1924 – Cecil Godby, Jack Corteen and Heroic!

Two of the most influential breeders of bloodstock in Australia in the first half of the century were the brothers, Will and Fred Moses of Arrowfield Stud.   The twins, as they came to be known, began at Combadello, their magnificent sprawling sheep property, about 25 miles from Mungie Bundie on the Sydney side of Moree.  In the early 1890’s they had raced a few minor winners, although their involvement at that time with the Turf was somewhat desultory: rather than breeding horses, their real commitment was to breeding sheep.  Nonetheless, the family had enjoyed a long-term association with the Turf, their father Henry Moses having been a steward of the Hawkesbury Race Club away back in 1871 in company with Andrew Town and others.  The twins’ flirtation with the Turf deepened into an altogether more passionate affair when Courallie, sporting their own livery, won the 1896 Doncaster Handicap at Randwick and subsequently, Will and Fred Moses decided to establish a stud of mares on the fertile Combadello pastures.

From the very beginning, the brothers’ adventures in breeding seemed blessed with a touch of serendipity as they chanced upon the best of bloodstock in a series of happy adventures.  As we have seen, Ike Earnshaw purchased on their behalf those two very good Derby winners, Poseidon and Parsee, as foals at the break-up of Neotsfield and Tucka Tucka Studs respectively, and both were reared in the paddocks of Combadello.  The brothers’ biggest slice of luck came, however, when their father, the Hon. Henry Moses paid a visit to England early in the century and purchased St Alwyne and Flavus for them to use as stallions.

Considering the influence that both were to achieve (albeit with Flavus in ownership other than the Moses family), that particular excursion to England by Henry Moses was most fortuitous for the development of the Australian blood horse.   When the two stallions arrived in Australia after their voyage from England, Flavus was thinner than a drover’s packhorse in drought time, but St Alwyne had travelled well and was in fine fettle.  Only needing one stallion for their stud, Will and Fred Moses decided to retain St Alwyne and leased Flavus to E. R. White, although White was so taken by the first foals of Flavus that he purchased him outright at a stiff price a little more than a year later.

St Alwyne was to become the foundation stallion of the brothers Moses’ stud.  Bred by Baron Rothschild in England, the horse was a half-brother to an English Oaks winner and a son of that outstanding racehorse and stallion, St Frusquin.  St Alwyne had proven to be a good second-class galloper over a bit of ground in the Old Country finishing out of a place only once in his nine starts.  Considering his breeding, many people at the time expressed surprise that a horse of his quality was even sold to Australia.  But in those days the Rothschild Stud tended only to retain classic winners for their own breeding programme, and St Alwyne, for all of his aristocratic lineage, really hadn’t measured up to the exacting standards demanded by Baron Rothschild on the racecourse.  St Alwyne’s progeny first appeared on the winning statistics in Australia in 1909.

Among the good horses he had already got by the autumn of 1919, were the sisters, Lady Medallist (Caulfield Cup) and Moorilla (Sydney Cup); St Carwyne (A.J.C. Metropolitan); Gladwyn (M.V.R.C. Moonee Valley Cup twice); and Swagger (Adelaide Cup).  In the previous spring, St Alwyne had also sired his first Melbourne Cup winner in Nightwatch. And at the A.J.C. 1919 Autumn Meeting, Poitrel – retained to race in the familiar yellow jacket, white sleeves and black cap of Will and Fred Moses, after buyers had shied away from him at the Sydney yearling sales – crowned St Alwyne’s reputation as a sire of stayers by dominating the weight-for-age events and sweeping the board with the Autumn Stakes, Cumberland Stakes, and A.J.C. Plate.  In short, with the singular exception of the V.R.C. Australian Cup, by the autumn of 1919, the sons of Henry Moses had either bred or reared the winner of every major Australian staying event on the Australian Turf calendar.  Moreover, the extraordinary successes of Poitrel had helped propel Fred Moses onto the A.J.C. committee, filling the vacancy created by the resignation of Adrian Knox.

It was in the summer of 1911-12 during the period of St Alwyne’s dominance and their burgeoning influence as thoroughbred breeders, that Will and Fred Moses decided to separate their bloodstock interests from their extensive pastoral holdings of Combadello.  Combadello had proven to be somewhat isolated from the more established horse-breeding districts and broodmare owners often had difficulty getting their mares there.  The brothers cast around for a property in the Hunter Valley to which to relocate their stud farm; they finally settled on more than 2,000 acres at Arrowfield on the Hunter and about five miles up from Jerry’s Plains.  The river country with its deep deposits of brown and black soil well fused with lime and other mineral salts was ideal pastureland for thoroughbreds.  Will and Fred Moses then set about stocking the property with some very valuable Australian and English mares.

By the autumn of 1919, however, St Alwyne was 20 years old, and the Moses brothers began making various inquiries through British bloodstock agents for a necessary replacement stallion.  Their choice eventually fell upon Valais, a very well-bred son of the 1905 English Derby winner Cicero, after Lord Rosebery’s racing manager, C.C. Edmunds, had recommended him to them.  Valais had been a first-class racehorse.  Although unplaced at his only three starts at two, at three he had won the Newmarket Windsor Stakes (9f) and run fourth in The English Derby finishing only a half-length from the winner, Fifinella.  Valais boasted a double classic cross of Bend Or and Hampton, although in appearance, being a chestnut with one white half-stocking, he threw distinctly towards Bend Or.

As rich and glorious as the pages of the Arrowfield Stud Book already were with the deeds of St Alwyne’s progeny, the Stud’s most golden chapter was about to be written and with it, the whole course of Australian thoroughbred breeding would change forever.  In May 1919 the first advertisements for Arrowfield’s new stallion, at a fee of 50 guineas, began to appear in the Sydney sporting journals.  In late June he arrived, and all up cost about £3,500 to land in Australia.  For Valais, those rich and fertile pastures of the Hunter Valley into which the Brothers’ Moses had delivered him, would be the “promised land”.  Although the stallion suffered a fertility problem – he only got on average about half his mares in foal – most of his progeny were outstanding, especially the colts.  When one considers his smaller numerical representation compared to other stallions, his record of producing class racehorses is truly marvellous.  He would prove to be the leading sire in Australia for five successive seasons.

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In his first Australian spring in 1919 Valais only served a very limited book of mares, almost all of them drawn from Arrowfield’s own paddocks.  This, together with the horse’s limited fertility, explains why in the autumn of 1922, Will and Fred Moses only sold five yearlings publicly through the Sydney sales, although three others were sold privately, while the brothers retained a few of the more backward yearlings to race themselves.  The five youngsters auctioned at those 1922 sales realised an aggregate sum of 1895 guineas with the most expensive, the future A.J.C. St Leger-winning filly Lady Chillwick realising 825 guineas.  The first hint of what was to come occurred later that year at Flemington on Melbourne Cup day when, in the November Nursery Handicap, the race preceding King Ingoda’s Cup, that smart daughter of Valais named Valrona flashed past the post a length clear of the field at odds of 50/1.  She was a good filly and in the following season took out the Adrian Knox Stakes.  It wasn’t long before bookmakers and punters alike began to pay more respect to the breed.

In the following weeks, Valwyne and Vallary consolidated the stallion’s nascent reputation by running placings in good company.  But as it turned out, the best horse of that first crop was being given a little more time to develop and did not appear until the autumn of 1923.  Then in March, Quintus, the future winner of the V.R.C. Newmarket and Standish Handicaps, put in a winning appearance at Flemington and later that same month, at the same course, was beaten a head in the prestigious Gibson Carmichael Stakes.  On the same day in Newcastle, the most expensive yearling of Valais’s first crop sold through a public auction, Lady Valais, won at her debut by four lengths.  Rarely, in the course of Australian thoroughbred history, had a first-season sire achieved so much with so few.   It is hard to believe now, but the speed shown by that first crop of Valais at the time gave forth a prejudice about the stallion’s inability to sire stayers. Nonetheless, there was intense speculation as to the prices that the second offering by Valais might realise through the sales ring, as the Sydney Easter Sales of 1923 approached.

William Inglis and Son Ltd disposed of 444 yearlings at those sales, and even before the auction hammer had fallen for the first time, it was widely expected that Lot No 20 would top the lot.  When one studies the pedigree in the yellowed sales catalogue now, it is not difficult to understand why even without making any allowance for the handsome chestnut colt’s faultless conformation.   The yearling was by Valais from the imported mare Chersonese. A bay that had failed in her only two appearances on a racecourse, Chersonese came from one of the most distinguished families in the General Stud Book.  By Cylgad, she boasted the wonderful Chelandry as her dam, a mare who had won five races including The One Thousand Guineas and had finished second in both the English Oaks and the English St Leger.

Chelandry’s performance as a broodmare was no less impressive, and her offspring included Neil Gow, The English Two Thousand Guineas winner, as well as Traquair, Skyscraper, Chelys, Perdiccas and Popinjay. Those six sons and daughters between them won between them £38,290. But it was also what they achieved after they had finished on the racecourse. Skyscraper produced Syce; Popinjay was the dam of Magpie, Popingaol and Good And Gay (dam of Bold And Bad and Saucy Sue); and from Chelys descended the Breeders’ Plate winner Nincompoop and other speedy horses including Gold Light and Razzle Dazzle, who scored a much-discussed win over Gloaming. Among the progeny of Samphire, by Isinglass from Chelandry, was the crack U.S.A. sire, Wrack while Bobolink, by William the Third from Chelandry, became one of the most highly prized mares in America. Curiously enough, two daughters of Chelandry finished up in the Goulburn Valley of Victoria, Chersonese who after Arrowfield went to The Nook Stud, and Yippingale who went to the Noorilim Stud. Mind you, the matronly legacies of the two mares in Australia could hardly have been more different with Yippingale’s progeny never winning a principal race. Chelandry herself died in March 1917 after foaling a particularly big colt (dead) by Junior. In 1916, she had been barren for the first time in 17 years.

