by Jim Haynes
So here is the story of that era in our racing history, the age of great stayers that ended with the horse many believe was the greatest of them all.
CHAMPIONS 1901–1921
JIM HAYNES
In the two decades between 1901 and 1921, Australia enjoyed a period of growth and prosperity. The Depression years of the 1890s were merely a memory, we had Federation, the economy was booming and so was racing, and the public had some outstanding horses to follow and admire.
This was a golden age for stayers and the first of the bunch was perhaps the greatest three-year-old in our racing history, a son of Positano foaled in 1903, named Poseidon.
In 1904 the Moses family, from the famous Arrowfield Stud in the Hunter Valley, purchased the Martini-Henry mare Jacinth, with a colt foal at foot, at the dispersal of Neotsfield Stud, also in the Hunter. They paid 400 guineas and decided to sell the colt at the Sydney Easter Yearling Sales of 1905.
The colt, Poseidon, was sold to Sir Hugh Denison for 500 guineas, which looked like a very good result for the Moses family when he managed to win only one race from six starts as a two-year-old. Poseidon’s amazing three-year-old season, however, made the 500 guineas look like petty cash.
Poseidon started fourteen times as a three-year-old for eleven wins and three seconds. The wins included the VRC and AJC Derbies and St Legers, the Eclipse Stakes, and the Caulfield and Melbourne Cups. He remains the only horse to ever achieve that sequence of wins.
He returned as a four-year-old to win seven from twelve starts. His weight-for-age victories that year included the AJC Spring Stakes, Cumberland Stakes and AJC Plate, as well as the Eclipse Stakes for a second time, the Melbourne Stakes and the Rawson Stakes. He carried the 9 st 3 lb (58.5 kg) to become the first horse to ever win consecutive Caulfield Cups; and he finished eleventh, carrying a massive 10 st 3 lb (65 kg), behind Apologue in the Melbourne Cup of 1907.
Poseidon lived to the age of 26 and stood at stud at Eumerella, in Gulgong, New South Wales. He was a moderately successful sire; his son Rascasse won the Queensland Derby and another son, Telecles, won the Moonee Valley Cup.
Following the retirement of Poseidon, great stayers continued to dominate the racing scene as far as public popularity was concerned. Three of the greatest stayers ever bred to race in Australia dominated this era, and they were three very different horses—Trafalgar, Prince Foote and Comedy King.
Of the three, Trafalgar was undoubtedly the most popular, although the other two were more brilliant, more versatile and better-performed overall. Prince Foote was probably the best of the three in terms of sheer talent.
A small bay horse, foaled in 1906 and trained by the master trainer of stayers, Frank McGrath, Prince Foote was the product of all English bloodlines, being by the imported stallion Sir Foote from the imported mare Petrushka, and so had the great 1875 Epsom Derby winner Galopin on both sides of his pedigree. Galopin started eleven times for ten wins and a second, and was the leading sire in Britain in 1888, 1889 and 1898.
As a two-year-old Prince Foote won the AJC Sires’ Produce Stakes in what was a moral victory for non-colonially bred horses, but he was considered by many to be too small to be a good stayer. Frank McGrath proved the doubters wrong when the horse took out the AJC and VRC Derbies, both St Legers, the Champion Stakes and the Melbourne Cup as a three-year-old. In that year Prince Foote started eleven times for nine wins.
His greatest victories were in the AJC Derby where he was badly checked twice, fell back through the field, was forced to race wide and went around every other horse to win by a length and a half; and the Melbourne Cup, where he came late and flew past Trafalgar and Alawa to win by 3 lengths.
Owned by the Newcastle coal baron and shipowner, John Brown, Prince Foote was a great success at stud, being the sire of dual Derby winner Richmond Main, Craven Plate winner Prince Viridis, and 1922 Sydney Cup winner Prince Charles. He was also a good sire of broodmares and his daughter, Princess Berry, was the dam of Rosehill Guineas winner, Balloon King.
Trafalgar, foaled the year before Prince Foote, was a son of Wallace, which made him a grandson of the great Carbine. He was a light chestnut with a flaxen mane and tail, so his colouring was identical to the great stayer Peter Pan, who was to grace the racetracks of Australia three decades later.
