner and straightens for the run home. But to experience that sight first-hand gives meaning to the cliché whenever you hear it afterwards. The leading bunch seemed to include at least half the field as they thundered past my position. The ground shook and the roar of the crowd, deafening since the jump, reached a painful intensity.

  At the exact moment when that wall of horses passed my position, Alcove put her head in front of the field. I saw Paddy Payne, in the blue and white striped silks, drive her to the lead. Her eyes were wide and her nostrils flared as her chestnut head reached the front. I saw it all in incredible detail, and I can still see it clearly now in my mind’s eye. I also had time, somehow, to notice that her bandages were unravelled and discoloured with blood and mud. Then the horses were gone, out of frame.

  Jeune outstayed them all to defeat Paris Lane by a length and three-quarters. This came as a surprise to many, including me, who thought the imported stallion was best over a middle distance. Alcove had been galloped on in the middle stages and ran a brave race to finish fifth.

  The best race I ever saw in Melbourne was at Caulfield, in the Yalumba Stakes of 2002, a match race between Sunline and Lonhro, with a few other lesser lights making up the numbers.

  The huge mare was approaching the end of her career, while Lonhro was nearing his peak. I have written about the race in another story in this collection, ‘They All Love Sunline’, but it is worth noting that Trevor McKee, owner of Sunline, and the Ingham brothers, who owned Lonhro, rate as true enthusiasts and lovers of racing. It is to the credit of McKee that Sunline raced on as a mare to give us all so many wonderful memories. The McKee motto was always, ‘We’re here to race.’

  The Inghams were also believers in racing horses while they were still fit and willing to compete. I will never forget Jack Ingham’s answer to a question put to him after Octagonal had won his second Mercedes Classic and broken the stakes-winning record. A reporter asked Jack why he was going to risk running the champion again in the Queen Elizabeth Stakes when the horse was worth many millions as a stallion and had absolutely nothing to prove. Jack simply looked at the reporter and asked him, ‘Don’t you want to see him race again?’

  The victor in the next
epic from my memory bank carried the same famous all-cerise colours as Octagonal and his son Lonhro. The track was Rosehill and it was Golden Slipper Day, 2003. The great West Australian champion Northerly had never had much luck in Sydney but at weight-for-age against a depleted and pretty ordinary field, he was red-hot favourite to win the Mercedes Classic. It was a matter of ‘how far’ in most racegoers’ minds.

  The race that year was looked upon as a mere appetiser for the Golden Slipper later in the day. It would be a chance for Sydney to see the great Northerly going through the motions in a Group 1 event, a chance to salute a champion, an added attraction to the big dash-for-cash by the over-developed babies in the Slipper later in the afternoon.

  The problem was that nobody had explained all that to a tough old stayer called Freemason.

  Freemason was a real character. A bay gelding by Grand Lodge, he had won the Queensland Derby and the Frank Packer Plate way back in 2000. Since then he had contested most staying events in Sydney and seemed to make a habit of running a place when he started at huge odds, but running nowhere whenever he was fancied.

  I made a habit of backing Freemason for a place whenever he got out past 20 to 1 in the betting; the longer the odds, the more I fancied his chances. I didn’t think he would be up to a weight-for-age clash with Northerly, though. Nobody did.

  I was playing host to a couple of rather beautiful showbiz friends at Rosehill that day, the wonderful Melinda Schneider and cabaret artist Nikki Bennett. Having to be civil and attentive to women at the races is never conducive to backing winners. Oddly, I also find that being at the races, or anywhere else, with beautiful women can be very distracting. Anyway, whatever the reason, I didn’t check Freemason’s price and I didn’t have a bet. But I am wandering off topic. This is a list of memories of great races. The list that comprises my memories of lost chances on the punt is one so long that it can never be recorded.

  Freemason was in the mood to race that day. In fact, he seemed so disgusted at the false pace early in the race that he took the lead as he rarely did. When Northerly came alongside in the back straight, Freemason pushed down his accelerator and decided to take the champ on, almost 1400 metres from home. It was the only time I ever witnessed a nose-to-nose, full-on, no-holds-barred, flat-out, ding-dong stoush for the entire final 1200 metres of a race.

  The sheer audacity of Freemason’s mad challenge when Northerly came alongside seemed to win the crowd over to support the old Sydney stayer. After all, he was a local horse and his lack of respect to the interstate hero seemed somehow courageous. Stupid, bound to end in embarrassment, a mere beau geste . . . but rather wonderful!

  Once Northerly responded to the challenge the two horses just kept daring each other to go faster and faster. By the 1000-metre point the crowd sensed something weird and wonderful was going on; by the 400-metre mark they were in a frenzy. When would this crazy old horse realise he wasn’t as good as Northerly?

  The answer was . . . never.

  Freemason, racing on the inside, refused to let Northerly past and there was never more than a neck between them over the final 1200 metres. They raced past the post locked together and a photo showed that Freemason had won by a short half-head in 2 minutes 26.82 seconds, a brilliant time for 2000 metres.

  Punters and racegoers usually think through their pockets, but sometimes they respond with their hearts when magic occurs. Unwanted in the betting ring, Freemason was cheered again and again as he returned to scale carrying the all-cerise colours of the Ingham brothers.

  I saw Black Caviar race several times and she is the best I’ve ever seen. She was in a class of her own: she wasn’t a battler like Octagonal or a tough fighter like Makybe Diva, she was simply better than every other sprinter in the world. She was unbeatable.