 Of course, this colt being sold by William Inglis and Son Ltd was heavily inbred, but Will and Fred Moses were not averse to a bit of inbreeding provided it was to the very best of stock and so long as the size was retained.   And this fellow would come to represent the apotheosis of the theory in practice. One man who had spent a lot of time examining the Chersonese colt in the days leading up to the sales was the successful Victorian trainer, Cecil Godby. After his first look at the chestnut son of Valais, Godby never failed to pay him a visit on every subsequent trip to Inglis’s. For a good few years now, yearlings had been the all-important side of Godby’s business. More recently, his principal clients Jack Corteen and George Tye had begun concentrating on the raw material and what a success Godby had made of it on their behalf.

Yearling buying is looked upon as a lottery. Not so with Godby. Every yearling was thoroughly inspected with his secretary in attendance to write copious notes in the catalogue. Godby then alighted on his picks and a valuation was affixed to each. His worries were generally over long before the sales commenced as he had reduced each yearling to a commercial issue. He didn’t expect to buy a Derby winner every time he saluted the auctioneer but reasoned that every yearling well bought could be properly placed for racing with the chance of a good one sometimes developing. However, until Easter 1923, Godby had never really bought the high-priced article at all. Yet he boasted a remarkable record of getting first-class horses at cheap prices as the likes of Demonte, Flaviol, Demetrius, Switch, Lethargic, Coolah, Irish Rhythm and Gadfly demonstrated. The problem with the Chersonese colt as Godby well knew, was that he wouldn’t come cheap. However, three days before the opening session of the William Inglis Sales, Cecil Godby trained The Monk to win the A.J.C. Sires’ Produce Stakes for George Tye on the first day of the Randwick Autumn Meeting. The Absurd colt was well-supported by the stable, too. Suddenly, the trainer had his commission from none other than Jack Corteen, the proprietor of Zander’s bond stores in King-street, Melbourne, and it was a sky-high commission at that!

The relevant page in Godby’s yearling catalogue was well-nigh written over with eulogies extolling the virtues of the youngster. The opening bid on Lot No.20 was 500 guineas and quickly advanced until Godby got him for 1800 guineas. When the hammer fell, Godby declared to a friend seated next to him: “That’s the first time in my career I have got the yearling I fancied most.”  It was a heroic price that did, indeed, top the Inglis sales. Of course, all of the Valais’ stock was in keen demand at those Inglis Sales and on the first day, Arrowfield sold nine yearlings by the stallion for an aggregate of 6785 guineas – the majority being sold to Victorian buyers. I might add that Jack Corteen recouped his lavish outlay the very next day when the A.J.C. Autumn Meeting resumed and a well-backed Purser gave the Godby stable the All-Aged Stakes.

The price paid for this Chersonese colt, however, fell well short of the Australian record, and it was eclipsed at the Chisholm and Company yearling sales only six days later, when Rosehill trainer Bill Booth paid 2600 guineas for a Comedy King – Ramson colt, on behalf of Mr Otway Falkiner, which was subsequently registered as King David.  Incidentally, that price was the second-highest ever paid up to that time, after the 3050 guineas paid for Orcus, Poseidon’s brother.  But for all that, the 1800 guineas bid by Godby was big money in those days, and the history of bloodstock auctions is littered with expensive yearlings that belied their pedigree and conformation when tried on the only Turf that mattered.  But Godby had chosen shrewdly and from that moment until October 23rd, 1924 when the V.R.C. would deny big-betting Jack Corteen the privilege of racing horses, the flashy chestnut would give his owner every reason to bet big.  The colt was subsequently named Heroic.

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The stable that Heroic joined that autumn was then the most successful in Victoria and the one most feared by Australia’s bookmakers.  Only the previous season, the man conducting it, Cecil Godby, had beaten Jack Holt for the Melbourne trainers’ premiership, and it was the Allendale Stock Farm located down on the bay at Mentone, which supplied most of the horsepower that enabled him to do it. Allendale, complete with its extensive stabling and a private training track, had been in the Tye family for years, and George Tye and Jack Corteen were Godby’s two biggest clients. When the 1922-23 racing season ended in July, Godby had won eighteen races at the Melbourne meetings and four races at the Sydney meetings for total prize money of almost £22,000. One measure of his dominance was the fact that in June 1923 when entries were declared for the Caulfield and Melbourne Cups as well as the Cantala Stakes, the Godby stable boasted no less than fourteen!  During the closing months of 1923, Godby’s two biggest owners negotiated an agreement to amalgamate their racing interests, with all of their horses being jointly owned in partnership from January 1st, 1924.  Heroic, who by then had already won three of his four-race starts, was the single exception to this arrangement and remained in the sole ownership of Corteen.

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For almost half a century the name of Godby was one to conjure with in Australian racing. Cecil Godby was one of four brothers who each became successful jockeys to varying degrees, and yet they hailed from a non-racing family. Charles, Cecil, Frank and Norman Godby were born in that order and all in the space of five years from 1883 to 1887, while a sister, Dorothy, came along three years later. Cecil, the second eldest, was born in Adelaide on April 9, 1884, but began his career in racing as an apprentice jockey in Armidale, N.S.W. Harry Godby pere, was an educated newspaper editor and the boys all spent their formative years in Armidale, in the New England district of New South Wales where Harry worked on the local paper. Now, while the pen might be mightier than the sword, it was inferior to the horse insofar as each of the boys was concerned. The Godbys’ Armidale home was near the local racecourse and trainers finding their way to the track by the dawn’s early light would pull the boys out of bed to go and ride the horses in their morning work.

While still going to school, Cecil Godby rode a number of winners at meetings in the Armidale district. It was only after his older brother Charles through the good offices of a Mr Wilkinson, a commissioner for the Dick Wootton stable, got in with that establishment, that Cecil quit school at the age of fourteen to pursue his own racing dreams. After a brief spell at Wonbobbie Station, near Warren, where he was recruited to ride for Fritz Buckland, Cecil Godby made his way to Sydney. Largely because of his brother Charles’s success with Wootton, Cecil landed an apprenticeship with John Gough at Randwick and served three years there. A talented jockey, Godby won a race within a month and enjoyed much success riding in the ‘ruby jacket, pink sleeves, gold bands, and cap’ of W. H. Mate, the Tarcutta studmaster and Gough’s most prolific client.

Godby’s best wins came on the progeny of the stallion Gossoon, winning a Maribyrnong Plate, Champagne Stakes and Caulfield Guineas on Ibex; and a Villiers, Carrington and Challenge Stakes on Fulminate. It was in 1899 that Cecil Godby came to Melbourne for the first time, the same year that Sweetheart won the Moonee Valley Cup for Gough. The following year Godby managed to get the prized ride on Ibex in the V.R.C. Maribyrnong Plate when just six months shy of his seventeenth birthday. How he did so is an interesting tale. Bill Delaney had the mount on Ibex in the Debutant Stakes but the horse got away badly and could only run fourth. Godby had practically broken Ibex in and had charge of him in all his work, so Gough decided to let the youngster try his hand on the chestnut son of Gossoon a few weeks later at Flemington. Godby jumped Ibex smartly away from his barrier and won easily. After that Gough rarely looked beyond Godby who completed his time and then struck out for himself.

Increasing weight forced Godby into the ranks of jumping riders at a young age but even then he continued to ride winners over the timber.  But as successful as Godby was as a jockey, his brother Norman, who won a Melbourne Cup on Lord Cardigan at the age of sixteen, eclipsed his feats. For a time, after Norman’s Cup success, Cecil Godby went to the West but didn’t make a splash there. On his way back, he bought a horse or two for himself and, just for the record, the first race he won as a trainer was at the 1906 S.A.J.C. Autumn Meeting when he both trained and rode Javanese to win the Maiden Plate. Returning to Melbourne, it was in the 1906-07 racing season that the supremely self-confident Cecil Godby first took out a Melbourne trainer’s licence, starting out with a horse called Withan, an aged gelding by Medallion from Happy Moments. At the time, he kept him in quarters at Barmby’s Hotel, Flemington, and ‘strapped’ himself. In June 1907 Godby came into money for the first time when Withan landed the Cambria Welter at Caulfield. Soon afterwards he successfully put the son of Medallion over fences. Other horses in the shape of Kanowna and Chiss soon came Godby’s way.

It was in September 1907 that Godby relocated to Caulfield and began renting horse boxes there. Within two years, he had entered the marriage stakes with a local girl, Sophia Elliot, and in due course, the marriage would produce three children viz. Ken, Greg and Dorothy. In June 1910 Cecil won a Welter at Moonee Valley with Lord Dudley, a son of Grafton that was his first yearling purchase, having made do with tried older horses before then. It’s worth noting that Lord Dudley was bought for a client who ultimately didn’t want the horse. Godby retained ownership and the horse proved a gold mine in a racecourse career noted for its longevity. When he won that race at Moonee Valley, Godby was having his first house, ‘Rosny’, constructed in The Grange at Caulfield and he desperately needed funds to pay the builder. Backed into 6/4 favouritism in a field of fifteen, Lord Dudley ridden by ‘Greg’ Ross, fell in to win by a short head!

Even in those early days, when Godby bet, the ring soon knew he was at work and any winnings were either put back into the ring or used to extend and improve his property at East Caulfield. Always a great believer in the paddock treatment for horses i.e. wide open spaces rather than the confinement of boxes, Godby’s home was surrounded by lawns and paddocks, with the stables across the lane at the rear. In due course, his brother Norman built his own home next to him. Godby never prepared a really big string in those days, preferring to concentrate on some ten to twelve horses in training at any given time and most of them owned by himself. In those days it would take a man a long time to make money purely out of training fees and hence Godby’s recourse to the ring on his own horses.

