The Big Book of Australian Racing Stories

by Jim Haynes

  The applause began before Mosstrooper jumped the last hurdle and rose to a ‘mighty roar’. At the St Leger and near the winning post on the flat the spectators were already standing, but in the stands they rose en masse to salute their champion. More cheering and clapping broke out when Mosstrooper returned to scale, and was kept up until the weight-right flag was raised and the hero led away to his stall. Experienced racing writers described the reception as extraordinary. ‘Trentham’ in The Argus wrote of the ‘veritable tornado’ of applause that greeted Mosstrooper as he passed the post. For ‘Musket’ of The Sydney Mail, the ovation eclipsed any ever given an ‘equine hero’ at Caulfield.

  In The Age, ‘Tasman’ claimed there had never been a racecourse reception ‘more enthusiastic or more prolonged than that so deservedly given to Mosstrooper, wonder horse, on Saturday’. A witness to well over 30 Australian Hurdle races, ‘Flash of Steel’ remarked in the Bendigo Advertiser that no running of the Caulfield classic had been ‘more keenly enjoyed by the spectators’. The racegoers ‘fully appreciated the tremendous nature of [Mosstrooper’s] exploits’, and the 1930 Australian Hurdle would be remembered ‘long after the present generation has passed away’.

  The crowd’s deafening applause was also a tribute to Bob Harris, according to ‘Khedive’ in The Sporting Globe. He admired the way in which Harris, a past master in the art of jumps riding, had conserved Mosstrooper’s energy and timed his finishing run to perfection. Comparing Harris to Tommy Corrigan, the nineteenth-century champion and the most successful Australian jumps rider ever, ‘Khedive’ judged that it would have been ‘beyond the power of the idolised little Irishman to preserve a statue-like seat until flying leaders began to crack up and then commence to overhaul them with consummate measurement of his horse’s powers’.

  If he was not an ‘iceman’, Robert Neville Harris was definitely a cool customer. Only 32, he had been in the racing game for 20 years and around horses almost from the cradle. Apprenticed to his father just before his 12th birthday in 1910, he developed his riding skills mainly on the non-thoroughbred pony tracks in hectic, boots ’n’ all sprints. It was the school of hard knocks—and not just from rival jockeys. By the age of 14, young Bob had been severely cautioned twice and eventually disqualified for 12 months by racing stewards. The times were tough, but even tougher were the authorities if you overstepped the mark in search of a quid. And plenty of jocks were doing just that out on the track. The boy was a fast learner, however, and his skills were soon recognised by leading trainers at Caulfield and Flemington. Young Harris became known as a rider ‘who never loses his head, however exciting the finish may be’, and by the end of the 1912–13 season he was the leading jockey in Victoria.

  Harris’ ingrained composure might explain why he came back to scale on Mosstrooper with a look of apparent indifference to the hullabaloo of the crowd and his triumph in the Australian Hurdle. Maybe after his Grand National victories on Mosstrooper a few weeks before, such a storm was nothing new, or he might have been simply too tired to raise an arm or a smile. He had just been through a gruelling day and a half. On the Friday out at Netherlea, Gus Powell’s Lysterfield property near the Dandenongs, Harris had occupied himself breaking in three buckjumpers and, as ‘Khedive’ tells it, ‘sat one of his mounts in sliding down a mountain side, with Mr. Powell using a stockwhip in his wake’.

  Why take such risks on the eve of an important race? Had some sort of macho mania taken possession of the pair? Had Powell set Harris a challenge he could not as a man or a rider refuse? Surely Harris was already fit enough for his ride on Mosstrooper the next day. Anyway, there were plenty of other, safer, physical tasks at Netherlea for Harris, if his fitness was an issue. Perhaps Powell felt it was necessary to stir up or stimulate Harris. Perhaps it was no big deal for the jockey; he may have already done some rough riding for Powell at Netherlea. He had been coming up to Lysterfield before the big races for the past few months. Usually he was accompanied by Garnet Eaton, who rode Mosstrooper in routine trackwork and just about all his conditioning races on the flat. Powell liked to keep the jockeys active doing various chores, or send them out rabbit shooting across the rolling hills.

