Best Australian Racing Stories (21 page)

Away they went, and though the Randwick horse nearly got up after being left a hundred yards at the start, he was just beaten on the post.

Thus justice was done, albeit in a somewhat crude way.

Hard luck

One hears some curious hard luck stories at the end of a race meeting.

One lady, who had sprinkled her investments over the tote as though half-sovereign notes were pellets from a shotgun, was heard to say last Saturday that she had backed the first six winners and would have backed the seventh if she had had any money left.

Another punter said that he had pushed at the end of a long queue to get his money on at the very last moment.

‘Unfortunately for me,' he said, ‘when at last I got to the window . . . it remained open and I got my money on!'

My racing problems: The punter's art

C.J. DENNIS

N
OW THAT THE RACING
season gathers to its exciting climax, a unique racing problem that has interested me for a number of years again presents itself for solution.

You are quite wrong if you imagine that my problem has anything to do with my own puny efforts to ‘spot stone morals' with a view to pecuniary gain. It is far more impersonal than that. Punting to me presents no problem at all! It is a perfectly simple process.

When I wish to have a little flutter I merely bid a last farewell to a ten-shilling note and give it to a bookmaker. (At the precise moment of its passing one gently intones over the ten shillings the name of some favoured horse.) For this sum the bookmaker sells me a little piece of pasteboard bearing his name and certain indecipherable characters that look like Coptic Roots, or something.

This piece of pasteboard I cling to religiously—even fanatically— until the race is over. Then I tear it into little pieces, throw these to all or any of the four winds that happen to be blowing at the time, and the transaction is completed.

I have heard it rumoured that, should the animal I fancy win the race (which is absurd), the bookmaker will then buy back my piece of pasteboard at a price more or less in advance of what it cost me. Some day I should like to have an opportunity of testing this contention.

But, even without this happy consummation, the mere purchase of the pasteboard provides me with a mild thrill. For, if the horse I have chosen manages to beat at least one other horse in the race, a distinct glow of satisfaction flatters my prescience and unexpectedly shrewd judgement.

I should like to know how to capitalise this; for I feel that I have a unique flair for selecting certain horses that are frequently well able to run faster than certain other horses, or at least one other horse.

But my real problem is far more baffling than anything presented by the simple mechanical rights of punting. It is this— Why is it that a large proportion of regular racecourse frequenters have extremely fat necks?

I know immediately what you would answer: that thin necks are also much in evidence; but I hope to be able to explain that also at a later date.

I wish it understood that I exclude from this enquiry all owners and trainers.

The men I refer to are very evidently gamblers who ‘follow the game' with a queer devotion worthy of an even nobler aim; and their fat necks are abnormally fat. Look about you next time you are on a racecourse.

I had taken my problem to various learned men without getting much satisfaction; and then I remembered Percy Podgrass. Percy is a friend of mine and a scientist of sorts—of very many sorts, in fact; he attends guild lectures.

I have propounded my perplexing problem to Percy (alliteratively, like that) and he has promised to chew it over and bring back to me a working hypothesis. At least, I think it is a hypothesis and certainly not a hypothenuse; though Percy himself laughingly referred to it, with his quaint, diffident humour, as his hippopotamus.

I shall be glad, later, to afford readers the benefit of the Podgrass–ian research.

Five bob on Sir Blink

CRACKERS KEENAN

I
REMEMBER THE FIRST
time I ever had the urge to put a bet on a horse. I wanted to have five bob on Sir Blink in the 1958 Caulfield Cup.

Mum said it was disgusting that somebody of such tender years should want to back a horse. She didn't want to put the money on but her conscience must have bothered her after it won because she gave me £2. What really upset her was that I wanted to ‘all up' it onto Sir Blink again in the Victoria Derby.

A horse who had been a champion two-year-old called Master Rane was the public elect. I think it won six or seven in a row as a two-year-old but Sir Blink was too strong for him.