The following year Cecil Godby enjoyed his first really big plunge on one from his own stable when Confide took the Grand National Steeplechase by five lengths. Godby had arranged to lease the horse only some eighteen months before from his uncle A. H. Oliver of Coonamble, who bred Confide. It was Oliver who did much to encourage his nephews to go into racing in the first place. That Grand National Steeple result could be richly contrasted with the Grand National Hurdle of 1920. Cecil Godby owned and trained Bright Plume, and was so confident of winning the race that year, that he declared to all and sundry the Bright Steel gelding was ‘timed to go off at 2.25’ and that nothing could stop him from winning. Bright Plume ran up to his trial alright, but he encountered a snag in the unconsidered Sandule.

The irony of the result was that Sandule should be trained by Cecil’s brother, Norman, who was thereby the unwitting means of preventing Cecil from raking in a small fortune in winning bets. Cecil Godby took the failure with good grace. In between those two Grand Nationals of 1911 and 1920, the Godby star continued in the ascendant. Perhaps his best horse during that period was Wedge, that black son of The Welkin originally bred and raced by John Turnbull. After Turnbull’s death, the horse was ultimately put through the sales ring and Godby secured him for 710 guineas following a spirited bidding contest with Dan Seaton. Godby set Wedge for the 1917 A.J.C. Epsom Handicap and laid a poultice on him only to see the horse go narrowly under to the lightweight Satin Bird. Godby received some compensation the following autumn when in a famous victory, Wedge defeated the great Desert Gold at the finish of the V.A.T.C. Futurity Stakes.

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As the decade of the 1920s opened, with few exceptions, metropolitan trainers in Melbourne had to work their horses on a public track – either Flemington or Caulfield or one of the courses down the line. There were only two training establishments in the immediate neighbourhood of the Victorian capital which could have been regarded as self-contained and private, in the sense that a horse could be brought to peak racing condition without leaving the property. One of these establishments was ‘Braemar’ owned by the sportsman who raced as “Mr S. A. Rawdon”, a none-too-convincing nom de course for Dr Syme, a medical doctor who belonged to the family of Melbourne newspaper magnates. The other establishment was the Allendale Stock Farm. Both properties were situated on the Dandenong-road outside of Mentone, and one wasn’t far distant from the other.

Adam Skirving, who trained for Mr Rawdon, managed Braemar, while Cecil Godby managed the Allendale Stock Farm. Braemar boasted a private track completely railed and equipped like a modern racecourse, while Allendale had two galloping tracks amenable to anything short of fast trials. The brothers Allan and George Tye jointly owned the Allendale Stock Farm. Originally hailing from Ontario, Canada, the brothers had come to Australia in the late 1880s and made their fortune initially from a furniture warehousing factory in South Melbourne which they ultimately extended into a retailing business.

During the first years of World War I, the great Lou Robertson trained a string of imported gallopers for the brothers and their most notable success came with Lavendo in the 1915 V.A.T.C. Caulfield Cup. However, by the autumn of 1917, Allan Tye became convinced that the ownership of racehorses didn’t yield an adequate return, particularly during wartime. Accordingly, the Allendale Stock Farm and almost all of the horses were put on the market. Almost all of the horses owned by the brothers were sold at Newmarket, Melbourne, by William C. Yuille and Company in two tranches, between March 1917 and November 1918. While most of the horses sold, the property didn’t. After more than a year and in the absence of a willing buyer, George Tye resolved to re-enter racing again in a big way by acquiring a string of horses but this time having them trained at Allendale solely at his own expense. Given the parlous state of prizemoney at the time and the overheads involved at Allendale, George Tye knew that it had to be a shrewd betting stable if it was to flourish profitably. It was with this in mind that he recruited Cecil Godby to take charge given that Lou Robertson had announced his intentions to return to his native New Zealand.

Allendale Stock Farm then consisted of some ninety acres of sheltered and spacious paddocks with twenty-six horseboxes. Nothing was overlooked in terms of professionalism and attached to one stable was a complete blacksmith’s shop. Originally the Allendale Stock Farm had been used for the breeding and training of trotters and the half-mile track where Lou Robertson formerly worked them had been converted into a dry-weather track for young gallopers. On a sand ridge in the same vicinity was another track of about equal dimensions where horses could be galloped when trackwork at Mentone racecourse had to be suspended during rain. The old quarantine paddocks at Allendale were still in use. Allan and George Tye in their heyday had brought out many valuable horses from England and in those looser times, these had been quarantined on the farm itself where a government official paid regular visits to ensure compliance.

It was in August 1918 that Cecil Godby moved into his new training quarters at Mentone and sold his fine property in The Grange at Caulfield, excluding the beautiful villa residence itself. Godby was just then emerging as one of the biggest plungers on the Australian Turf and in relocating to Mentone he sought both the therapeutic value of its beach to work his horses and its relative obscurity away from the touts and the tipsters of the city. It was on November 15, 1919, under the banner headline ‘MELBOURNE’S PLUNGER’ that Smith’s Weekly observed: “In the last year a rival to Eric Connolly and other big punters whom the Australian turf has known, has appeared in Victoria in the person of Cecil Godby. Until last Spring he was a comparatively small and little-known bettor, but during last year’s Cup carnival he began to loom large in the speculative firmament, and then, after a period of quiet which lasted for some months, he launched forth in the Autumn as the biggest plunger on the turf. This reputation he maintained throughout the Spring campaign just concluded, and his operations at the recent Caulfield and Melbourne Cup meetings alone stamped him as far and away the biggest punter of his day in Australia.”

Smith’s Weekly continued: “His bets are not made in casual ‘ponies’ or ordinary hundreds; he generally puts on as much money in one race as the average backer would hope to make from a year’s transactions with the books, and his wagers frequently overstep the thousand-pound mark. Nor is he content to put these big amounts on at rare intervals; often they are invested more than once in a single day’s racing, and the sum total of his daily operations, when he has been betting in his best form, oftentimes must run into a fair-sized fortune. The turf has certainly found a rare gambler in this young man, but even with his great penchant for plunging, he is credited with a deep strain of shrewdness and balance which saves him from the pitfalls into which so many heavy backers before him have fallen.”

Although only of slight stature, Godby had an abnormally big head for the size of his body and he was an easily identifiable presence in the betting ring. He was coolness personified as he went about his business amidst the tumult and the shouting of the ring, making his wagers in a quiet, unostentatious manner. Those bookmakers who operated on a big scale, gave him a preference if there was a rush on a horse, recognising in him a ‘good client’, who must be accommodated wherever possible if his custom was to be retained. One of Godby’s big bets of the 1919 Cup carnival was on one of his own horses, Colonel Chutney, who won the Railway Highweight Handicap with relish. Godby’s commission was said to be £500 and as 6/1 was averaged, at least £3,000 was won on the race.

He went for a bigger plunge on the same horse in a mile race at the Williamstown meeting the following Friday. No less than £1,000 was invested, but Colonel Chutney in a rather lumpy ride was rushed to the front too hurriedly, to be beaten a head by Ordella in a thrilling finish. Godby also landed a £2,000 double over the success of Lucknow and Artilleryman in the two Cups that year. Nor did Godby restrict his on-course wagering to the period before the starter’s flag had fallen. In those days so many of Melbourne’s tracks lent themselves to betting in running, Moonee Valley in particular, and Godby soon won a redoubtable reputation among the fielders for reading a race. Was it any wonder then, that George Tye recruited him to head up the operations of the Allendale Stock Farm?

For a time upon moving to Mentone, Godby trained Jack Corteen’s horses out of his own Mentone stables while he prepared the Tye horses out of Allendale. And he was eminently successful in this duel role too. In November 1920 Godby trained a treble at Sandown Park, something quite rare in those days. Soon Cecil Godby began buying more expensive yearlings and better-performed older racing stock at costly prices. Among his expensive bloodstock in the early 1920s were Purser (Sea Prince – Paper Money) for 1500 guineas; All Gold (Almissa – Golden Malt) for 1500 guineas; The Monk (Absurd – Cowl) for 1200 guineas; Grotesque (Absurd – Amyrian) for 1000 guineas; Darjeeling (Lucknow – Lady Honor) for 650 guineas; Three Kings (Comedy King-Kuningada) for 800 guineas; and Bonaparte (Boniform-Desmine) for 950 guineas. Flushed with success in the spring of 1923, Godby reputedly offered almost 5,000 guineas for the champion New Zealand four-year-old Rapine.

In 1921 the stable provided the Caulfield Guineas winner in Demetrius. Soon Godby was winning such better class races regularly, including both the Moonee Valley Cup and the Herbert Power Handicap in 1922 with Purser for Jack Corteen; and the V.R.C. Ascot Vale Stakes and A.J.C. Sires’ Produce Stakes in 1923 with The Monk for George Tye. Initially, Corteen cloaked his racecourse activities under the nom de course of ‘Les Ramsay’ but Purser’s successes in 1922-23 soon saw him discard that fiction and by the time Heroic came along Jack Corteen had emerged into the full glare of the spotlight and was even serving on the committee alongside Tye and Godby that eventually became the Victorian Breeders’, Trainers’ and Owners’ Association.

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There is a delightful story, perhaps apocryphal, that when the popular veterinary surgeon T. G. Doyle first set eyes upon Heroic – this perfect colt with the perfect pedigree – the good doctor immediately turned to examine the colt’s feet to see if they bore wings, although Doyle would be called upon later to examine Heroic in an altogether more serious vein.  Early in his two-year-old season, the horse suffered from an eye affliction that at one stage was thought might threaten blindness.  The veterinary surgeon diagnosed ‘recurring ophthalmia’, which he then treated successfully with drugs.  Despite this temporary setback, Heroic proved a brilliant two-year-old.  After seeing what he could do on the sequestered sands of Mentone, Cecil Godby brought him over to Sydney for his first race start as part of his stable’s assault on the 1923 A.J.C. Spring Meeting. Jack Corteen was into the ring early, as if it were something in bond and the chief of the Zander stores had a packet going on his colt.   Heroic, in the hands of George Harrison, scattered a field of twenty-six in the Breeders’ Plate, going to the front after half-a-furlong and winning in hollow fashion by two lengths.  It was clear, even then, that here, was something out of the ordinary.