  These stays at Powell’s farm no doubt built a better understanding between trainer and jockey and helped Harris to keep fit, but their main purpose seems to have been to keep Harris out of the pubs. The story goes that he was often ‘kidnapped’ by friends on a Friday night to ensure he was capable of riding on the Saturday. The image of Powell cracking a whip behind Harris, as their mounts slid down a hill, may encapsulate a crucial aspect of their relationship: Powell felt he had to train his jockey as well as Mosstrooper.

  By 1930, Mosstrooper was living proof of Powell’s horsemanship, especially his skill as a conditioner. In the saddling enclosure before the Australian Hurdle, Mosstrooper was as ‘perky and muscular’ as ever, ‘Trentham’ noted in The Argus. Despite a long and demanding campaign (eight races in nine weeks, over a total of almost 15½ miles), Powell’s ‘battler’ was still fit and keen. He naturally pulled up tired after the Australian Hurdle, but quickly recovered. Back in his race-day stall, he soon plunged his head into a bag of fresh grass brought from Lysterfield.

  Stamina was Mosstrooper’s forté.

  For his success in the Australian Hurdle, Mosstrooper was penalised 9 pounds for the Australian Steeplechase. The gallant gelding would now have to carry 13.5 over 24 obstacles and 3½ miles. This time, Powell’s cause for concern was so patent there was no point in keeping quiet about it. Adelaide’s Advertiser called him the most worried man in Melbourne. ‘He is only a little gelding’, Powell told The Advertiser, ‘and it means a lot to have to carry 13.5 over such a long journey. If I run him and he gets hurt people will blame me. If he does not run some people will say that I was not game enough’. Although Powell presented his problem as a dilemma about avoiding public condemnation, for him as a trainer the issue was essentially whether Mosstrooper could win, or even run well, lugging the top-weight of 13.5.

  Nevertheless, early in the week of the Australian Steeplechase, Powell was not convinced that the weight was impossible. He had not made up his mind to scratch Mosstrooper. The gelding had bounced back from his taxing run in the Australian Hurdle, and on Tuesday morning worked solidly over 10 furlongs. The Argus trackman at Caulfield said he looked ‘as fit as ever’. Later that day, Powell accepted for the steeplechase, to be run on the Saturday.

  When acceptances were published, there was a 58-pound (26 kilograms) gap between Mosstrooper and bottom-weighted Good Whisky, who would carry only 9.3. Kentle was second top-weight with 12.3, 16 pounds less than Mosstrooper. On Wednesday morning, Mosstrooper took part in a school on the Caulfield steeplechase course with three other horses. He jumped three fences perfectly before being steered off the steeplechase track by Harris to do two circuits of the cinders track. On Thursday, with Eaton up, Mosstrooper was keen to go faster in a working gallop, again over 10 furlongs. He was obviously in good heart and good shape.

  Powell was probably inclined to risk Mosstrooper under the big weight. His champion might never again be so well-primed to win a major race and make history, and there was a good deal of money riding on him to take out the Australian jumps double.

  Melbourne’s weather, and its effect on the track, was the most troublesome factor. If the rain that had been around for several days disappeared, the track might just firm up enough to give Mosstrooper a chance of running. Should Powell decide to run Mosstrooper, ‘Flash of Steel’ observed, ‘not even the race for the Melbourne Cup will create a greater interest among racegoers than Mosstrooper’s effort to record two double wins in successive years in the Australian Hurdle and the Australian Steeplechase’.

  Although ambitious, Powell was a fair and selfless person, and he agonised over the decision. Unlike Hamlet, he did not lack advice. He received letters for and against. One man told Powell he had Mosstrooper going in doubles, and urged him to consider all those who would los
e money if he scratched the horse. A woman who described herself as ‘a lover of horseflesh’ was concerned only for Mosstrooper’s welfare.

  I would like to see you withdraw your wonderful horse Mosstrooper next Saturday, as with that awful weight something may happen which would be cruel, after his glorious victories. Let him stay as he is Glorious in Victory.

  Nothing cruel did happen, unless it was cruel that Mosstrooper was to miss the opportunity to extend his already historic sequence of major victories. On Friday, Powell inspected the steeplechase course at Caulfield and made up his mind. On Saturday morning he went to the VATC office at the racecourse and withdrew Mosstrooper from the Australian Steeplechase. The rain had not eased off and the track was a quagmire. The stewards in fact almost postponed the meeting.

