HORSES IN HISTORY

HORSE HISTORY

Phar Lap the Wonder Horse

Phar Lap will always hold a special place in our hearts, writes N. G. QUINLAN of the rangy chestnut whose career was tragically cut short when he was poisoned at only six-years-old.

In 1930, halfway between two World Wars, the fledgling nation of Australia was suffering. While the ‘soldier-settlers’ – returned servicemen who had bought or leased Crown land – battled droughts and floods in order to scratch a meager living from the soil, the effects of the Wall Street Crash were beginning to be felt, ushering in the grim period now known as the Great Depression. Hope was at a premium and people were clinging to any heroes they could find.

Four years earlier, in a stable near the town of Timaru on the South Island of New Zealand, a foal had been born. His sire was Night Raid, an English Thoroughbred, and his dam was Entreaty, a New Zealand mare. The horse’s owner, an American named David J. Davis, had hired Sydney trainer Harry Telford to find him some good yearlings. At the sales in Trentham, New Zealand, Telford bought a gangly colt for 160 guineas and shipped him across to Australia. This ungainly beast would go on to be nicknamed the ‘Red Terror’ and ‘Australia’s Wonder Horse’. In time, he would enter Australian legend as arguably our greatest ever racehorse, and certainly our most beloved. The name ‘Farlap’ was suggested by a Chinese medical student named Aubrey Ping. The word meant ‘lightning’ in both Chinese and Thai (literally ‘sky flash’). Somewhat superstitiously, Harry Telford decided to change the ‘F’ to ‘Ph’ and make it two words because he felt that a seven-letter two-word name better matched the names of other horses that had previously won the Melbourne Cup. However, to his devoted strapper Tommy Woodcock, the horse would forever be known as Bobby. Tommy was only twenty-four years old when Telford employed him full-time as Phar Lap’s strapper. Tommy Woodcock and Phar Lap had a rare bond and on the night before any important race, Tommy would set up a cot outside the stable, spending the night close to his favourite horse. Legend has it that Phar Lap would not accept food from anyone’s hand but Tommy’s. It was Tommy Woodcock who was with Phar Lap one Saturday morning in November 1930 when unknown assailants fired a shot at the champion gelding from a passing car. Fortunately the bullet missed and neither horse nor strapper were harmed. Three days later, ridden by master jockey Jim Pike, Phar Lap won the Melbourne Cup.

As Phar Lap’s fame grew, the chestnut became a hero to the nation. Then in 1931, David J. Davis expressed his plans to ship the horse to the United States to compete in what was then North America’s richest race, the Agua Caliente Handicap. Held just across the Mexican border south of San Diego, the race offered a purse of US$50,000. Such a prize proved too much for Davis to resist and so in November of that year Phar Lap departed from Sydney Harbour, bound for California.

Trainer Harry Telford was vocal in his protests, believing the journey would be too much for Phar Lap. He refused to go, sending young Tommy Woodcock in his place. The truth is that without Tommy by his side, Bobby would have fretted so much that he would have been unable to race at all. On the long sea voyage, Tommy was forced to eat all his meals in the boson’s cabin where ‘Bobby’ could see him through an open door.

Only two weeks before the big race, Phar Lap split his front left hoof after treading on a stone. Tommy and the rest of the team were justifiably

A

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A: Phar Lap winning the Melbourne Cup spring 1930. B & C: Phar Lap and Tommy Woodcock.

worried and a special horseshoe had to be made to bind and strengthen the hoof. Nonetheless, on the afternoon of Sunday March 20th 1932, Phar Lap took his place in the starting lineup of the Agua Caliente Handicap. Although he was one of the last horses away he won the race convincingly, shaking off the other ten entrants with seeming ease.

Less than one month after Phar Lap’s great win, Tommy Woodcock entered the stable at Menlo Park, California one morning to find the horse in severe pain. He and the rest of the team were powerless to help and in a matter of hours ‘Bobby’ haemorrhaged to death. The cause of his death has never been determined, although as recently as 2010 Associate Professor Ivan Kempson from Taiwan’s Institute of Physics, and Dermot Henry from Museum Victoria conducted intricate examinations of several hairs from Phar Lap’s preserved mane and concluded that the horse had died from arsenic poisoning. Although arsenic was an ingredient in several tonics in those days, the tests showed that the poison was present in greater amounts than could have come from any tonic, or even from the taxidermy process itself.

We will probably never know who poisoned Phar Lap, but what we know from history is that the people of Australia and New Zealand mourned his passing with great sorrow. During his short four-year racing career, Phar Lap won 37 races from 51starts, and had two second placings and three thirds. His total prize money was £70,123, or more than $16 million in today’s money. More importantly, he won the heart of a nation and is immortalised with a life-size bronze statue at Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne. Phar Lap’s hide was preserved and now stands as an exhibit in the Melbourne Museum, forever keeping alive the memory of one of Australia’s greatest racehorses.

In memory of Phar Lap - Australia’s Wonder Horse (October 4th 1926 –April 5th 1932)