Best Australian Racing Stories (18 page)

No one saw him fighting there like some four-footed equi-librist for his balance, bleeding from many wounds, on that deadly night—with no friendly hand to help him. But that he did this thing is unarguable, as you shall see.

Then, after the groaning ship had lifted herself from that monstrous wave's cold embrace, she sank back again into the bosom of the sea, as if weary of it all. The twisted port rail, 4 feet from the horse, sank under, and the black waters reached him with icy fingers. To his knees—his shoulders—the water came. Then he felt a steel-shod foot slip on a steel-shod deck that gave no grip as wood had done. At last his courage faltered. Terror enveloped him. He lifted his classic head to those frantic skies, and sent his shrill wild call for help to a boy who slept and could not hear him.

Red dreamed on. Wedged in his corner sound asleep. Tonight, as on so many other nights, he dreamed of horses. Of riding horses in silks and satins, among cheering multitudes. The land he came from uses bugles to call the horses to their posts. Deep in his dreams he heard the bugles call, shrill and clear. He stirred uneasily. Deep in his subconscious mind he sensed that something was amiss. His dream of horses faded out. Tormenting nightmare gripped him. A weird fantasy of strife and tumult. He stirred again—his head lifted—then he awoke, and sat bolt upright, his mind still gripped with the fear of his crazy dream.

Then, high and thin and clear over the bedlam of the night, he heard the great horse call. So
that
was the bugle he had dreamed about. The bugle that, even in his dream, had seemed so sharp and shrill. He was gone from that room like a freckled wraith, defying the laws of gravity, desperate with fear.

He'd slept only a few yards away—yet to him it seemed hours before he reached the horse. Then with one strong young hand he held tight to the broken halter, and talked to his friend, and reached up and patted him and soothed him—just as he had done so many times, when all that the nights had held were stars and peace.

And so, through the remainder of the hours of blackness, the boy and the horse fought it out together, each helping the other, each drawing courage and confidence from their strange companionship. No physical strength possessed by one small boy could have tipped the scale, but his cheerful voice, his gentle hand, together with the mere fact that he was near at all, was all the bay horse needed.

When the black turmoil of night at last gave way to a yellow, murky dawn, the sailors found them there and, except for cuts and bruises, both were safe and sound.

The Captain, coming aft, paused and surveyed the scene in blank astonishment. He watched his men, with cunning hands, weave hempen safeguards. He examined the shattered horse stall in amazement. He had watched over the grey ship through the anxious night, and half the time his bridge had been deep in water. He looked again at the two on their little square of steel deck, with unbelieving eyes, and shook his weary head.

All night long on his bridge high above the chaos raging below him, the Captain had fought for his footing. Time after time, the plunging steel monster he rode and guided through the blackness had hurt and bruised him. But there, high over this sea-swept wreckage, he'd had a hand hold, a little shelter to guard him from the Storm Gods' fury. But these two! This salt-encrusted stallion, with the blood dripping from his broken forehead—this little lad with his windswept flaming hair and smiling eyes. What hell had they had?

He looked again at the gap where his port-side rail had been, then lifted his eyes to the dreary skies for just a moment. ‘This thing makes no sense in any language,' he muttered. ‘How could any horse . . .' He paused and perhaps for a full minute more he surveyed the scene before him. Then he shook his tired head again in utter disbelief and, without another word, he turned and lurched away.

On a Western Australian stud farm, a great bay horse watches the sun etch the crest of the mountain ranges with purple and lemon and faint old rose. In the pastures that stretch towards him from their base, soft-eyed matrons with foals at foot browse quietly. The stallion lifts his head and calls to them masterfully, compellingly, as a king might call. His name is Zaimis.

T.J.'s top two: Tulloch and Kingston Town

JIM HAYNES

T
OMMY SMITH HAD AN
eye for a horse.

He came to Sydney with his first horse, Bragger, in 1941. He had bought the reject out of the paddock in Wagga Wagga in spite of the owner telling him the colt was mad and would never make a racehorse.

Tommy and Bragger lived side by side in two boxes at Kensington racetrack until Tommy and the horse had proved his previous owner wrong. It was touch and go for a while, though; Bragger bolted at his first barrier trial at the old Victoria Park track, threw the jockey, hurdled a fence and ended up on the beach at Botany Bay before Tommy managed to catch him.