  The best race I ever saw, however, was the encounter of four great three-year-olds in the 1996 AJC Derby at Randwick: Nothin’ Leica Dane, Saintly, Filante and Octagonal.

  That race really turned the tide for racing in Sydney, and a huge crowd had flocked to the course in anticipation of the best derby for years. And they got far more than their money’s worth. It seems to me that racing crowds at big meetings have been on the increase in Sydney ever since that day. It made racing more than just a form of betting in the public’s mind. It made racing a spectator sport once again.

  You couldn’t get a seat in the stands. The atmosphere was electric. It was the biggest crowd for 30 years and the race lived up to all hype and expectations. In fact, it surpassed anything you could have imagined.

  Up the famous Randwick rise and down the straight they came, racing stride for stride, the VRC Derby winner, a future Cox Plate and Melbourne Cup winner, a future Epsom and Yalumba Stakes winner, all three of them at their peak and flat out trying to stay ahead, or get ahead, of one of the toughest and bravest horses to ever race in Australia—the Big O, as he was known.

  How Octagonal fought on to win that race is part of Australian racing folklore. He seemed to race quite low to the track when he let down and he just ground away, a dark brown nemesis slowly overhauling the two big chestnut horses on his inside, with his neck extended the way he always did to get his nose to the post first, as if he knew where the camera was.

  I never saw a better contested finish to a race in my life and I never saw a horse with more will to win than Octagonal.

  I backed him that day, too.

  I took my dad to the races to see Octagonal’s derby win. Dad was pretty old by then and getting a bit frail, but it was only fair. After all, my dad had taken me to see Tulloch’s great attempt to win the Sydney Cup in 1961, with 63 kg on his back.

  FROM POWDER PUFFS TO PIONEERS

  PENNY HAND

  I will never forget the day in 2005 when Kathy and Tracy O’Hara made history at Gosford, New South Wales, by being the first sisters to dead-heat in a horse race anywhere in the world. It was a sign of the future. Female jockeys were here to stay, and they were riding winners. Less than a decade later, at Orange races on Melbourne Cup Day 2014, all the jockeys in every race were female. Even more impressively, the day before Australia Day 2015, female jockeys won all eight races on the program at Mount Gambier Racecourse. Apprentice Chelsea Jokic won the first, apprentice Emily Finnegan rode three winners, and Clare Lindop and Holly McKechnie two each. The times they are a-changing!

  ***

  In 1973, June Lossius became the first officially recognised woman jockey to win a race at a metropolitan meeting in Australia, riding Some Attraction to victory at Eagle Farm in Brisbane. Up until this point, a tradition of amateur ‘ladies only’ picnic races had existed in Victoria since the 1850s, as women were not permitted to compete professionally as jockeys or ride on professional racetracks.

  By the start of the 1970s women were still restricted to the ladies-only events, known as the ‘ladies bracelet’, or colloquially as ‘Powder Puff Derbies’, which were held on small, non-professional racetracks.

  June Lossius was a very competent rider and had challenged the restrictions facing women riders in Australia. When she was younger, June had pretended to be a boy in order to ride her own horse in an early morning training session at Flemington racetrack. She recalls, ‘With my cropped hair pushed under a boy’s cloth cap, scarf around my throat, wearing a roomy boy’s jumper and in the dim light of dawn to confuse any suspicions, away I rode.’

  Later June helped to establish the Victorian Lady Jockey’s Association, which played a role in establishing The Dame Merlyn Transition Handicap at Eagle Farm in 1973. Named in honour of Victorian philanthropist Dame Margery Merlyn Baillieu Myer, the race gave Australian female riders their first chance to ride and compete on a major racecourse, with access to professional facilities and large crowds. It also brought the issue of licensing female riders as professional jockeys into the public and media spotlight. The increasing momentum of the women’s liberation movement also assisted their cause.

  June wasn’t alone in her quest to bring female joc
keys to the forefront of professional racing. Pam O’Neill was the trailblazer for female jockeys in Australia. For many years O’Neill worked as a strapper for top trainer Harry Hatten before competing in women-only races in the 1970s. She maintained a strong race record and in 1974 she won the International Jockeys race for women riders at Eagle Farm on Ropely Lad. The Queensland jockey tirelessly fought for women to be able to compete against men.

  In 1979 women were given an official licence to race as professional jockeys, with Pam O’Neill and New Zealand’s Linda Jones the first to be awarded licences in Australia. Like O’Neill, Linda Jones battled to obtain a licence after being rejected for many reasons: she was considered too old at 24, she was married, wasn’t strong enough, and would be taking the livelihood off a male jockey.

  Jones was the first female jockey to gain the right to race against men in her home country, in 1977. Apprenticed to her husband, trainer Alan Jones, Linda had her first professional ride on 12 August 1978. She then rode six winners in the first five weeks of the 1978–79 season.

  She would also forge a successful racing career in Australia and become the first woman to ride a winner against male professionals at a registered meeting when she rode the tough stayer Pay The Purple to victory in the 1979 Labour Cup at Doomben, etching her name into the record books. That year, Linda would also be the first woman to ride in the Adelaide Cup, on board Northfleet trained by her husband Alan.

  Continuing a long list of firsts, Linda was the first woman in the southern hemisphere to ride four winners in a day; the first woman to ride a winner at Ellerslie, and at Trentham; and the first to compete in the Auckland, Sydney and Wellington Cups. She was also the first woman in Australasia, the United Kingdom, Europe or North America to ride a derby winner—Holy Toledo in the Wellington Derby.

  After she gained equality, her career was short but spectacular: in eighteen months she rode 65 winners.