Returned to Victoria, and united with jockey Hughie Cairns, he was surprisingly beaten in the Debutant Stakes at Caulfield before completing his spring campaign with victories in the Gwyn Nursery and the Maribyrnong Plate.  In the latter race and burdened with 9 st. 6lb, Heroic had a half-length to spare at the finish from Fuji San; the pair having scooted over the Flemington course in exactly 60 seconds, establishing a new race record for the prestigious juvenile classic.  Fuji San was yet another son of Valais and was to prove to be the other really outstanding horse from the sire’s second crop, although by comparison with Heroic, he had only cost his owner J. P. Arthur 500 guineas and thereby hangs a tale. Now and again a bargain can be secured at ringside by the delivery of a courageous opening bid and Fuji San is a prime example.

Prior to the sales, Arthur had told the auctioneer Reg Inglis that he would start the bidding for several of the Valais youngsters that year at 500 guineas, and he hoped he’d get one. He did start a couple and they both went higher. When Fuji San waltzed into the ring, “Five hundred!” cried Mr Arthur. “What?” said Reg, and then added: “All right, it will do for a start.” But it was both the start and the finish of bidding and Fuji San went on to become the best horse to ever carry J. P. Arthur’s colours. Not that he got much satisfaction out of it. For just like that top galloper Rostrum, Arthur parted with Fuji San when he was a young horse and his best days were still before him. But I digress.

When George Tye elected to go it alone with his string of horses at Allendale, he underestimated the cost. While his brother Allan, dropped out of the ownership of the horses, he still retained his half-share of the farm, for which George paid him rent. It was in order to help defray such a burdensome overhead that in January 1924, George Tye and Jack Corteen formed their racing partnership. Tye put in nineteen horses including The Monk while Corteen contributed seven including Purser. However, as mentioned above, Corteen continued to retain exclusive ownership of Heroic, the only horse excepted from the new arrangement.

The partners would race as ‘Messrs Tye and Corteen’ and George Tye’s colours of ‘pink and black stripes, white sleeves, pink cap’ became the official colours, with all the horses now stabled at the Allendale Stock Farm. Further improvements were also made at Allendale with a mile and a quarter track planted with buffalo grass being laid down in addition to the existing exercise track. The new track was watered by a state-of-the-art Noonan spraying system. There were also some additional loose boxes constructed and some of the stallion yards were split. This happy triumvirate of Cecil Godby, Jack Corteen and George Tye, now all sharing the superb private facilities of Allendale, was in a privileged position to indulge its gambling propensities to the full. Bookmakers right across the eastern seaboard were on red alert!

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In the autumn Heroic confirmed his reputation as the finest two-year-old colt seen out for years, although the campaign didn’t go smoothly. Godby and Corteen set Heroic for a first-up tilt against the older sprinters in the V.A.T.C. Oakleigh Plate. Heroic had rather easily beaten Little Flower in a private trial at home and imbued with this knowledge, the stable ladled the money on at Caulfield, so much so that Heroic went to the post as the 11/2 favourite. However, once again the Oakleigh Plate proved that it was not a race for two-year-olds when Heroic failed to run a place. Indeed, up to that time, only four juveniles had ever won the race and the last was Coil back in 1896! Redemption came at his next start when Heroic posted quite the best two-year-old performance of the year in winning the V.A.T.C. Alma Stakes under the crushing burden of 10 st 2lb in a big field of twenty-two. He might have only won by a neck but he conceded the runner-up Mercian King 34lb!

On the strength of his Caulfield performance, Heroic started a prohibitive 4/9 favourite for the V.R.C. Sires’ Produce Stakes. Alas, not for the last time, Heroic bungled the start and was unlucky to be beaten three-quarters of a length by Arendal, a colt by Beragoon that the free-spending E. M. Pearce had bought for 1000 guineas at the previous Sydney sales. Pearce,  a wealthy Melbourne wool magnate, initially raced under the nom de course of ‘E. M. Melrose’ and much will be made of his hapless bloodstock purchases in these pages, but Arendal did represent a momentary success. The following Thursday at Flemington, Heroic’s barrier etiquette was back to its best and down the straight-six of the Ascot Vale Stakes, he took charge at the distance on the outside fence and won by a length and a half from Fuji San and nine others.

Something of the same Jekyll and Hyde character at the barrier marred Heroic’s second visit to Randwick. Before an estimated crowd of 80,000 people on A.J.C. Doncaster Day, Heroic, the even-money favourite, was in a cranky mood at the start for the A.J.C. Sires’ Produce Stakes and was half-side on when the tapes were released. So badly was the son of Valais left that he had no earthly chance in the big field and as a result, thousands of pounds in bets were lost. It was yet another hint of the waywardness that was to become quite pronounced in the years ahead. Leslie Wallace won the race with the fillies Versine and Brimming filling the minor placings. Conversely, when twenty-two juveniles started for the Champagne Stakes on the following Wednesday, Heroic was on his best behaviour at the start. Always in a handy position, Heroic finished with an electric dash on the rails and passed the judge’s box two lengths ahead of the outsider Loquat, who beat Leslie Wallace by three-quarters of a length for second money.

Those with an eye to the future might have caught sight of Spearfelt, the A.J.C. Easter Stakes winner, coming with a rattling run over the last furlong to finish on the placegetters’ heels. In winning, Heroic slashed a half-second from the race record previously held jointly by Tressady Queen and Furious, which confirmed the smart times clocked the previous Saturday. The inside of the course was in wonderful order that week. How often have four new race records been established at Randwick in a six-race programme, as happened on the first day of the meeting? In taking the Champagne Stakes, Heroic lifted his own prizemoney to £11,826 and thereby displaced Thrice from the position of Australia’s leading juvenile stakes winner.

Heroic’s splendid performances in his first season merely served to confirm the immense value of Valais as a stallion to the Australian bloodstock industry. Moreover, this foal, bred and weaned on the Arrowfield pastures, served as a wonderful advertisement for the dispersal of that great stud itself.  For during the summer of 1923-24, Will and Fred Moses decided to sell up, attributing their decision to a ‘family matter’. In fact, Will Moses was in very poor health and brother Fred wished to travel extensively in England and on the Continent.  William Inglis and Son Ltd, and H. Chisholm and Company were appointed to act in conjunction as the sales agents and the auction was conducted on the Arrowfield property itself, on Wednesday, 16th April 1924 in the week prior to the beginning of the A.J.C. Autumn Meeting. The sale attracted widespread interest and it came as no surprise when Valais was sold for a record 14,400 guineas, eclipsing the 13,000 guineas paid for Carbine more than a quarter of a century earlier.  The successful bidder was Herbert Thompson of Oakleigh and Tarwyn Park, who was bidding as part of a joint enterprise with his cousins, the Widden and Caneema studmasters.  Chersonese, with a fine foal at foot by Valais, and served by that stallion again, brought the top price for a broodmare at the dispersal when she was sold to Alec Creswick for 5100 guineas.

Actually, Creswick spent 8,000 guineas in purchasing three broodmares that day. As well as Chersonese and her fine colt foal, he parted with 1,800 guineas and 1100 guineas respectively for the broodmares, Scanty and Pistole.  Neither Scanty nor Pistole achieved any good class winners but the money paid for Chersonese proved to be worth every penny.  The foal that she had at her foot was Thracian who turned out a really good racehorse and probably would have ranked high among Australian performers had he not been troubled with his kidneys during his racing days.  He ran second to Rampion in the Victoria Derby and later was an outstanding stud success, getting Alec Creswick a Victoria Derby winner in Feldspar.  The foal Chersonese was carrying turned out to be a lovely yearling but she broke her leg while being handled one day and had to be destroyed.

Later, Chersonese became the dam of Cimbrian, a really top handicapper and the winner of a Williamstown Cup and Hotham Handicap, among other good races.  In all, 136 lots changed hands for 60,575 guineas – a record for Australia.  It was the end of an era.  Before giving 14,400 guineas for Valais, Herbert Thompson, concerned about the fertility of Valais, had asked Clive Inglis to make a report on the stallion’s record with his mares.  To do so, Inglis had to wade laboriously through several volumes of the Australian Stud Book.  The task was made more difficult by the fact that when mares missed in those days the offending sire was not named.  This practice was subsequently changed in the Australian Stud Book, which also began to show a fertility table for stallions, an innovation for which Jim McFadden was responsible.

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After his winter spell, Heroic’s A.J.C. Derby campaign got off to an inauspicious start at Warwick Farm in the new season when he showed all the worst traits of the Valais breed, by being left at the post.  The next start was the Chelmsford Stakes at Randwick.  During the week before this race, the Godby stable went to extraordinary lengths to try and curb the colt’s aversion to facing the starting barrier.  On the Thursday prior to the race, with Ashley Reed in the saddle and sporting the colours, Heroic was taken to the Randwick start.  There, alongside, was the official A.J.C. starter, Mr Mackellar, mounted on a hack, and Heroic’s regular postillion, Hughie Cairns, sartorially resplendent in the red coat of the clerk of the course.

Yet, what made the lesson particularly instructive for the horse wasn’t so much the smartness of Cairns’ attire but rather the size of the stockwhip the jockey was wielding in one hand.  Several times Heroic baulked, but he was eventually coaxed into jumping off fairly well; Reed galloped him smartly for seven furlongs and the colt pulled up in a lather of sweat.  The next morning there was another barrier lesson with the same players and stage props, and on this occasion, Heroic worked really well, certainly well enough to inspire the stable to have a dash at the Sydney ring.  Incidentally, some attributed Heroic’s antics at the barrier due to his inbreeding.  In point of fact, he inherited this waywardness from Valais, whose second greatest son, Manfred, as we shall see, was much worse although he was certainly not inbred.

