Best Australian Racing Stories (27 page)

Two elements of the story are true. He was known as Peter and he was very young, in fact he was only 12 and, oddly enough, this fact explains the whole wonderful concoction.

Aged only 12, the boy had ridden Briseis, as a two-year-old, to three victories at Randwick earlier in the year, including an incredible win in the Doncaster Handicap where he rode her at 5 st 7 lb (35 kg). However, the VRC rules did not allow jockeys to ride in the Cup until they were aged 13, and Peter was a few days shy of his 13th birthday on Cup Day 1876.

The regular jockey for St Albans' horses was the legendary Tom Hales, who could not make the Cup weight at 6 st 4 lb (39.5 kg). As Briseis won most of her big races as a two- and three-year-old, she was given very light weights to carry, which meant that a good lightweight jockey was required.

Few grown men could ride at those weights, but Peter was an excellent rider who knew the horse as a stable boy at St Albans and had ridden her to victory in three races in Sydney. So, cunning old Jim Wilson came up with the ‘cock-and-bull' story of Peter's origins to allow him to ride Briseis in the Cup. He argued to the VRC that both the boy's birth date and parents were unknown, but he was probably older than 13.

‘Peter St Albans' was actually born in Geelong on 15 November 1864, and there is a birth certificate to prove it. He was the son of Michael Bowden and his wife and, though christened Michael, he was known as Peter from an early age. There is a painting at the State Library of Victoria by Frederick Woodhouse showing Peter as a youth, looking very white and European, standing alongside Briseis with Tom Hales in the saddle.

Michael ‘Peter St Albans' Bowden was a successful jockey for several years around Geelong and also rode successfully interstate until a bad fall at age 19 saw him switch to training. He died in 1900 at the age of 35. The Geelong Thoroughbred Club awards the Peter St Albans Trophy each year to the jockey who rides the most winners at the Geelong track.

Other Cup folklore has William Evans weighing-in unconscious after wasting more than 10 pounds (4.5 kg) in a week to ride the 1907 winner Apologue at 7 st 9 lb (48.5 kg). Evidently the totally exhausted jockey collapsed after the horse passed the post and was placed unconscious on the scales.

Let us hope that Dame Nellie Melba and famous English contralto Dame Clara Butt, whose combined presence on the lawn was the social highlight of Cup Day 1907, were not unduly distressed by witnessing the poor jockey's plight!

Reckless and Tommy Woodcock—A national love story

The Cup was already well established as the highpoint of Melbourne's social calendar when poor Evans passed out past the post. Indeed, once the race had recovered from the debacle of 1863 and the two rival race clubs of Melbourne combined to form the Victorian Racing Club in 1864, the race quickly developed into far more than a mere rich handicap where horses from all colonies could compete.

The dream of the creators of the race, Captain Standish and the committeemen of the Victoria Turf Club, was to show the Victorian colony's supremacy over New South Wales in all matters, especially sporting matters, by running the richest race on the continent. This was looking like becoming reality as crowd numbers for the event went to 25,000-plus in the first decade of the race's history and had reached a regular 100,000 by the end of the second decade.

Although Melbourne has given way to Sydney as the financial capital of Australia and the most populous city in the 150 years since the Cup was created, it remains the sporting capital of the nation, largely due to the iconic status of the Melbourne Cup.

Racing has always been a focus for literature, art and romance since the earliest times of the sport in Britain. There is something in the nature and history of the sport which brings to the surface the more imaginative and romantic aspects of our humanity. The nobility and beauty of the horse, the drama of the competition, mere men controlling large and powerful animals—all these things inspire awe and wonder.

The whole fickle and glorious nature of the human drama is intensified and crystallised in the sport of thoroughbred racing. What is it that draws us to the sport? The vicarious thrill of the risks involved? The possibility of making and losing fortunes? The snob appeal of the involvement of the nobility? The possibility that the sport may make a prince from a pauper, and vice versa?

Whatever it is, it is typified and made easy for Australians via the Melbourne Cup. Each year all Aussies can get a massive dose of ‘whatever it is' in early November and then return to the humdrum of normality. Those of us afflicted by the ‘racing bug' habitually raise our eyebrows at this seasonal invasion of the uneducated into our ‘world' and enjoy the event as the culmination of the racing season which, for us, lasts 12 months in every year.