Trafalgar was a more solid horse than the later champion, and his popularity with the racing public was based as much upon his courage and dour staying ability as it was on his good looks. He started 59 times for 24 wins, eleven seconds and six thirds. His best wins were in the Sydney Cup, the AJC Plate and the Melbourne Stakes. His greatest run came in the Melbourne Cup of 1910, when, carrying 9 st 2 lb (58 kg), he unwound a mighty finish to come from near last and just failed to catch Comedy King, carrying 7 st 8 lb (48 kg). The margin was half a head.
Trafalgar was one of the most loved horses to ever race in Australia. He ran in three consecutive Melbourne Cups carrying huge weights—more than 9 st (57 kg) each time—and finished fourth, second and eleventh, but he was always the crowd favourite. Some idea of his popularity can be gained by looking at the events surrounding the running of the Melbourne Stakes of 1911, three days before Trafalgar’s final Melbourne Cup run.
Most punters considered the 10 furlongs of this race far too short for a dour stayer like Trafalgar. His old nemesis, Comedy King, was red-hot favourite at 5 to 4 on, while Trafalgar was unwanted in the ring at 15 to 1. The great stayer was to finish behind Comedy King eight times in his career but that day, when he produced another of his great finishing runs to defeat the imported champion, the Flemington crowd cheered him all the way back to scale—a show of affection rarely seen for a horse that had just defeated an odds-on favourite.
Comedy King went on to win the Melbourne Cup of 1910 and was the first imported horse ever to do so. He was bred at King Edward’s stud in 1907 and purchased and imported by the popular Melbourne bookmaker Sol Green as a foal at foot with his dam, Tragedy Queen. His sire, Persimmon, a son of St Simon, started only nine times for seven wins, a second and a third, but those wins included the Epsom Derby, the St Leger, the Eclipse Stakes and the Ascot Gold Cup twice.
Sol Green was born into a poor Jewish family in London and was apprenticed to the royal upholsterer as a lad. When he discovered how little his master made, he decided there had to be more to aim for in life and he set off for Australia at fifteen, travelling fourth class to Melbourne with sixpence in his pocket. He slept in old boilers on the docks and bought and sold anything he could get his hands on. Eventually he became the biggest bookmaker in Victoria and one of Australia’s wealthiest men, with massive real estate holdings in Melbourne and rural areas.
Sol Green never forgot his humble origins. He gave enormous amounts of money to charities, established a housing estate for ex-servicemen and a children’s playground in South Melbourne, and constantly donated large sums to Melbourne’s public hospitals.
Green’s popularity was one reason for the public support of his imported champion, Comedy King. The handsome black galloper won the Caulfield Futurity as a three-year-old before going on to win six times from twelve starts at four, including the AJC Spring Stakes and Autumn Stakes in Sydney, and the St George Stakes, Essendon Stakes, All-Aged Stakes and Melbourne Cup in his hometown. He returned at five to win the Eclipse Stakes before finishing a gallant fifth in his second Melbourne Cup, lumping a massive 9 st 7 lb (60.5 kg).
At stud Comedy King continued to make his mark in Australian racing history. He sired two Melbourne Cup winners, King Ingoda and Artilleryman, and many other useful stayers, like the immortal Shadow King who started in six Melbourne Cups for two seconds, two thirds, a fourth and a sixth. His granddaughter Witty Maid was the mother of Comic Court, who won the Melbourne Cup for Jim Cummings in 1950, and his son Artilleryman was perhaps the best racehorse ever foaled in Australia.
Bred by Sol Green at Shipley Stud in Victoria in 1916, Artilleryman was purchased for 1000 guineas at the stud dispersal sale by well
-known grazier and businessman Sir Samuel Horden.
His dam was the well-bred New Zealand mare Cross Battery, who had Carbine’s sire Musket and the great imported sire Fisherman on her sire’s side and was a great-granddaughter of the unbeaten Melbourne Cup winner Grand Flaneur on her dam side.
Reputed to be the best-looking horse ever to race in Australia, the headstrong brown colt’s wins at three years old included the 1919 AJC Derby, Caulfield Guineas, Memsie Stakes, C.B. Fisher Stakes and Melbourne Cup. He dead-heated in the AJC Derby with Richmond Main, a son of his sire’s contemporary Prince Foote, and ran second to that colt in the VRC Derby after pulling fiercely throughout the race. In the Melbourne Cup, however, Artilleryman settled the matter of who was the superior racehorse by defeating Richmond Main by 6 lengths at equal weights. He then completed his three-year-old season by taking out the 1920 St George Stakes, Governors’ Stakes, King’s Plate and St Leger Stakes in Melbourne and the Rawson Stakes in Sydney.