The Sydney Tattersall’s Club meeting of 1924 marked the opening of Gloaming’s final Australian campaign and Dick Mason, the champion’s trainer, expected the previous year’s Derby winner Ballymena, to prove the horse to beat.  But at a distance of nine furlongs and with the pull in the weights enjoyed by the three-year-old, the Godby stable was supremely confident of their charge; and Heroic was backed down to start the second favourite.  The band regaled the 40,000-strong crowds with a rousing rendition of ‘In the Gloaming’ as the field proceeded to the start.  An interesting feature of the race was that the field, including Rivoli, contained four winners of the A.J.C. Derby – three actual and one prospective.  At the barrier, the old champion was a bit restive and the young champion troublesome, but both were despatched on terms.

Rather than make the running, Reed steadied Heroic and dropped him back to race with Gloaming.  At the home turn, Gloaming and the others left the rails and Reed dashed Heroic up on the inside.  The old horse responded gamely but could not match strides with the young colt.  At the post, Heroic had set a new Australasian record of 1-minute 50 ¼ seconds for the journey.  It was a splendid performance from Jack Corteen’s champion.  The equivalent Melbourne race meeting on that afternoon was at Moonee Valley where patrons keenly watched the posting of the Randwick results; there was much satisfaction when it was seen that their local hero had triumphed over Gloaming. Moreover, it suggested the testing mile and a half of the Derby, against his own age group, was well within Heroic’s compass.  Godby now put the colt away in readiness for the Randwick classic.

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There were heavy rains at the beginning of Derby week in Sydney although they had the effect of enhancing rather than detracting from the condition of the course come race day.  Derby Day itself was overcast with intermittent rain but 78,000 racegoers still made the pilgrimage to Randwick bedecked in the finest of fashions.

The 1924 A.J.C. Derby field and race conditions appear in the table below:

The race attracted seven starters, although only three genuinely serious candidates. Heroic retained his position at the head of the market right to the very end.  Second elect for the race was Nigger Minstrel, a workmanlike bay by All Black, and a full brother to that wonderful staying mare, Desert Gold.  Like his famous older sister, Nigger Minstrel was raced by his breeder, Tom Lowry of Hawke’s Bay, and trained by Fred Davis.  He was rated the best colt in the Dominion that year and crossed the Tasman with a tremendous reputation.  As a juvenile, he had won both the Fitzherbert Stakes and the Great Northern Champagne Stakes and been placed behind Gloaming and Glentruin at weight-for-age.

It was not unusual for two-year-olds in those days in New Zealand to challenge the older horses in special weight events.  Nigger Minstrel’s first appearance in Australia had come at Rosehill where he won the Guineas with such contempt that he was immediately pronounced the likely Derby winner even though he had not been seen in public over the Derby distance.  Unfortunately, an incident occurred immediately in the wake of the victory that severely inhibited his Derby preparation.  Before his rider had weighed in, the lad in charge of Nigger Minstrel began to lead him away.  He was called back, and upon swinging the colt round rather smartly, the horse wrenched himself.  It was thought for a time that he might not even be able to honour his Derby engagement and was stopped in his work for a week.

The third favourite in Derby betting was Spearfelt.  Bred in Victoria and by the Spearmint stallion, Spearhead, this little colt had endured a rather romantic struggle for survival in the early days of his life that lent a certain sentiment and colour to this particular chapter of the Derby history.   As a foal he was sold at foot with his dam, Lady Champion, to Widden Stud in the Hunter Valley; the mare and foal were actually bought by William Inglis and Sons acting on behalf of Alf Thompson at Widden.  During the voyage by steamer carrying them both to Sydney, however, Lady Champion died and the youngster had to be bottle-raised at Newmarket until he was old enough to be transported in a cattle wagon to Widden.

Subsequently, the colt was returned to Sydney as a yearling and sold at Easter 1923 for 120 guineas to Doug Grant, a Melbourne racing identity. At two, although found wanting over shorter trips, Spearfelt had confirmed his class by winning both the Gibson-Carmichael Stakes and the A.J.C. Easter Stakes over seven furlongs.  He had served notice of his Derby credentials when he went under to the good older horses Polycletan and Purser in a head-bobbing finish in the Rosehill Cup, an open handicap over eleven furlongs only a fortnight earlier.  The other starters in the Derby that year were Noscitur, the high-priced son of Lady Wallace owned by the Victorian ‘S. A. Rawdon’; Arendal, another Victorian challenger, carrying the colours of ‘E. M. Melrose’; Dan Lewis’s colt, Solidify; and Sir Dighlock.

It was a race that was the subject of some very heavy wagering, particularly from the Godby stable.  By the time the bell summoned the Derby horses to the enclosure, steady rain had begun to fall.  The betting was still in full swing when the barrier was released. Sir Dighlock set off at a good gallop and was already twelve lengths in front of Solidify, Heroic and Nigger Minstrel before the milepost.  The order remained much the same until just before the home turn when the tearaway leader was grabbed by both Heroic and Solidify, although Nigger Minstrel and Spearfelt were within striking distance. Heroic got to the front only to be challenged almost immediately by Nigger Minstrel with Spearfelt matching strides although running in slightly under the whip. Getting the utmost out of his mount and himself, Cairns kept the colt going as if for his life.  In a magnificent final furlong, Heroic lasted to win by a head from the New Zealand colt, with Spearfelt a further head away third.

That last furlong of the race confirmed George Orwell’s dictum that sport is an alternative form of war, but Heroic absorbed the venom and came back for more. Given the closeness of the result as the horses flashed past the post, the crowd remained hushed until Heroic’s number was hoisted.  The A.J.C. judge on that famous occasion was Dudley Smith, who upon his eventual retirement in 1948 after twenty-seven years in the job, unhesitatingly nominated it as the most memorable finish of the thousands he had seen.  Few of those privileged to be at Randwick on that day would have disagreed.  Jack Corteen later presented to the club a large framed photograph depicting the finish; it currently hangs on the walls of the Stud Book department.  As narrow as the winning margin might have been there was nothing plebeian about this performance from Heroic; it bore all of the hauteur and divine grace of an aristocrat among thoroughbreds.  We were reminded yet again that, yes, breeding does count.

Few doubted that three cracking colts filled the placings, although opinions were divided as to whether or not the best horse had won.  Certainly, the Derby post-mortem suggested that Heroic may have been a rather lucky winner.  Nigger Minstrel had met with considerable interference during the race, as had Spearfelt to a lesser extent, and the latter had also been baulked at the start.  The chequered passages received by the two minor place getters and the volume of the money lifted from the betting ring by connections of the winner created uneasiness within the racing establishment.  It was an uneasiness that eventually found public expression in an editorial in “The Australasian” of October 18th under the headline ‘The Evils of Betting’.  The paper observed:

“………….There is a phase of betting which is strongly condemned, not only by social reformers but even more so by racing men who place the good repute of the Turf above every other consideration.  We refer, of course, to the wagering of large sums on single events won by individuals known in the vernacular of the racecourse as “plungers”.  These heavy bettors are a danger to themselves and a menace to the Turf.  From the earliest days of British racing to the present time, few indeed of these ‘plungers’ have escaped financial ruin, and the magnitude of their operations has inevitably led to reports of jockeys and trainers being bribed and horses being pulled.  Probably many of these sinister rumours were totally without foundation, nevertheless even when they were false the good name of the Turf suffered, and the faddists who oppose racing were thereby furnished with effective ammunition.

Unfortunately, the ‘plunger’ was strongly in evidence at the recent Randwick meeting and his operations in connection with the A.J.C. Derby probably were the cause of the rumours, which were circulated in Sydney that the race was to be ‘fixed’ for one of the competitors.  Some little colour was given to the canard – for we are certain in this instance rumour was a lying jade – by the announcement that an attempt was being made by the parties connected with one of the favourites to buy a dangerous opponent.  As a matter of fact, the would-be buyer of Spearfelt was Mr McCaughey, a veteran sportsman and wealthy station owner who has bred some good horses in New South Wales and would like to own a prospective Derby winner.  Betting considerations do not trouble Mr McCaughey.

The ‘plunger’ we have referred to, is reported to have won a very large sum over the success of Heroic in the Derby, and on his own admission lost £10,600 on the second day of the meeting.  Again, betting on the same colossal scale, his winnings on the third day are said to have approximated £15,000.  Now, we feel certain that there was no valid reason for supposing the operations of the ‘plungers’ at Randwick were not perfectly straight and above board in every way, there is no blinking the fact that this heavy betting caused much uneasiness in some quarters and much idle and harmful talk.  One leading owner went so far as to express doubts regarding his jockey to the stipendiary stewards.  These officials were able to reassure the owner, and there is no doubt the jockey did his level best to win the race in question, but the incident serves to show the kind of poison that is distilled from the noxious weeds of inordinate betting.

An individual may have the legal right to gamble on a race in thousands of pounds as if they were marbles if he has the money to pay with it if he loses, but morally he has no right indirectly to cast suspicion on other people in this way.  Anyhow, let us hope that the plunging at Randwick was only a temporary obsession and that there will be none of it during the spring carnival in Victoria.”

It was to prove a curiously prophetic piece of journalism.