Bragger went on to win 13 races, including the Rosehill Cup, and set Tommy on the path to success as a trainer.

Tommy's eye rarely let him down. He famously bought Playboy for Sydney owner E.R. Williams, who later raced good horses like Pride of Egypt and dual Cox Plate winner Hydrogen, and was annoyed when Williams said he didn't like the horse.

Williams later decided to take Playboy, but Tommy's nose was well out of joint and he refused to sell him, raced him in his own colours, and won the AJC Derby with him in 1949, along with the AJC St Leger, Craven Plate and CB Fisher Plate.

Tommy Smith was well established when Tulloch came along, but it is perhaps true to say that Tulloch stamped him as a great trainer and Kingston Town capped off his career.

The two champions had much in common, as well as some obvious differences. Tulloch and Kingston Town were both brilliant middle-distance horses that could stay, but they inherited that ability in different ways.

Tulloch was bred at the famous Trelawney Stud in New Zealand. He was by King George VI's galloper Khorassan, who was bred by the Aga Khan and had bloodlines back to Nearco (and thus Carbine), from the handy staying mare Florida. Tulloch was bred to be dour, but was also born with brilliance aplenty.

Kingston Town, on the other hand, was bred to be brilliant and go over distance when required. His sire was Bletchingly, a son of Biscay and a grandson of Star Kingdom, and his dam, Ada Hunter, was a grand-daughter of Italian legend Ribot, who had multiple St Simon blood and was unbeatable over a mile and a half, literally. In fact he was never beaten at any distance, winning all 16 of his race starts, from 1000 to 3000 metres and including the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe twice.

There was one thing Tulloch and Kingston Town had in common— they were both rejects.

Tulloch ‘took Tommy's eye' at the New Zealand sales and he bought him, in spite of his ‘sway-back', thinking he would easily find an owner for him. T.J. Smith was by then a top trainer and owners lined up to buy horses he chose.

However, no one wanted Tulloch and Tommy was resigned to racing the colt himself when a chance meeting with Mr Evelyn Angus (Lyn) Haley changed everything. It seems Tommy had completely forgotten a conversation in which Haley had asked him to look for a yearling in New Zealand. Lyn Haley bought the horse and named him after his mother's hometown in Scotland.

Kingston Town was bred by wealthy owner David Hains at his property on the Mornington Peninsula. Like Tulloch, he was an unimpressive yearling, being spindly and awkward where Tulloch was small and sway-backed. Hains decided to sell the colt but the best offer was $5000, well below the $8000 reserve price. Hains was annoyed but unwilling to accept the paltry offer. He reluctantly decided to keep the horse and sent him up to Sydney to see if the great T.J. Smith could make anything of him.

Tulloch and Kingston Town were both bad-tempered and hard to handle.

Tulloch, whose stable name was the prosaic ‘Bobby', was a biter and kicker who would lash out when annoyed and nip anyone he could. His strapper, Neville Johnson, was usually wearing a bandage somewhere when ‘Bobby' was in the stable.

Kingston Town, known as ‘Sam' in the stable, was also a biter and was so badly behaved as a two-year-old that he was gelded. At his first start at Canterbury he refused to race when the gates opened, then tried to throw Malcolm Johnson and finally tailed the field to the post, finishing last.

At two years of age Kingston Town won at his only two other starts after being gelded, whereas Tulloch started 13 times aged two for six wins and seven seconds. He won the Sire's Produce Stakes in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland and defeated the champion two-year-old Todman easily when winning the AJC version of the race.

As three-year-olds the two horses both became true champions.

Tulloch started 16 times for 14 wins and two placings, while Kingston Town's record was 15 starts for 12 wins, a second, a third and a fourth.

In Tulloch's case T.J. Smith himself admitted the two placings, in the St George Stakes and Queen Elizabeth Stakes in the autumn of 1958, were a result of him not having the horse fit enough when he resumed after a three-month spell. It was a different matter with Kingston Town; his second in the VRC Derby was due to him tearing a lump off his hoof when he lost a plate. His third in the Caulfield Guineas and fourth in the Caulfield Cup were a result of the horse getting on his wrong foot around the Caulfield track.

Kingston Town always preferred to race clockwise. His record in Melbourne was four wins from 14 starts. In Sydney he won 22 from 25 starts, and in Brisbane it was two from two.