While being spelled, Artilleryman developed a growth on a hind leg and thickening of his veins, but he was still sent out as a 12 to 1 on favourite for the St Leger in Sydney. In a boil-over he ran second to Millieme and then failed in the Sydney Cup and the All-Aged Stakes. It was obvious to vets that the horse had an enormous growth or cancer internally, and this proved to be true when he suddenly haemorrhaged and died in January 1921.
The year after Artilleryman’s Melbourne Cup win the great race was won by another popular champion in Poitrel, carrying 10 st (63.5 kg), which places him behind Carbine and Archer as the third-greatest Cup-winning weight carrier. Poitrel was bred and owned by the Moses brothers of Arrowfield Stud, who had sold Poseidon to Sir Hugh Denison. Luckily for the brothers Poitrel failed to reach his reserve at the 1916 Easter Sales and the brothers reluctantly decided to race him themselves. He went on to win seventeen of 37 starts, although his career was blighted by brittle hooves.
Poitrel, foaled in 1914, was sired by St Alwyne, a son of the English champion performer and sire, St Frusquin, who was by St Simon. St Alwyne was imported by the Moses brothers and brought more of the wonderful St Simon blood into Australia.
Poitrel failed in three races as a two-year-old but managed three wins from just five starts at three. It was as a four- and five-year-old that he claimed a unique record in Australasian racing history—when he beat the great New Zealand mare Desert Gold in record time in the Spring Stakes and, in winning the same race again at five, he defeated Gloaming, who jointly held the Australasian record of nineteen consecutive wins with Desert Gold. Poitrel also won the Cumberland Stakes and AJC Plate at four, real staying races.
Poitrel then won a string of weight-for-age races and ran a close second to Kennaquhair in the Sydney Cup with 9 st 9 lb (61 kg) in an Australasian record time for 2 miles of 3 minutes 22.75 seconds. The two horses dead-heated in the AJC Spring Stakes that year, giving Poitrel his third win in that race, and he also won the AJC Plate again before heading for Melbourne for the first time, as a six-year-old, to take on the great Western Australian champion Eurythmic in the Melbourne Stakes and Melbourne Cup.
Eurythmic had arrived in Melbourne from Western Australia and won the Memsie Stakes, October Stakes, Caulfield Stakes and Caulfield Cup, all in a row! He made it five in a row in Victoria, and nine straight wins, in the Melbourne Stakes, with Poitrel finishing third behind Greenstead. Poitrel also finished behind Eurythmic again later, running second to him in the C.B. Fisher Plate. Between the two defeats, however, Poitrel won the one that mattered, outstaying Erasmus, Comedy Queen and Eurythmic to win the Melbourne Cup with 10 st (63.5 kg).
Poitrel’s last start was another dead heat for first, this time with John Brown’s good stayer Richmond Main, in the Rawson Stakes at Rosehill. At stud Poitrel was a moderate success, the best of his sons being Belgamba, who won three St Legers.
Apart from his great record as a dour stayer, Poitrel is remembered as being the conqueror of three absolute champions of his era—Desert Gold, Gloaming and Eurythmic.
DESERT GOLD—THE KIWI RAIDER
JIM HAYNES
The Melbourne and Sydney spring and autumn racing carnivals had been attracting ‘raiders’ from New Zealand, as well as the neighbouring colonies or states of Tasmania and Queensland, for decades.
In the 1880s the amazingly versatile Malua had arrived from Tasmania to win not only the Melbourne Cup at 2 miles, but also the Newmarket Handicap at 6 furlongs and the Grand National Hurdle over 3 miles! The great Queenslander Le Grand, winner of thirteen races from 21 starts, raced successfully in Sydney and Melbourne, winning the AJC Derby in 1883 and the VRC Champion Stakes in 1884.
New Zealand horses had been making the trip across the Tasman for many decades, and prizemoney was much better in Australia. New Zealand’s rich limestone soil and cooler climate produced great horses, notably stayers. We need look no further than the two greatest of all time, Carbine and Phar Lap, to prove the point. But one of the first Kiwi raiders to storm our shores was a flying filly who won hearts wherever she went.