Sir Blink was trained by Jack Godby and was owned by a Mrs Kellett. She called him ‘Blinky', but that wasn't what I felt like calling my mum when I found out she didn't put my money on in the Derby. Sir Blink was a bit of an early favourite of mine; he was by Blue Coral out of Inky and had a big baldy face.

I eventually forgave my mother for not backing Sir Blink in the Derby for me. Someone tried to explain to me it was the Scottish blood in her that found the thought of playing up my earlier winnings far too extravagant.

Then she did it to me again a couple of years later. It was in the early 1960s and I picked out a daily double. I'll never forget it. The two horses were Rio David and Chokra.

Mum wouldn't put a bet on and they both won, paying a small fortune. Or at least it would have been. I haven't cried too many times in my life but that was one of them. It's very vivid in my memory, sort of like total recall.

By this stage we had moved off the farm into the big smoke— Yarrawonga. The town had 2500 people in so many double-storey buildings we didn't know what to do. I used to bet just about every Saturday. I'd go down to the TAB and ask people to put money on for me. I talked to all the desperates outside the TAB and got known—as a ten-year-old—as a good tipster, a kid that did his form. Blokes would actually come up and ask me what I fancied.

I used to get the
Truth
if I could because it was the best form guide to have, but my mum didn't fancy me buying the scandal rag, as it was in those days. Little did I know at the time that I'd eventually be writing for it.

I used to get every bit of information I could, and then my big day finally arrived when the old man took me to the races. We used to go to Wangaratta or Chiltern or Corowa, sometimes Berrigan. I couldn't wait to get there and race in and buy a racebook.

Mum and Dad would line all of us ten kids up and take us to the races. We knew all the trainers. Jack Freyer used to train for the old man at Corowa. Hal Hoysted trained for him as well. Jackie ‘No Teeth' Murrell, who was Bill Murrell's cousin, also trained for my dad. So we'd go to the races and he'd drink and drive us home. It was terrible—we'd keep waiting to hit the white posts at the side of the road.

But they were great days. Most of the horses were no bloody good but we thought they were champions. A few of them went on to win in town, horses like Sullivan and others. We were sort of taken into the bosom of the racing fraternity.

They were the early memories. I remember Bill Murrell coming to pick up his horses after they'd spelled on our farm. Some of these horses were left untouched in the paddock for six months or so. Just running wild around the paddock. When it was time to get them on the float, they'd try to kick the sides out of the float and Bill Murrell would be there cursing and getting them going. They had names like Mad Mac and so on.

Bill Murrell would lob in about midday, have lunch, drink all afternoon and then, about five o'clock, he'd say, ‘Let's get these mongrels on the float,' and then off they'd go to Melbourne. I don't know how they did it. They'd get them loaded up and away they'd go, drunk as skunks and headed to town. They certainly would not be doing it these days.

I was going to Yarrawonga Primary and I remember reading the
Turf Monthly
under my desk while pretending to be doing schoolwork. One of the first copies of
Turf Monthly
I ever bought was when Tulloch had gone to stud at Kia Ora in New Zealand and there were all these photos of his mares in foal. Rather poor taste I thought at the time, but it was rather interesting.

I decided about then that all I wanted to do was own racehorses. I ate, drank and slept dreaming about the horses I would own. I was showing a bit of promise as a footballer, but football never took over my life. Everything I ever wanted to do in life was centred around racehorses. It stays with you.

By the time I got to the Marist Brothers' Assumption College in Kilmore my gambling tentacles had spread far and wide. Being a good Catholic boy I knew that idleness was an instrument of the devil. So, as well as being firmly hooked on the punt, I decided to wile away my spare time by taking over as the school SP bookmaker.

I'd bet on race, pace and chase. I spent six years of intensive study at Assumption but it wasn't all on school matters. Pretty soon, anybody who wanted to have a bet, they'd come and see me. I'd get the form guide every day.

One of my assigned jobs was to go down to the gate and get the papers for the Brothers. Mostly it was the afternoon
Herald
. It wasn't the best form guide but I had to make do, so on the way back to drop off the paper, the form guide would disappear. I wanted to keep temptation away from those Marist Brothers. I didn't want them to get caught up in the punt. I was so dedicated to making sure they didn't have a bet I'd just hook out the racing pages. I always had the form guide and no one ever knew. Every Saturday, anybody that wanted to bet had to come to me.

