Racehorses in Australia

by Unknown

Racing is a conservative pastime. Necessarily this is so, for, as everyone knows, it is the “Sport of Kings.” But when this huge continent, this “giant Ocean Isle,” was first thrown open for colonisation, the most independent, the most adventurous, the most audacious, and those most full of initiative, left their homes for the yet unknown lands across the seas, and their characters came with them. And the colonists’ manner of life tended to foster the proclivities which Nature had implanted in their hearts. The wide, open spaces; the long distances between town and town, neighbour and neighbour; the free, healthy, open air, stimulating to body and soul; necessity, and the desire to help oneself—all these factors moulded our Australian character, and forced us not to be satisfied with the things which were good enough for our forefathers, but to develop, improve, and sometimes to strike out on new lines altogether. Therefore in all our work, and perhaps more so in our play, when something obviously required change, we did it without hesitation, and we are continuing to do so to this day.

And that is how we have introduced some reforms into our horse racing which, after having been tested here, and found good, have penetrated into the older countries, and have ultimately been adopted there. “The Gate” is one of these changes which has revolutionised the whole art of starting. It used to be a pretty, yea, verily, a wonderful sight, to watch old Mr. George Watson despatching a big Cup field. Mr. Watson was a genius, and he was possibly the most efficient starter that ever held a flag. But, in spite of him, delays occurred nearly every day, horses went mad with the fret and turmoil of it all, and false starts were horribly frequent. It was neither good for man nor beast. Then someone thought of a barrier, behind which the field had to stand. Previous to this, there had sometimes been an imaginary obstacle in the shape of a white chalk line painted across the course, but if horses did not ignore this, they often jumped it as they galloped past the different starting places during the course of a race, and that was no good. The Romans, however, had started their chariot races during the Empire from behind barriers, and the knowledge of this may have given the hint to Mr. Poulain, who, I think, first brought into notice a workable machine which would fly out of the way on the official starter pulling a lever. After numerous private trials, Poulain’s machine was adopted for the first time, I believe, on The Harvester’s Derby day. It was a magnificent success, and I remember being so impressed with the idea that I at once dashed off home to the country, and induced the Racing Club, of which I had the honour to be the Honorary Secretary, to adopt the affair. There had been a few fiascos on the Metropolitan courses, and one or two races had to be run twice over in consequence. Sternchaser’s Winter Handicap at Caulfield was one of the cases which comes back to the mind most vividly. The “Register” remarks that “This race was run twice. On the first occasion the barrier went up of its own accord, and all the horses, with the exception of Sternchaser, ran the full course (a mile). The stewards declared the event no race, and the horses returned at once to the starting post.” Sternchaser, a New Zealand colt, the property of Mr. Spencer Gollan, by Nordenfeldt out of Crinoline, had no difficulty in winning the run off.

We had several misadventures in the country when we first took up the notion, and of course there was an outcry from the public, and from owners, jockeys, and trainers. In the Old Country the barrier met with strenuous opposition for a long time, and literally, gallons of printer’s ink must have been used in condemning or upholding the “machine.”

But it all came right in the end, and anyone advocating a return to the days of the flag would now be “locked up” right away. Long delays at the post, and false starts, are no longer seen, and every field of horses is sent on its momentous journey within a minute, or at the outside, a couple of minutes of the advertised time of starting. Of course a great deal of this punctuality and good starting is due to the splendid officials whom our leading clubs employ. For a starter must have a particular temperament in order that he may be perfectly fitted for the job. The present V.R.C. official, Mr. Rupert Green, is very nearly an ideal starter. He knows the game thoroughly, he is almost uncannily quick at seizing the first opportunity, and in that lies the mainspring of his splendid efficiency. If you fail to take your first opportunity, you are lost, at this business. He has the complete confidence of the boys, and these, as a general rule, are masters of their mounts. Everyone, of course, must have a bad start occasionally, but the majority of these are due to the horses themselves. Some are naturally slower than others in finding their feet, and do what you please, a certain number of them, out of hundreds, will misbehave themselves in some way or another after the ropes have flown up. But in the course of several years, during which I have witnessed many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of starts, I cannot recall more than, at the outside, half a dozen where there has been anything to complain of so far as the human element of the transaction was concerned. The late Mr. Godfrey Watson was regarded as the Prince of Starters, in the same way as his father, Mr. George Watson, was acknowledged to be the King. But I have not seen anything in these two which is not at least emulated by our official of the present day. Nor indeed is Mr. Norman Wood, who officiates at most of the down-the-line meetings, and at innumerable country gatherings in Victoria, out of the running. And I have no doubt that there are other admirable officers over on the other side, whom it has not been my fortune to witness handling the big fields that assemble behind the barriers at the many suburban and outside meetings near Sydney. At any rate, “The Gate” has completely altered the whole aspect of the racing, and especially of the sprint racing of to-day.