Both horses won the AJC and QTC Derbies among their many classic wins at three. Tulloch added the VRC Derby; Kingston Town won the Sydney Cup.

Each horse had ‘one that got away' in their stellar three-year-old seasons, races they never started in but would probably have won easily. For Tulloch it was the Melbourne Cup, and for Kingston Town the Cox Plate.

The fuss over Tulloch running or not running in the Cup has been well documented. It is true he was given a record weight for a three-year-old, but it is hard to see how he could have lost the Cup at the height of his powers, even with 52.5 kg, after his spectacular and effortless victory in the Caulfield Cup. Nevertheless Haley decided to scratch him and ‘Haley's Comet' was not given the chance to blaze a path to glory in the Cup.

In the case of Kingston Town it is a little more complex. He did not seem to handle the Melbourne way of going and T.J., on the strength of the colt's inability to handle Caulfield, decided the Derby on Flemington's roomier track would suit him better than the Cox Plate on the tight Moonee Valley track.

In hindsight this seems a tragic assumption. Kingstown Town started three times at Moonee Valley for three wins, in three WS Cox Plates. As it was, at three he raced at Flemington instead, damaged a hoof, changed legs all down the straight and missed winning the Derby by half a head. We can only imagine what would have happened had he won his first Cox Plate at three, instead of four.

Tulloch missed almost two years with a life-threatening scouring illness and returned triumphantly to win five races from five starts at age five; he then took the Cox Plate, Craven Plate, Mackinnon Stakes, CB Fisher Plate, AJC Queen Elizabeth Stakes and Autumn Stakes at six and just missed winning the Sydney Cup with 63 kg after being boxed in until the last furlong. He lumped 64 kg in the only unplaced run of his career in the 1960 Melbourne Cup and went out in a blaze of glory by winning the Brisbane Cup over 3200 metres, carrying 62.5 kg.

Kingston Town won four from six at four, including the Cox Plate; seven from nine at five, including the Cox Plate; and five from eight at six, including the Cox Plate. He was narrowly defeated in the Melbourne Cup of 1982, carrying 59 kg, but his effort to win his third Cox Plate, after legendary race-caller Bill Collins had famously broadcast ‘Kingston Town can't win', will live forever in the memory of everyone who heard the call or saw the race.

Tulloch failed dismally at stud and Kingston Town retired to David Hains's property at Mornington, where he was bred.

Kingston Town was euthanised, aged 14, after a kick from another horse damaged a knee, which failed to heal. Tulloch died relatively young also, at 15. An autopsy revealed that Tulloch's heart weighed more than 6 kg, almost the equal of Phar Lap's, which weighed 6.3 kg. The average racehorse has a heart weighing about 3 kg.

‘Bobby' and ‘Sam' are long gone, but they are ‘immortals' in the rich history of Australian racing, as is Tommy Smith, who sure had an eye for a horse.

How to look at a horse

LES CARLYON

F
ROM THE FIRST TWO
yearling sales, the message has come down: this year buyers want ‘athletes'. After the Magic Millions sale, a spokesman for the auctioneers said buyers, and bless every lovely one of them, wanted ‘athletic, racy types'. After the Sydney summer sale, the man from the selling agents said: ‘People are now trying to buy an athlete rather than merely buying on pedigree.'

I am not sure any of this is as original as it sounds. Harry Telford once bought a chestnut colt sight unseen from a catalogue, and Phar Lap turned out sort of athletic. But, mostly, trainers have always tended to put type ahead of pedigree, good legs ahead of good families.

And rightly. The absentee owner can stoke up a warm inner glow as he sits up in bed and drools over this catalogue page he has bought. The trainer has to live every day with the flesh and blood. He figures that if it can't talk and sulks most of the time it probably won't run.

All right, so let's wander into the occult. How do you spot one of these athletes at the sales? We all need one badly. Well, for a start, it's much harder than spotting a fancy pedigree.

The truth is any fool can spot a hot pedigree. You leaf through the Bunker Hunt dispersal catalogue and, lo, here's a filly by Northern Dancer from Dahlia. Northern Dancer is the most commercial stallion in the 300-year history of the breed. Dahlia, apart from being nicely bred, was a racecourse champion for three seasons. It takes no divine insight to conclude that this filly, so long as she is vaguely ‘athletic', will make big bucks. She did—nearly $2 million.