The general Australian population of some 22 million can, with the help of the media, enjoy the annual human and equine drama and suspense as the Cup approaches. They are told the usual stories of potential ‘rags to riches' battlers, the horses who might compete become characters, and Cup history and mythology is retold to a point that a collective sigh of relief goes up when the gates spring open on that first Tuesday afternoon in November.

After the race comes a week of reflection on the winners and losers. Recent examples of Cup ‘drama' being used to create more Cup folklore and provide millions of words in ‘human interest' journalism are the stories of Tommy Woodcock and Reckless in 1977 and the amazing story of Media Puzzle's win in 2001.

Reckless was trained by Tommy Woodcock, who was famous as the strapper of Phar Lap when he won the Melbourne Cup in 1930, and who accompanied Phar Lap to America and was with the great racehorse when he tragically and mysteriously died after winning the Agua Caliente Handicap in world-record time in Mexico.

Reckless, trained by the 73-year-old iconic ‘battler', was known as ‘the people's horse' by the media due to his lovely nature and the fact that his trainer was much loved for his attachment to, and obvious love for, the iconic Australian champion Phar Lap.

It was a real ‘battler's story' as Reckless started 33 times before winning his first race at the age of five.

Woodcock resurrected the horse's career and trained him to run fourth in the Cup of 1976. He then went on to win the Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane Cups in 1977, a feat never equalled before or since.

All Australia wanted the gentle stallion and his trainer to win the Melbourne Cup in 1977. In scenes never before seen on major racetracks, Tommy Woodcock gave children rides on the stallion's back on racedays before he raced, including Flemington on Cup day!

To so nearly achieve the ultimate dream of winning all major 2-mile events, including the Melbourne Cup, in one year and then fail by a length in running a brave second to Gold and Black was poignant enough. For the most-loved racing character and the most-loved horse in Australia to be the protagonists in the drama had sentiment fairly oozing from the pens of journalists.

It is not in words, however, but in two photographs taken at the time that we see the true appeal of the story. One, taken by
Melbourne
Age
photographer Bruce Postle, shows Reckless and Tommy Woodcock lying side by side in the horse's stall the night before the race, with the big stallion nuzzling his smiling trainer. The second, taken minutes after the race, showed horse and man walking out of the saddling paddock as the presentations take place to the winner's connections.

Media Puzzle and Damien Oliver—by the grace of God

In 2002 the nation was awash with emotion as Damien Oliver, 10 metres past the post seconds after winning the Cup on Media Puzzle, raised his whip and eyes heavenward in memory of his brother Jason, killed earlier in the week while riding in a trial in Perth. Jason was just days away from his 33rd birthday and Damien flew to the funeral the day after winning the Cup.

Oliver had won the Cup previously on Doriemus in 1995 and had dedicated that win to his father Ray, a man he barely knew as he was also killed in a racing accident while riding in the Boulder Cup at Kalgoorlie in 1975 when Damien was just three years old.

The Cup of 2002, like most Cups, had its share of dramatic and history-making elements. Media Puzzle had recovered from a fractured pelvis to win the Cup ahead of his more famous stablemate, Irish champion stayer Vinnie Roe. Media Puzzle's trainer, Irishman Dermot Weld, made history by becoming the only overseas trainer to ever win two Cups. Until that day in 2002 he had been the only overseas trainer to ever win one Cup! He also achieved the difficult feat of training the quinella that year.

All that drama was overshadowed by the human tragedy of the Oliver family's grief and loss. The memorable and inspirational moment that capped off the Cup hype and put the event into perspective came when Damien Oliver, asked what the Cup win meant to him, replied, ‘Melbourne Cups don't mean a thing to me anymore. I'd give it back right now to have my brother back.'

Shadow King

Sentiment plays a big part in the public appeal of the sport of racing, and it is a huge part of what we love about the Cup. This is well demonstrated in the way we have remembered the amazing Cup career of Shadow King, who also happened to be a son of Comedy King, the first imported horse to win the Melbourne Cup.