Desert Gold, the first horse to string together a remarkable nineteen victories in Australasia, was New Zealand bred, owned and trained.
At two she won at her first four starts, in the Great Northern Foal Stakes, Royal Stakes, Manawatu Sires Produce Stakes and the North Island Challenge Stakes, but ran second in the Great Northern Champagne Stakes.
It was her last start as a two-year-old, the Hawke’s Bay Stakes of May 1915, which began her amazing sequence of nineteen successive wins. As a three-year-old, Desert Gold won fourteen races and she remained unbeaten until age four, when she came up against a two-year-old named Kilflinn in the North Island Challenge Stakes of April 1917. At three she won the Hawke’s Bay Guineas, New Zealand Derby and Oaks, Great Northern Derby, Oaks and St Leger.
When she came to Australia at five she defeated the best Australian horses at weight-for-age. She suffered her first defeat in Australia at the hands of Poitrel in the Spring Stakes over a mile and a half. She won the All-Aged Stakes in Sydney and the St George Stakes in Melbourne and carried top-weight of 9 st 6 lb (60 kg) in the 1918 Melbourne Cup, finishing eighth behind Wakeful’s son Night Watch, carrying 6 st 9 lb (42 kg).
Back in New Zealand, when she was a six-year-old, she defeated the three-year-old Gloaming—who was later to equal her record of nineteen straight wins—when he missed the start in the Taranaki Stakes in 1919. However, the two later met four times and each time Gloaming won.
Desert Gold retired to the Okawa Stud, where she had been bred, and her daughters and granddaughters produced many winners, among them the brilliant Gold Rod, a champion sprinter-miler in New Zealand in the 1930s, who also won the Epsom and Doncaster Miles at Randwick in Sydney.
Desert Gold raced through the dark days of World War I and brought some joy into the gloomy war years for New Zealanders and Australians. Her amazing sequence of wins was followed eagerly in the press by two nations for whom anything but war news was a blessed relief.
With an overall record of 36 wins, thirteen seconds and four thirds from 59 starts, Desert Gold’s win rate stands at 61 per cent, and her amazing place rate at 90 per cent. Both of these strike rates are very close to those of another legendary New Zealand mare of a later era, Sunline.
While Desert Gold was New Zealand bred, her sire, All Black, was imported from Britain, and her dam, Aurarius, was Australian bred, being a daughter of the great sire Maltster and a granddaughter of Wallace. This meant that Desert Gold had both Carbine and St Simon on her dam side and Galopin on both sides of her pedigree.
ROAMING WITH GLOAMING
JIM HAYNES
Gloaming took over Desert Gold’s mantle as New Zealand’s favourite horse, but Australia can claim the honour of having at least bred the champion. He was owned and trained in New Zealand, however, and returned to plunder the rich races in the land of his birth.
Gloaming was bred at the Melton Stud in Victoria in 1915, but his bloodlines were all British—both si
re, The Welkin, and dam, Light, were imported. His pedigree is interesting as he was inbred, to the great Galopin, on his sire side, and to no less than three good horses—Sterling, Rosebery and Bend Or—on the dam side.
He was purchased for a mere 230 guineas by New Zealander George Greenwood and shipped over to New Zealand to be trained by Dick Mason. He became shin-sore at two, so he was gelded and turned out. At three he showed enough promise to be shipped back across the Tasman to begin his racing career in the Chelmsford Stakes in Sydney. He won the race by 8 lengths in record time and then won the AJC Derby at his second start.
In a truly remarkable career, Gloaming raced from age three until he was nine—even today that would be outstanding but in the 1920s it was unheard of. He started 67 times, won 57 times and ran second nine times. His only unplaced result came in the North Island Challenge Stakes at three, when he managed to get his head tangled in the starting wires and fell, taking no part in the race. So, it is true to say that Gloaming ran first or second in every race he ever contested.
The accident probably occurred in an attempt to anticipate the rise of the barrier wires. The horse had done the same thing several starts previously in the Taranaki Stakes over 6 furlongs, but had untangled himself and chased down the field to run second. Unfortunately for Gloaming’s connections two factors stopped him winning a remarkable victory that day. Firstly the race was over the short sprint distance of 6 furlongs, giving Gloaming little time to catch the field, and secondly he was racing against the great mare Desert Gold, in the twilight of her career, and she held on to win by a neck. Gloaming defeated the great mare on four subsequent occasions.