  The result of the race confirmed Powell’s good judgement in scratching Mosstrooper. In the small field of ten, four of the five starters weighted under 10.0 finished in the first four places. Kentle, top-weight in the absence of Mosstrooper, was pulled up 7 furlongs from home, and Namera, the second top-weight, finished a distant second-last. The race was won convincingly by the bottom-weight Good Whisky (12–1), with the two horses just above him in the weights—Orange Park (33–1) and Bang Bang (7–1)—finishing second and third. Given the awful condition of the track, it is surprising that only three previous winners of the Australian Steeplechase had run it in faster time than Good Whisky.

  If Mosstrooper had run in the Australian Steeplechase, and won or finished close up in a place, it might have been his last race. The handicappers would have been obliged to give him huge weights in any future jumps race. So the persistent rain in early August 1930 did him and his owner-trainer a favour: Mosstrooper was to race for another three years under heavy weights, but, on firm tracks at least, these were not impossible burdens.

  After missing the Australian Steeplechase, Powell could have sent Mosstrooper to Adelaide for its Nationals, or given him a brief let-up before taking on the rich Moonee Valley steeplechase in mid-September, but no matter which course he took, Mosstrooper would have been asked to carry 13 stone or more. He had been in work that jumps season for ten weeks and had covered just on 19 miles in nine races—an average of almost one 2-mile race each week. In six jumps races, Mosstrooper had won three majors in succession and been placed in the other three lead-up events. He had boosted his total stakes earnings to £12,751 (A$924,292), an Australasian record for a jumper. The durable campaigner was still fit and keen. But maybe enough was enough. Why tempt the gods?

  Powell decided to tip his champion out for a spell. And so, for all its triumph, Mosstrooper’s third campaign as a hurdler and chaser ended on a rather muted note. Had the rain not been so heavy and incessant, Australian jumps racing could have had its most memorable moment by far. Yet what a wonderful winter it had been. Make that two winters. For in 1929 and 1930, Mosstrooper put together two successive seasons of jumping that have never been matched in the history of Australian racing. No other jumper—not Redleap, Bribery or Roisel, not Redditch, Winterset or Crisp—was as durable, as versatile or as successful.

  But what cared Mosstrooper for the milestones of history as he headed for the green, green grass of Lysterfield in the spring of 1930? Coming up at home were months of warm ease to amble and gambol in. What lay beyond, in what could be the hardest new campaign of all? Well, that was for Gus to worry about.

  (This story is taken from Mosstrooper: Hack to Hero by Peter Harris. It is available at ).

  SHORT SHRIFT

  HARRY ‘THE BREAKER’ MORANT

  I can mind him at the start—

  Easy seat and merry heart!

  Said he, as he threw a glance

  At the crawling ambulance,

  ‘Some day I’ll be on the ground

  And the van will hurry round!

  Doc will gravely wag his head,

  “No use now, the poor chap’s dead!”

  ‘Every man must, soon or late

  Turn up at the Golden Gate:

  When we weigh in—you and I—

  How can horsemen better die?’

  On that sunlit steeple course

  He lay prone beneath his horse,

  Never more his pal may ride

  By that gallant horseman’s side.

  ‘Reckless fool?’ What matter, mate?

  All his time he’d ridden straight—

  Went (smashed ’gainst that wall of sod!)

  Spurred and booted to his God.

  Carve in stone, above his head,

  Words that some old Christian said:

  ‘Grace he sought, and grace he found,

  ’Twixt the saddle and the ground!’

  DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON

  LES CARLYON

  Jumps racing is different. The Grand National had been robbed of its star, Sharp As, then its best supporting act, Derrydonnell. In the cold and the rain at Flemington, we stared at the bit players remaining, looking for a greatness we had assumed, until now, not to be there. Who, among these old warriors, could gallop for two laps and six minutes?

  Tacloban looked the way a national horse should. He carried his head low and his hip bones stuck out to prove he had galloped hundreds of kilometres to harden up for this one day. But Andallah, the baby of the field at five, was the eye-catcher. Even in the grey light, his brown coat shone. And when Billy Londregan was legged up, the horse wanted to jig, to get on with it.