Shadow King ran in six Melbourne Cups without ever winning, although he was placed in four of them, finishing fourth and sixth in his other two runs.

‘As unlucky as Shadow King' was a common saying in Australia in the 1930s and 1940s, and the racing public loved the horse who came to represent the archetypal Aussie battler.

The fact that our premier race is a handicap rather than a true test of ‘quality' means that our champions often lose as they battle to overcome the odds and win with the top weight. We love seeing everyone get ‘a fair go', but we still love our champions whether they win or lose the Cup. Wakeful, Kingston Town, Gunsynd and Phar Lap in 1931 were cheered from the course, gallant in defeat.

We also love the underdog and that was Shadow King. He should have won in 1933 when he was almost knocked down on the turn and Scobie Breasley managed to get him balanced again but failed by a head to catch Hall Mark.

In a wonderful gesture to the horse who represented the Aussie belief that the main thing was to ‘have a go', the VRC allowed him, aged ten and carrying saddlecloth number seven, to lead the field onto the track for the Melbourne Cup of 1935.

The crowd of 110,739 clapped and cheered sentimentally but considered the horse to be merely a colourful footnote to the race that year, until he flew home to narrowly miss a place, finishing fourth at 100 to 1 to prove, once again, that ‘having a go' can make dreams
almost
attainable.

In a further addition to Cup history Shadow King was re-trained as a police horse after retiring and performed ceremonial duties at the Melbourne Cup every year until he passed away in 1945.

Dreaming to win

Dreams and premonitions have long been a part of Cup folklore. There are many accounts, mostly unsubstantiated, of people dreaming the winner. Shearers riding miles but arriving too late to place a bet having dreamed the winner in an isolated shearing shed; housewives telling husbands the name of the winner before the race due to women's intuition, a premonition or cryptic dream, only to be ignored or laughed at by the husband until proven right on race day.

The most famous Melbourne Cup dream story is the one concerning Walter Craig, owner of the 1870 winner, Nimblefoot.

Craig was the owner and the licensee of Ballarat's Royal Hotel. He had purchased the hotel in 1857, at the height of the gold boom. It was originally known as Bath's Hotel but, after Alfred Duke of Edinburgh stayed there in 1867, it became known as the Royal.

In the same year legendary horseman and poet, Adam Lindsay Gordon, took over management of the hotel's substantial stables and livery business. Walter Craig and his horses are mentioned several times in Gordon's verse.

In August 1870 Craig dreamed that he saw his horse, Nimble-foot, winning the Melbourne Cup. The horse carried Craig's violet silks but the jockey was wearing a black armband in the dream.

Craig recounted the dream to several people and died within days of the premonition. An account of this strange event did appear in the
Melbourne Age
just prior to the running of the Cup, which lends some credibility at least to this piece of Cup folklore.

Needless to say, the horse subsequently won the Cup with the jockey wearing a black crepe armband to mark the passing of the owner.

Walter Craig's death is the central feature of another piece of Melbourne Cup mythology. It seems that Craig and a group of friends, including well-known bookmaker Joseph Slack, were drinking at Craig's hotel in February 1870 when Craig asked the bookmaker what odds he would give on an AJC Metropolitan Handicap–Melbourne Cup double featuring Croydon and Nimblefoot.

The bookmaker, in a spirit of conviviality, offered to bet £1000 against a round of drinks for the group and Craig duly obliged. Although the double proved successful, Craig died before the result was finalised and, according to the unwritten rules of gentlemanly sportsmanship, death cancels out debts of honour.

Legend has it, however, that Joseph Slack chose to honour the bet made with his friend and paid Craig's widow the £1000. A second account of the story has the bookmaker paying £500 to the widow in order to appear honourable while still acknowledging the accepted rules of sportsmanship surrounding such verbal, or ‘handshake', bets.

Stories of ‘dreaming the winner' had become such an accepted feature of the annual Cup publicity barrage by 1886 that a young Banjo Paterson was able to use the idea as the basis of a comic poem, ‘A Dream of the Melbourne Cup'.

Published in the
Bulletin
just prior to the Cup of that year, the poem has several interesting elements.