 Heroic returned to Melbourne to win the Caulfield Guineas one week later but it was to be the last time that the chestnut sported the now-famous colours of Jack Corteen.  Within a matter of weeks, the big betting owner was banned by the V.R.C. from owning racehorses.  The seeds of his destruction were sown in the Coongy Handicap, run four days after that Caulfield Guineas.  As we have seen, Corteen and George Tye jointly owned Purser, a rather well-named horse by Sea Prince from Paper Money.  He was friendless in the betting ring for that event and drifted out to 20/1 before running accordingly.  Three days later, in the Caulfield Cup, Purser was rather sensationally backed in from 50/1 to 15/1 before running out an easy winner, despite being burdened with 9 st. 5lb.  The press during the following week rang with declamations against the plunderers.  Although the V.A.T.C. stewards said nothing on Cup Day itself, the following Tuesday they opened a retrospective inquiry into Purser’s running in the Coongy; at noon on the following Thursday, the stewards announced their findings.

The panel concluded that Purser was not allowed to do his best in the Coongy Handicap, and disqualified George Tye and Jack Corteen, together with Cecil Godby and Hugh Cairns as well as the horse, for a year.  The decision meant that Tye and Corteen had to sever all relationships with the Turf for the term of the disqualification. The four principals appealed the decision to the V.R.C. committee, which met on the following Monday to consider the matter. This was a high drama that might have tested even Nat Gould’s imagination. Crowds flocked around the offices of the club in Bourke St as the appeal was heard. The ten V.R.C. committeemen who adjudicated on the appeal were L. K. S. Mackinnon, Ted Baillieu, William Leonard, Henry Currie, Edward Manifold, J. A. Macleod, Septimus Miller, J. M. Niall, Philip Russell and Agar Wynne. In explanation of the failure of Purser in the Coongy Handicap, it was argued that the jockey Hugh Cairns, had been struck in the eye by a clod of mud. Corroboration of this story was furnished at the appeal by William Kennedy, a well-known racehorse owner. Several jockeys were called as witnesses among them Bob Lewis, Fred Dempsey and George Young.  The hearing of evidence from the parties concerned, and witnesses whom they called, took two and a half hours. In comparison, the committee’s decision to dismiss the appeals and uphold the disqualifications took just fifteen minutes.

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Two days after the V.R.C. stewards disqualified Heroic and his connections and two days before the V.R.C. upheld the stewards’ ruling, racegoers were given a reminder of the potency of the Chelandry blood when another grandson of the legendary broodmare, The Night Patrol, won the W. S. Cox Plate at Moonee Valley. The strapping bay was bred in England by Lord Rosebery and was got by the high-class performer Stedfast from Dark Flight, a daughter of Dark Ronald and Chelandry. Imported from England in 1924, by the Governor of Victoria, Lord Stradbroke, and trained here by James Scobie, The Night Patrol was a splendid racehorse both in England and Australia, and his stake winnings eventually amounted to more than 16,000 pounds. His principal wins here apart from the W. S. Cox Plate would include the Cantala Stakes, C. M. Lloyd Stakes in which he easily defeated Heroic, Linlithgow Stakes (twice), C. F. Orr Stakes, and the William Reid Stakes. At one time, he would hold the Australasian record for six and a half furlongs. When his career on the Turf ended in 1926, he was sold to Gerald Buckley of the Rock House Stud, Kyneton, for 10,000 guineas. Some years later, when Mr Buckley died, The Night Patrol was again sold at Mackinnon and Cox’s yards, with A. T. Creswick of The Nook Stud, being the buyer at 1500 guineas. The horse dropped dead from heart failure in March 1941 at Newmarket soon after he arrived at Mackinnon and Cox’s yards from Nagambie, where he was to be sold as part of The Nook dispersal.

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But let’s return to Heroic. The disqualifications meant that this grandson of Chersonese immediately became ineligible for the 1924 Victoria Derby and Melbourne Cup. The V.R.C. also had the option of disqualifying all the horses owned by the pair and the disqualification could extend even beyond any sale.  Had this option been exercised, the racing public would have been denied the pleasure of Heroic.  The V.R.C. did not pursue this course but their decision prompted Tye and Corteen to offer their racing stock at an auction in November. The majority of their twenty or so horses were sold but the reserve of £20,000 placed on Heroic deterred buyers, the highest bid being 16,000 guineas.  Jack Corteen said: “I have a sentimental regard for Heroic that makes me loathe to part with him.  I have had several tempting offers from would-be buyers but their prices do not reach my reserve.”

Three weeks later it was announced that Martin Wenke, a Sydney hotelkeeper who had won the 1918 Victoria Derby with the Eudorus colt, Eusebius, had agreed on the terms of purchase with Corteen, and the price given at £14,000.  The crack colt went into the Mordialloc stables of Jack Holt and was then entered for some of the major races at the 1925 autumn meetings.  However, the V.R.C. committee was not entirely satisfied that the Corteen/Wenke transaction was bona fide and at arm’s length.  A committee inquiry was instituted at which the enigmatic Mr Wenke was invited to appear.  Wenke refused to answer certain questions and at the conclusion of proceedings, the V.R.C. committee decided to reject the horse’s nomination for the Newmarket Handicap.

The following week the A.J.C. endorsed the decision by similarly refusing to recognise Heroic’s nomination for the Doncaster Handicap and Sydney Cup.  This time the colt went through the Newmarket saleyards of W. C. Yuille and Company in conjunction with Adamson, Mackinnon and Cox Pty Ltd on Monday, February 2nd 1925. About five hundred people gathered there to see the much-discussed racehorse sold.  The moment was captured for later generations by the camera and a framed photograph of the sale was displayed in the administration office of that establishment for years.  Five hundred people crowded into Newmarket sale yards to see the bidding begin at 10,000 guineas with a call from Charles Kellow.  A duel developed between Kellow and F. D. McNabb, who was reputedly acting for Norman Falkiner, that saw the price climb to 16,000 guineas before Kellow silenced his opposition. The entire proceedings had occupied about eight minutes.  And so, for the second time within a year a new Australasian record for a thoroughbred had been established, this time with the son assuming the honour from the father. A meeting of the V.R.C. committee was held at 4 p.m. that afternoon with Charlie Kellow in attendance at which Heroic’s future nominations were cleared.

For Jack Corteen the 16,000 guineas sale price together with the prize money and winning wagers landed on Heroic represented a healthy return for the 1800 guineas he paid to acquire him as a yearling in the very same ring only two years before  After having been forced to part with Heroic, Corteen effectively dropped out of racing as an owner although he didn’t relinquish his interest in the sport, seldom missing a meeting in Melbourne, but the days of his spectacular betting plunges were over.  Corteen was one of the two principals associated with Heroic – Hughie Cairns was the other – who met with a violent and premature death.  In April 1939 Corteen was killed in a motor accident in St Kilda, at the age of sixty.  Like so many colourful racing identities both before and since, Corteen died bankrupt, the money from the plunges and the profits on Heroic having been spent.  The chief creditor of his estate was the E. S. and A. Bank with an overdraft of £15,628 and just on £11,000 of this amount was unsecured.  Corteen’s widow, Annie, and his son, Leslie, were left nothing.

However, disqualification did not spell the end of Cecil Godby’s career on the Turf. He spent much of his year in exile in England, buying bloodstock and watching his son K. D. ‘Bill’ Godby, who was riding over there. When he did resume training, the Allendale Stock Farm was no longer available. He was forced to leave Mentone and for a time in 1927 he even considered buying Fred Williams’s High-street stables at Randwick, but the reluctance of the A.J.C. committee to grant him a No. 1 licence caused him to abandon the scheme, which saw those stables sold to Jack King. Instead, Godby purchased Cambria House at Caulfield that same year. He arranged to have the best of his boxes moved there, with its stables and residence overlooking the famous heath. Indeed, the stabling was considerably extended. If walls could speak, Cambria House could have told some tales. J. H. Davis, who ultimately became the handicapper to the Victoria Racing Club, was the private trainer there to his father in 1893 when Tim Swiveller led home the Caulfield Cup field but lost the race on a protest to Sainfoin. The latter raced in the nomination of I. T. Carslake but really belonged to Henry Skinner, who kept the Golden Gate Hotel at South Melbourne and made a fortune out of race day catering. Other good horses to come out of Cambria House in the Davis era included David, Camerine, The Buccaneer, Fortunatus and Dulcimer.

Under the C. T. Godby regime, Cambria House maintained its reputation as the home of great racehorses although not all of them were trained by Godby. Over the years he did several leading Sydney trainers the favour of providing them with stable accommodation when the Melbourne racing carnivals were in progress. Les Haigh brought Rogilla to be stabled there in 1932 when he won the Caulfield Cup, and Mick Polson enjoyed Godby’s hospitality several times on southern visits with both Fuji San and Winooka. But perhaps I should stick with Godby’s own good gallopers. The very year after Rogilla won the Caulfield Cup, Godby won the same race with another horse from Cambria House in the shape of the former New Zealand champion, Gaine Carrington for the Victorian bookmaker, Jack Phillips. A week later Godby also trained Gaine Carrington’s half-brother, Peter Jackson, to win the Moonee Valley Cup for the same owner.

In 1936 Cecil Godby trained his third Caulfield Cup winner when Northwind won the race for Colonel Harold Cohen. Not that Northwind could be regarded as a great horse, he was anything but. Yet he was another fine example of Godby’s talent for spotting a tried racehorse in another stable that he believed he could improve. He was also another fine example of a Godby plunge. Having seen Northwind flash home from the rear of the field to be narrowly beaten in the Gainsborough Handicap at Ascot in late September, Godby stepped in and bought the horse for 1100 guineas on behalf of Cohen.  The price was more money than Northwind, a five-year-old gelding, had ever managed to win in his many starts but Godby knew what he was doing. At his first start in his new owner’s colours, Northwind could only finish twelfth in the V.A.T.C. Herbert Power Handicap. And yet at the Victorian Club on the following Monday, betting commissioners acting for the Godby stable snapped up the 200/1 on offer about Northwind for the Caulfield Cup and backed him into 33/1! Six days later with the lightweight jockey Harold Badger riding a waiting race, Northwind stormed home from the rear of the field at the half-mile to win the Cup running away from the minor placegetters, Silver Standard and Talking.