  Here was the one doubt: national horses should never look too fresh. Long steeples are seldom about brilliance; they are always about cleverness. Jump racing is different. It is not so much about who is right but who is left.

  John Craddock, a thirty-nine year old stock agent and trainer from Arthurs Creek on Melbourne’s northern fringe, casually led Trei Gnaree around by the bit ring. He patted the old bay with the long back but looked at Andallah. Craddock had seen the horse who could beat him. With his hunting clip, Trei Gnaree looked right enough: big, strong, seasoned. Few fancied him, though. He had a problem you could not see. It was in his head. The racebook said Trei Gnaree had been ‘pulled up’ two starts back in a steeple in the Valley. The truth was Trei Gnaree had pulled himself up.

  When the gates opened, the leggy Andallah jumped to the lead, ears pricked, no problems in his head. He stayed there for nearly two laps, going lightly for Londregan, who sat high, bridging his reins on the wither, and riding as if he knew he was on a good one. Andallah stayed there while the attrition, fall after fall, went on behind. He stayed there for around 4500 metres, for twenty-six of the twenty-eight jumps. Coming to the second last, in front of the cypresses just before the home turn, Andallah was about a length ahead of Bar the Shouting and Trei Gnaree. Andallah’s ears were stilled pricked. He was still going sweetly.

  Because of the angle, one cannot be sure what happened. Probably Andallah took off too soon. Certainly his forelegs struck the top of the jump. Andallah described a single awful somersault. His hindquarters hung in the air. He finished lying on his near side, his offside legs in the air and convulsing as if an electric current were charging through them, convulsing the way animals’ legs do when the link between the brain and the extremities is lost. Andallah’s head was facing the wrong way, back towards the fence that had killed him. The jumps are different. They do not forgive.

  Brian Constable on Trei Gnaree glanced back at death, then ahead at life. Trei Gnaree, the horse they said wasn’t putting in, the horse they said couldn’t stay five thousand metres, fairly surged into the last jump, shook off Bar the Shouting, and strolled in by twelve lengths. John Craddock then gave his horse the finest reward an old chaser can hope for. He retired him.

  The jumps are different, all right. They are an old sporting print come to life, a throwback to the world of Adam Lindsay Gordon and Tommy Corrigan, both of whom had to die to obtain idolatry. They are about a different sort of horse, too. Slow horses by flat standards, and older. Sound, tough horses with maybe not much bloo
d, big and small, coarse and refined, united only by one quality—courage.

  The rich sprints for two-year-olds are the new world. They are like rock videos: frantic and bug-eyed and reeking of money. You learn the colours, and all you see is a technicolour stampede. Sneeze on Slipper Day and you miss ‘the incident’. The jumps are like epic novels: long, crowded with subplots and sidetracks, hard on their heroes. They do not flash by but grind on, not one chapter but many.

  Eleven set out in the Grand National. Pal O’Mine fell at the third, sliding along spectacularly on his side. Then there were ten, Andallah gliding along in front, Trei Gnaree fifteen lengths back. Just after entering the straight at the end of the first lap, McMurphy bungled the thirteenth and tumbled over and over. Then there were nine.

  At the last of the five jumps in the straight, Andallah stood off and took a breathtaking leap; it might be only his third start over the big fences, but he was starting to look special. Vim was inspired. He was a couple of lengths off the main bunch and decided to fly just like Andallah. He stood right off the jump—and planted his front legs right in it. Then there were eight, and Trei Gnaree was cruising up to second.

  In this last lap, Oakleigh Jack was finally coming to terms with his limitations. A chestnut with a big blaze, Oakleigh Jack is the very horse who makes jumping different. A seven-year-old, bred in the beige rather than the purple, he had been to the races thirty-one times and had never run a place, earned not a cent. Still if everything fell . . .

  At the second on the river side, old Oakleigh landed awkwardly and suddenly looked tired. He seemed to run half-heartedly to the next jump, blundered through, then fell down quietly. He is a modest horse with a lot to be modest about, and he had the grace not to make a spectacle of himself. Then there were seven. Trei Gnaree had dropped back to fourth. Maybe they were right; maybe he couldn’t stay.