Probably the best result I ever had as a bookie was when Tobin Bronze won the Caulfield Cup in 1967. But, champion though Tobin Bronze undoubtedly was, everybody and his dog wanted to back Red Handed, trained by Bart Cummings. The odd few who didn't want Red Handed still didn't go for Tobin Bronze.

I was about the only one who was keen on Tobin Bronze; he had won the Toorak Handicap the previous Saturday, but he had failed in the Caulfield Cup the year before. My confidence was a bit dented and I even rang Bill Murrell to ask his opinion. He was a Tobin Bronze man.

I said, ‘What about Red Handed?'

Bill replied, ‘Tobin Bronze is a bloody champion!'

I had great faith in Bill Murrell's judgement and my enthusiasm for the big copper chestnut was restored.

A bloke called Peter Twomey from Numurkah came up to me on the day before the race—and this bloke was pretty well heeled. You wouldn't want to know, he wanted to back Tobin Bronze. The horse was 4 to 1 favourite and I looked him straight in the eye and said, ‘You can have 8 to 1.' He looked at me sort of funny and I said, ‘Give us ya money, I love taking money from mugs any day of the bloody week. Give us ya money.'

I tried to grab his money but he whipped it away and put it straight back in his kick. ‘You know something,' he said suspiciously. He put that money straight back in his pocket and walked away.

Tobin Bronze gave Jimmy Johnson an armchair ride and beat Red Handed by a neck, giving the second horse the equivalent of 7 kg. Then, of course, Red Handed came out 16 days later and won the Melbourne Cup.

Hardly anyone had backed Tobin Bronze and, to cap it all off, I backed him down at the TAB. I found some desperate to put my money on for me.

I've never eaten so many bloody ice-creams in my life. I bought all my mates ice-creams, we were fair dinkum as fat as black rats at the finish. That was my best bluff of all time.

I just went on from there. Sort of progressed to being even more mad about horses. I would study anything to do with them. I'd get stoked up with yearling catalogues and
Turf Monthly
s and various other racing magazines.

Any time I got down to Melbourne I'd be straight into MacGill's, the famous Melbourne newsagent and bookshop, and buy anything about horses.

I was playing football regularly at Assumption by the time I was 14 but I was still more interested in horses than football. I was just an absolute student; I did six years of study in horses and reading form guides.

Despite all this, I finished matriculation and got a Commonwealth scholarship and all the rest and did reasonably well. There was always a lull after the Melbourne Cup, so I used to do a bit of schoolwork. It gave me about six weeks to get myself through. You had to get your priorities right.

Assumption was a boys'-only school then—it's co-ed now. Maybe my punting activities might have been curtailed a bit if there had been girls there in the 1960s, but somehow I doubt it. At least they didn't have Sunday racing then—the term ‘day of rest' truly applied in my case.

I used to joke that I had to bet to get money, because my old man wasn't too forthcoming with pocket money.

If you were doing the form for a living you had to have the best and eventually I graduated to the
Truth.
It was the best form guide you could get, but it was very hard to come by at Assumption. The only forms you could get on a regular basis were the ones in the dailies and they weren't a patch on the
Truth.
If you got caught with the
Truth
at Assumption, you were treated to a sneak preview of what hell would be like.

All the perverts used to say they just bought it for the form guide; in my case it was true. I used to ask anybody who I thought could get me one to buy it for me. I'd say, ‘Get me the
Truth.
You can have the tits—I just want the form guide.' We'd carve it up between us—the pervs would take the main section and I'd have the centre lift-out.

One day I got caught with the
Truth
, the whole
Truth
and nothing but the
Truth.
I'd removed the form guide for some later study but, before I could get rid of the rest, I got nabbed. The funny thing was that the Brothers were searching the lockers for cigarettes and I usually had some. That would have been preferable to them finding the
Truth.