The numbered saddle-cloth is another strictly Australian innovation. It is such an obvious improvement on the old state of affairs that one wonders how the Jockey Club in England has never adopted the idea. The use of the cloths is meant only for the convenience of the general public, be it understood, and not for the use of the judge or other official. To these, of course, the different colours are so familiar, that I do not suppose they ever notice that the numbers are there. But I confess that, for myself, I occasionally find them extremely handy. Where there is a large field, and two or three, perhaps, of the jackets are new to me, I often refer to the numbered cloth, which, with powerful glasses you can read from almost any point on our largest course, and I acknowledge the convenience.

When I was last at Newmarket, in England, I saw a device which we might do well to copy. At the July Meeting at Newmarket, the horses, instead of being in stalls or in boxes awaiting their race, parade round paths cut through the Plantation. It is very delightful, on a hot summer’s day, to sit on a comfortable garden seat, and take stock of the high-bred animals strolling round through the chequered light and shade, whilst the spectators, many of them also highly bred, from His Majesty the King downwards, watch them in luxury and ease. Each boy in charge of a horse has, bound on his right arm, a brass badge showing the number of the race on the card in which his horse is entered, and his number on the card. It is an ingenious and simple “dodge,” and not one of a costly nature, which we might well make use of in Australia. Of course, whilst standing in their stalls, the names of the competitors in this country are blazoned on one of the posts, but whilst parading round the enclosure it would be a very useful adjunct to our arrangements, which we so earnestly desire to see made perfect.

Another Australian innovation is the “Bruce Lowe Figure System.” This, too, has been the motive force of endless ink slinging. But, like the starting gate, it has come to stay. It is extremely simple. For a great number of years in the history of the Turf, breeders, with the exception of a few genuine enthusiasts, paid little attention to the family lines of their mares. They were aware that their stallion was an Eclipse horse, and was by so and so from so and so, but the dam, although a good one, did not trouble them much, on her dam’s side, so long as she was clean bred. I remember a discussion which took place long ago, instigated, I think, by the “Sportsman,” on “How to Breed a Good Racehorse.” I believe, but am not quite sure whether I am right, that it was the late General Peel who promulgated the appallingly simple doctrine to “put a winner of the Oaks to the winner of the Leger, and there you are, don’t you know.” But of later years, and before Mr. Bruce Lowe had published his “system,” men were beginning to waken up to the supreme importance of the dam, and her family, and the revised edition of the first volume of the “General Stud Book” was an incentive to the seekers after truth to persevere in their studies. Bruce Lowe was struck with the fact that descendants of certain of the old “Royal” and other mares—the “tap-roots,” as he called them—in tail female, of our “Stud Book,” were infinitely more successful than the descendants of other tap-root mares. Mr. Bruce Lowe, and his friend, Mr. Frank Reynolds, had noticed the same peculiarity in their Shorthorn herds of cattle, namely, that the produce of certain cows from some particular old original matron of the herd, continued to be superior to the produce of others. And this animal they called No. 1. Mr. Lowe then went into an exhaustive analysis of the winning families of the British thoroughbred racer, and he took, as a standard of excellence, the winning of the great classic three-year-old events which have been in existence for so many years, and a record of which is easily found and referred to. After tabulating these, and running them all out to the original tap-root mare, he discovered that more Derbies, Legers, and Oaks had been won by the descendants, in tail female, of Tregonwell’s Natural Barb mare, than by the offspring, in direct female line, of any other original mare in the “General Stud Book.” The same standard placed Burton’s Barb mare second, and Dam of the Two True Blues third. There are some fifty of these mares contained in the sacred pages of Volume I., and Bruce Lowe identified them by the figure denoting the place they held in his standard of Derby, Leger, and Oaks wins. Thirty-eight of them are responsible for classic winners, and after No. 38, the remainder have been given a figure in an arbitrary manner purely, until Miss Euston is reached, who is No. 50. It is a little peculiar that the last of these mares to figure as the ancestress of a classic winner is Thwaite’s Dun mare, No. 38, to whom traces Pot–8–Os (a son of Eclipse), whose own son was Waxy, sire of Whalebone, to whom, in tail male, run all the famous horses of to-day, which come from the Birdcatcher and Touchstone tribes, and they are legion. These are two of the great pillars of the temple of Eclipse, the third and, perhaps, central support, being Blacklock.