However, post-Heroic, Godby’s big race wins were by no means restricted to either the flat or his home course and home State. In 1934 the trainer landed a tidy plunge when Prismatic easily won the Grand National Hurdle, and in 1935 he plundered a king’s ransom from the Randwick ring when he brought across Synagogue, also owned by Jack Phillips, to win the Epsom Handicap and survive a protest.  The men of Tattersall’s didn’t forget that day in a hurry, for not only did Godby win the Epsom but he parlayed much of his winnings onto another horse he trained for Phillips, Great Legend, in the last race, the Kensington Handicap, which the son of Great Star won in a cakewalk.  There were other good gallopers to pass through Cambria House in those days, too, including Ortelle’s Star and Burberry. But a few short years later with the outbreak of the Second World War, Cecil Godby’s star had begun to wane, and although he continued to train until the close of the 1956-1957 racing season, his days of pulling-up horses and pulling-off plunges were over.  No longer the bookmakers’ bogeyman, I think his last big race winner was Murray Glen in the 1952 Australian Cup.

Cecil Godby died in November 1963 at the age of 79. Curiously, the four Godby brothers who all made their mark in racing died in the reverse order of their births. Norman, the youngest, was the first to go in June 1939 at the age of fifty-one, having suffered from poor health for some years. The Melbourne Cup on Lord Cardigan in 1903 wasn’t his only big race triumph. He was unlucky not to win a second Melbourne Cup five years later when he was beaten a half-head on Tulkeroo by Lord Nolan, who raced in the same interests as Lord Cardigan. But there were other victories that made up for it including the wonderful run he enjoyed in the year 1905 when he won the A.J.C. Epsom Handicap on Sleeper; the A.J.C. St Leger and V.R.C. Champion Stakes on Dividend; the Moonee Valley Cup on Blue Spec; and the V.A.T.C. Futurity Stakes on Gladsome.

Initially apprenticed to Dick Wootton, when Wootton went to South Africa before the expiration of Godby’s apprenticeship, Norman served the last eighteen months of his time under Colin Smith, the owner of that good horse Beverage. As a trainer, while Norman Godby’s most notable feat was the Grand National double in 1920 with Sandule and Iolaus, he also won the Grand National Hurdle a second time with Berrinbo. He surrendered his V.R.C. trainer’s licence in 1935 because of poor health. Frank Godby was the next of the four brothers to pass from the scene and his death happened in 1961. Frank was a good but unlucky trainer and he is now best remembered for Maikai, who ran second to Rivette in both the 1939 Caulfield Cup and Melbourne Cup. The eldest brother, Charlie Godby was the last to die in 1969, and while his riding career wasn’t overly distinguished, for a while he’d done well on the other side of the running rail swinging a bookmaker’s satchel rather than a jockey’s whip. At one stage the brothers were so prosperous that they collectively owned five of the six hotels in Dandenong and a convent in Caulfield to boot. However, he who lives by the punt dies by the punt. By the time all four brothers had departed the racecourse of life, most of the money had gone.

While sons rather than daughters dominated the next generation of Godbys, only two of them really made their mark on the Turf. K. D. ‘Bill’ Godby followed his father Cecil into training after his fairly successful riding career had ended and he enjoyed a deal of luck in winning a Summer Cup with Double Blank and a Doomben Cup with Rio Fe, although he is probably best remembered today as the owner of the famous filly, Wiggle. The other Godby to make a splash was Jack, Frank’s son and Cecil’s nephew. Jack Godby, like his famous relations, proved himself an astute trainer at Caulfield and his most notable achievement with the stopwatch was winning both the Caulfield Cup and the Victoria Derby in successive starts with Sir Blink in the spring of 1958. He was desperately unlucky not to collect the 1959 Caulfield Cup as well, when, not for the first time, Sir Blink suffered from an ill-judged ride by jockey Bill Williamson and went under by a neck to the lightweight mare, Regal Wrench.

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So much for the principals involved with Heroic.  But we should now turn our attention back to the real hero of the 1924 A.J.C. Derby – the horse himself.  After his sale to Kellow, Heroic returned to the stables of that great Victorian trainer, Jack Holt, who was much relieved that the horse was staying with him. There wasn’t much of the old-time horse mentor about the man who would now chart Heroic’s course and he was a very different character to Cecil Godby. Holt was smooth-faced, dapper and pleasing in both manner and appearance. Although 45 years of age, he gave the impression of a much younger man. Innocence and cheerfulness emanated from him in alternate waves. His direct and compelling glance was softened by a smile that invited confidences and he seemed altogether too artless to ever go unattended on a racecourse.

But beware of appearances. Holt’s frank, boyish countenance was a greater asset on the course than the sphynx-like, sullen face so fashionable among the old-timers. This astute judge of men and horses already had a formidable reputation among the men of Tattersall’s and it was a reputation that was augmented just a few weeks later when he landed the Sydney Cup with Lilypond, a horse that had been heavily supported in doubles with every prominent Doncaster prospect including the winner, Fuji San. Holt’s reputation would only be augmented even more with the arrival at Mordialloc of Heroic and the colt’s subsequent progeny down through the years ahead.

However, for a time at least, it seemed that Charlie Kellow had made a rather bad bargain.  Heroic’s late three-year-old form proved rather ordinary with Kellow only seeing his gold and green colours carried to victory once – in the A.J.C. Autumn Stakes – from six public appearances. Having expatiated at length on the qualities of Heroic as a two-year-old and spring three-year-old, it seems churlish to suggest that there was an even better-staying colt out that season that was being trained upon the very Randwick course itself. But there was. Had his Derby preparation not been interrupted due to one of his forelegs giving trouble, a different colt bred in the Hunter Valley might have been wearing the A.J.C. blue riband.  I refer, of course, to Windbag.

Like Heroic, Windbag was sold through the William Inglis premises during Easter 1923, and like Heroic, his sale, too, had caused a slight rumpus. Bred by Percy Miller at his famous Kia Ora Stud at Scone, Windbag was a son of the imported English stallion Magpie out of the Charlemagne II matron, Charleville and boasted a double-cross of the great St Simon. Charleville was a New Zealand-bred mare and the winner of seven races there including the C.J.C. Linwood Handicap. This bay was her third foal, the first two not having appeared on racecourses. The rumpus surrounding his sale at Inglis was caused by the preference of his original buyer, Ian Duncan, a leading New Zealand bloodstock breeder, not to accept the horse upon subsequent inspection. Duncan, vice-president of the Wellington Racing Club and the proprietor of the Waikanae Stud, was buying on commission for a colleague in the Dominion and did not care for the set of the colt’s front legs upon closely looking him over.

Duncan asked that Clive Inglis put the colt through the ring again at the end of the sale. Rather than do that and create the impression among potential bidders that there was something wrong with the yearling, Percy Miller countered that if Duncan was prepared to accept 120 guineas for the colt instead of the 150 guineas hammer price, Inglis could book the colt to Bob Miller, Percy’s brother. Now, these circumstances offer yet another illustration of the lottery that attaches to the purchase of yearlings. Duncan had brought over half a dozen of his Boniform yearlings and sold them through the offices of Chisholm and Co during his visit and he had reason to be thoroughly pleased with his trip when they averaged 425 guineas. However, he must have spent the rest of his life questioning his judgement and haunted by the day he let a champion slip through his fingers.

Placed in the Randwick stables of George Price, Windbag first carried his owner’s livery of ‘pale blue, black diamond, black sleeves and yellow cap’ at the Randwick Tattersall’s meeting in late December 1923 when unplaced in a field of fifteen. Another two unplaced efforts followed before the son of Magpie broke through at Canterbury Park on the first Saturday in February. That was a red-letter day for Bob Miller and his juveniles for the lucky owner won both divisions of the Nursery Handicap with sons of Magpie – the other being Gift of the Gab. Alas for Bob, neither colt was supported in the ring with Gift of the Gab going off at 33/1 and Windbag at 15/1. Windbag may have been slightly fortunate to win for he had to survive a protest before he secured the stake and the protest was fired in by of all people, Jim Munro. Jim that day could never have imagined that some twenty-two months later the colt against whom he was protesting would give him his first Melbourne Cup!

Windbag’s only other win in his eight starts that season came in a nursery handicap over the Randwick mile on A.J.C. Plate Day in late April at his last appearance. Stepping up in distance, he was backed with some confidence that day and he came with an irresistible burst to claim those two smart Valais colts, Valamita and Metellus, right on the line. Each minor placegetter would go on to win multiple major races on the Australian Turf. Although that couldn’t be known at the time, George Price had seen enough to be convinced that he had a genuine Derby colt on his hands. Racegoers knew that they had seen one champion on the card that day when the great New Zealand galloper Rapine ran a record in the A.J.C. Plate. What they didn’t realise was that they had actually seen two.

Sent for a spell, Windbag came back to open his three-year-old season on the very first Saturday in August in a six-furlong handicap restricted to his own age group. Although Price believed the distance might be too short for him, in the experienced hands of Bunty Brown, Windbag claimed the race right on the post. Cardigan, writing for the Sunday Times, echoed the belief of many when he wrote: “The winner is a well-grown colt that may have something to say in the classic events.” Prophetic words, but the colour of the classic riband would be red rather than blue, for within days of that comeback race an injury forced Price to throw the colt out of work. Sometimes such setbacks can be a blessing in disguise, particularly when the horse in question lacks maturity and is still growing into his frame.

