Melbourne Cup 2009, Flemington Australian Spring Carnival

Phar Lap
Photo by Turf Monthly

Thursday, 27 October 2005:

It had scandal, gunfire, romance, a mystery death. And that was just the movie. The real Phar Lap story had it all and more.

It is 75 years since the giant-striding chestnut won the Melbourne Cup but the whole story has never been told. It never will be.

Those who knew it took it to their graves and those who didn't embellished a legend that has been passed on from generation to generation.

It unfolded something like this.

On October 4, 1926 a leggy chestnut was born in the New Zealand town of Timaru.

His sire Night Raid and dam Entreaty won two races between them and his mother was afforded such a lowly status Phar Lap was foaled in a tent.

But Sydney trainer Harry Telford saw something in Phar Lap's bloodlines.

He bought him sight unseen from a New Zealand sale for 160 guineas, bankrolled by American owner David Davis, but when Phar Lap arrived in Sydney, awkward looking and covered in warts Davis blew his stack.

He couldn't believe he had been talked into buying the ugly duckling, so Telford agreed to cover the costs of Phar Lap's training in return for a percentage of any winnings.

And then there was Tommy Woodcock.

The relationship between the young strapper and the horse he affectionately called Bobby became one of racing's greatest love stories.

Horse and human were virtually inseparable and Phar Lap's regular jockey Jim Pike was once quoted as saying there were mornings when Phar Lap refused to stretch out at trackwork unless he'd had a loving rub on the nose from his strapper.

But the champion's career had a humble start.

Phar Lap didn't manage a place at his first four runs and his first victory was in a lowly Rosehill maiden in April 1929.

It wasn't until the following spring his star began its ascent.

He won the AJC and Victoria Derbys and was third in that year's Melbourne Cup before stringing together nine wins the following autumn.

Six months later - three-quarters of a century ago this week - the tale took a Hollywood twist. Phar lap was shot at.

Woodcock was riding a stable pony and leading Phar Lap back from trackwork at Caulfield racecourse.

It was Derby Day morning and in just a few hours Phar Lap was scheduled to line up in the Melbourne Stakes at Flemington as his final Cup lead-up.

But there was no enjoying the fresh spring air for Woodcock. He was nervous.

Phar Lap had been the subject of death threats for several weeks and the rumours had cranked up a notch over the preceding days.

The gelding had been a late scratching from the Caulfield Cup, for which he'd been favourite, and not long before the announcement he was out, bookmakers had been hammered by punters coupling Amounis and Phar Lap in the Caulfield-Melbourne Cup double.

Amounis duly won the first leg and bookmakers were standing to lose a fortune if Phar Lap won the race that stopped a nation.

Rumours were rife a contingent of bagmen wanted to stop Phar Lap first.

Leading Phar Lap back from the racetrack to the stables that October morning, Woodcock followed an unfamiliar route in the hope of confusing any gunmen-in-waiting but his suspicions were quickly aroused when he spotted an unfamiliar car in the backstreets around Caulfield.

If you've seen the movie, you know the scene.

The car sped up from behind them. Woodcock wedged Phar Lap up against a fence on one side and put himself and his pony between the road and Phar Lap on the other.

Shots were fired from the car, Phar Lap reared and Woodcock held onto the reins for grim death despite being dislodged from his pony.

The car sped away and a frantic Woodcock began checking Phar lap for gunshot wounds.

There were none. The shots had missed.

Despite the morning's dramas and having to arrive at Flemington with a police escort, Phar Lap lined up in the Melbourne Stakes at Flemington that afternoon and won.

It was the start of a week the likes of which we are unlikely to ever see again.

With the death threat hanging over Phar Lap still very real and the Cup now just three days away he was ferried to a top secret location, creating a storm among the press and questions over whether he would line up in the Melbourne Cup.

When the first Tuesday in November 1930 dawned the public weren't any the wiser about Phar Lap's whereabouts.

As race time drew nearer, preparations were finally made to get Phar Lap from his hiding place near Geelong to Flemington.

Then the float wouldn't start. It took half an hour of coaxing for it to roar to life.

Again flanked by a police escort and cutting it fine, Phar Lap finally arrived at the track.

But when it came Phar Lap's turn to do his job it was a procession. He was saddled up, lined up and won.

Two days later he returned to take out the Linlithgow Stakes (1600m) and another two days later backed up to take out the CB Fisher Plate (2400m).

He won four races in eight days over various distances and remains the only horse before or since to win on all four days of the Flemington carnival.

All this against the backdrop of a young country and its people, struggling for meaning and survival in the grip of the Great Depression.

That eighteen months later Phar Lap went on to endure a more than three-week journey on the open deck of a boat to America, take on that nation's best gallopers under new trainer Woodcock and triumph on foreign soil sent a besotted Australia into Phar Lap fever-pitch.

A few weeks later Phar Lap, a five-year-old at the peak of his powers, died in Woodcock's arms.

Whether it was colic or poisoning - deliberate or otherwise - nobody knows.

His body was stuffed and is still a popular display at the Melbourne Museum. His heart, more than a third as big again as that of a normal horse, can be seen at the National Museum at Canberra.

Seventy five years after that dramatic and historic week in November his story still sends shivers up the spines of people who never even saw him race.

And the legend that is Phar lap lives on.