That then, is the main object of Bruce Lowe’s “Figure System”—to identify each of the fifty original mares in a simple and handy manner. And this has been done. Mr. Lowe claimed that his system would “revolutionise our methods of mating the thoroughbred horse.” I think that it has done so. Few people care to publish, or peruse, a tabulated pedigree nowadays without the figures being appended to each horse in the table. And I can scarcely think it possible that every racing man of to-day does not see, in his mind’s eye, the name of each horse of whose pedigree he is thinking, without also visualising its appended number. When you mention St. Simon, for instance, you immediately know that his family number is 11, and that therefore, on the dam’s side, he runs to the Sedbury Royal mare. Stockwell’s name at once calls up No. 3, and you understand in a moment that his tap-root is Dam of the Two True Blues. And so on, throughout all the names in any given pedigree. At a glance you know to what family you are in-breeding, and, therefore, how to outcross, if you so desire. Mr. Lowe had numerous side issues to his system, and with these you may, or you may not, agree. He propounded the theory that horses received certain qualities direct from the female side of their house, as, for instance, that prepotency which goes far to ensure that a horse will develop into a sire. That may or may not be true. Personally, I am sure, so far as one can be certain of anything, that it is. He put a hall-mark upon such horses by printing their family figure in thick type. Thus, in a tabulated pedigree, you will always notice the numbers 3, 8, 11, 12, and 14 printed after that particular style, and then in a moment you understand that these, according to Lowe, possessed “sire characteristics.” He believed in the theory of “Saturation,” at least to some extent, and wrote about it in his book. But that is beyond our scope in this volume, and we shall not discuss it here. He also wrote, instructively, upon how to breed “Great Stake Horses,” and “How Great Fillies are mostly Bred,” the “Breeding of Sprinters,” and an excellent chapter on “Phenomenal Racehorses,” and you will find much to make you think if you peruse these. Mr. Bruce Lowe’s influence has been very great in the Thoroughbred Turf world, and he has been much assisted by the erudition and enthusiasm of his Editor, Mr. William Allison, of the English “Sportsman,” and the owner and manager of the Cobham Stud. For, unfortunately, Mr. Lowe was in very bad health when his book was approaching completion, and he travelled to London in order to supervise its publication. Here, all too soon, and before the proofs had reached his hands, he died. From his literary style you would scarcely call up to your imagination a picture of what the man actually was like. For Mr. Lowe certainly wrote somewhat dogmatically, as indeed anyone with pronounced views upon a subject next his heart must perforce do. It may be, too, that his editor has assisted in strengthening such an impression. For Mr. Allison has a happy knack of raising discussion on some equine subject, and then, after controversy, he proceeds to “make his enemies his footstool.” But here, from the hand of Mr. R. H. Dangar, Lowe’s close friend, is a little picture on the converse side of that which we draw for ourselves from his writings. Mr. Dangar, of Neotsfield, writes:—

“I do not know much of Bruce Lowe’s earlier history, but understand he commenced making out his figures in his spare time when inspector of Government lands out back in Queensland. Later, he and Frank Reynolds worked together, or perhaps it would be more correct to say compared notes, as I think they worked independently, and discussed the question together afterwards.

“In appearance he was very tall and thin, with brownish grey hair, a very gentle nature, with a quiet voice, and altogether, as I knew him, a most lovable man. He had indifferent health for some years latterly in his life, and eventually died in London, whither he had gone to finish his book and get it published. He had a small connection as a stud stock agent in Sydney, and we, amongst others, used to send him our yearlings, and it was a treat to hear him reel off yards of stuff for T. S. Clibborn to repeat from the box. Lowe had no voice for selling, and he told me once he did not think he could get up and harangue the crowd—so he got Mr. Clibborn to sell for him, and used to prompt him as if he were reading out of a book, with never a note to help him—and catalogues in those days were not the elaborate productions of to-day. As to his character—well, I cannot believe he knew how to do a dirty action, and I would simply not believe anyone who might say anything against him.”