Such was the case with Windbag. When the son of Magpie next appeared in public at Moorefield in late February, he was a different horse. Although he found the six furlongs too short that day, a fortnight later on the same racetrack but two furlongs more and carrying 9 st. 12lb with Jim Pike in the saddle, he swept to another convincing victory. George Price now knew what so many didn’t: in Windbag he possessed the horse of a lifetime. While Windbag failed in the R.R.C. Rawson Stakes and could only run second in the A.J.C. Chipping Norton Stakes in his next two races, neither Rosehill nor Warwick Farm was a course that suited Windbag’s style of swooping at the finish. Randwick, his home course, was far more to his liking and it was Randwick and the four days of the 1925 A.J.C. Autumn Meeting that his trainer ‘wee Georgie’ had in mind! For George Price set Bob Miller’s colt to race on all four days in an attempt to win each of the A.J.C. St Leger, Sydney Cup, Cumberland Stakes and A.J.C. Plate.

It was audacious and ambitious…and it almost came off! The A.J.C. St. Leger was the first to fall when, in an exciting contest, he beat the 2/1 on favourite Spearfelt by a short head with three lengths to spare over the next horse. Some thought Spearfelt would have beaten Windbag in that St. Leger had the pace been more solid throughout, but that bit of mischievous speculation was effectively scotched later in the week. On that same card, Heroic, who had forfeited his classic engagements by his suspension, won his only race that preparation when he took out the A.J.C. Autumn Stakes. Two days later came a dramatic Sydney Cup in which Windbag was asked to carry 8 st. 2lb with Jimmy Munro in the leathers. It was a race with the first prize worth £6,233 and a trophy valued at £200, and it was conducted in front of some 80,000 people. Alas, a bad fall marred the event that year. The field had only travelled a little over two furlongs when Kingslot fell, and, in quick succession, Royal Roue, Prince Minimbah, Spearfelt, Wallarak and Backwood were also down. Munro, on Windbag, narrowly missed coming off, so badly did his mount blunder. And yet such was the class of Windbag that he still got up to run second, beaten a length by the Jack Holt-trained Lilypond.

It might have been a hard run in the Cup but Windbag was back again on Wednesday for the A.J.C. Cumberland Stakes, the only race in which he met Heroic that autumn. Although ‘met’ isn’t quite the right word. Heroic had saddled up earlier on the same day for the All Aged Stakes but in a peevish display, the colt refused to budge from his end-on position to the machine. Harry Mackellar was blamed by many people for not waiting longer than the scheduled two minutes. Perhaps he might have waited a little longer for a horse so heavily backed by the public, but Mackellar had seen Heroic stand at the same barrier for twenty-five minutes on a previous occasion and obviously, in his judgement, it was useless to expect him to face the machine. For a fortnight past, the A.J.C. starter had been down in the mornings helping with Heroic and he hoped that the colt had mended his ways but, clearly, he hadn’t.

When it came to the Cumberland Stakes later on the card, there was a rush by the public to get on Heroic and he went out the 5/4 favourite. Though he was actually first away, he ended up running last behind Windbag. Heroic would, indeed, have to have been a wonder colt to have beaten Bob Miller’s budding champion over a mile and three-quarters that day, as he had previously run a mile in a tick over 1 minute 40 seconds. Windbag returned to Randwick on the last day of the meeting for a hollow victory in the A.J.C. Plate sans Heroic. The speed was on throughout and Windbag’s finishing sprint was sensational. However, it wasn’t to be his last race of the season. In honour of the American Fleet’s visit, a special meeting was held at Randwick in late July. Price sent Windbag around in the A.J.C. New Mexico Stakes a race for two and three-year-olds with special weights over six furlongs. Handicapped with 9 st 12lb and over a distance a mile short of his best, Windbag steered by Jimmy Munro won effortlessly from his seventeen rivals. I think it’s fair to say that Windbag came along just when Sydney’s racegoers were beginning to wonder if every decent horse came from Victoria or New Zealand.

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In the wake of Heroic’s catalogue of disappointments at the Randwick autumn meeting, a journalist from the Country Life Stock and Station Journal interviewed Jack Holt. It is worth quoting some of that exchange just to capture some of the charms and good-natured astuteness of the man whose keen racing mind was second to none in that era:

“Oh, I’ve by no means given up hope of getting Heroic right – it’s only a form of nervousness that causes him to become fractious. He’s evidently been frightened at some time or other.” The wizard trainer will tell you this quite casually as he sits unconcernedly on the sea wall of the Coogee promenade. “Kindness is likely to restore his confidence…at least, I think so, don’t you?” He awaits your reply as though lingering on the decision of an expert, really, that is a characteristic of him. He will ask the advice of people who could not possibly know one-tenth as much as himself on matters that he is already convinced and decided on.

“You see I haven’t had Heroic very long – and nervousness takes overcoming.”

Is Heroic the best horse you’ve ever had? “Hardly say that – would you? You remember Eurythmic won almost everything he was expected to, except the Newmarket and Melbourne Cup. Really now, I believe we asked too much of him. Don’t you think I ruined him by trying to train him for the Newmarket?”

Sarcasm, this, I thought, and at a glance, the student of horses read my thoughts and explained.

“You see, sometimes a man gets so wrapped up in a champion that his enthusiasm overrides his judgement; lookers-on see most of the game then.” And Heroic!…was he worth 16,000 guineas? “Only time can tell; he’s already won over 2,000, while there is a standing offer of 8,000 guineas when he retires from racing. You’ll admit he’s got extreme speed, and he wouldn’t need to win too many of the big stakes around now to get the balance. George Harrison reckons he’ll run two miles all right after his Cumberland Stakes run…”

Your idea on re-saddling him on Wednesday?

“His owner and I chatted it over and decided to give him the second run to see how he behaved – what effect it would have on him. Harrison did not ride him out when he was so hopelessly left in the All-Aged Stakes. He knew he had no chance, but it encourages a horse to remain at the machine again if he is not sent after the field. With his freshness worn off, we reckoned he’d jump away better, which he did. Heroic is very intelligent, most horses are and probably realised that his second run was owing to his playing up at the first start. Don’t you think I’m right?”

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If there is a golden epoch in the history of Australian racing that has me yearning for it, convinced that I’m living in an inferior age, it would have to be the 1920s. And perhaps no season on the Turf demonstrates it better than that of 1925-26. Just consider this. Not only did we have that historic Melbourne Cup finish between Windbag and Manfred when both horses carried 2lb over weight-for-age, but in the autumn we had Heroic’s Newmarket when the champion carried 9 st. 8lb to victory as well as the flying Valicare’s scintillating Doncaster win. Meanwhile, the likes of Amounis, Spearfelt, Pilliewinkie, Whittier, Pantheon, The Hawk, The Night Patrol and Limerick were waiting in the wings. Windbag was imperious that spring and Jack Holt was wise in deciding not to bring Heroic to Sydney. Following up on his clean sweep of weight-for-age events at the 1925 A.J.C. Autumn Meeting, Windbag returned to do the same thing at the A.J.C. Spring Meeting when he won the Tatt’s Chelmsford Stakes, A.J.C. Spring Stakes, Craven Plate and Randwick Plate on the trot.

Handicapped on 9 st. 6lb for the A.J.C. Metropolitan, equal third topweight behind Sir Samuel Hordern’s imported English horse Bolet Satan (9 st. 10lb) and Pilliewinkie (9 st. 7lb), George Price had no hesitation scratching Windbag from the event. There was only one handicap that ‘wee Georgie’ had set his heart on that spring and that was the one conducted in Melbourne on the first Tuesday in November. And Price, satisfied with Windbag’s handicap, wasn’t prepared to cop any more weight penalties on the route there, hence the restriction to weight-for-age races. Windbag was beaten for the first time in eight starts when he made his debut in Melbourne. It came in the V.R.C. Melbourne Stakes, his first clash with Heroic as a four-year-old. While Windbag as the 4/6 favourite could only run the minor placing behind Pilliewinkie and Pantheon, Heroic, who was mixing his form badly at the time, finished last. On the following Tuesday, Windbag in the hands of Jim Munro, made history when he carried 9 st. 2lb to triumph by a half-length over Manfred in the Melbourne Cup in equal Australasian-record time. It was a race that was to live long in the memory of all who saw it. Still, the run took more out of the horse than George Price imagined. Saddled up on the last day of the meeting in the C. B. Fisher Plate in a field of four, Windbag (1/2 favourite) was beaten into second placing by Pilliewinkie. Heroic, one of the other two runners, again finished last. It was the end of their respective spring campaigns.

Heroic’s four-year-old season lacked consistency and it took Holt a lot longer to get to the bottom of the horse than he hoped. However, in the autumn of 1926, both Holt and Heroic finally got their act together. Reunited with Hughie Cairns, his partner in crime at Randwick on Derby Day, Heroic won the V.R.C. Newmarket Handicap in scintillating fashion. In fact, that race down the straight six at Flemington marked the horse’s first really big win in Charlie Kellow’s famous livery. In that Newmarket, Heroic carried 9 st. 8lb – the heaviest weight ever borne by the winner of the big sprint up to that time – and scored comfortably from a brilliant pair in Perspective and Fuji San in a time that had been excelled only once before in the race.

For reasons never made public, the V.R.C. committee actually withheld Cairn’s riding licence for a much longer-term than the original disqualification.  Cairns had only just resumed his career in the saddle a couple of weeks before that Newmarket, notwithstanding the fact that the official twelve months disqualification had expired the previous October.  Heroic, of course, was never the easiest of rides and as we have seen, at times his barrier etiquette could be heartbreaking. Cairns understood him better than anybody.  In just a few weeks during that autumn Heroic emphasised what a remarkably versatile horse he was.

Just over five weeks after that Newmarket sprint victory, Heroic was then beaten less than a length into fourth placing in the Sydney Cup over two miles when burdened with 9 st. 7lb. Charlie Kellow had coupled the horse with the Doncaster winner Valicare that year in a series of colossal doubles.  A huge payout was only narrowly averted when the race was won by the 200/1 shot, Murray King, giving the bagmen their best doubles result in the history of big betting on the A.J.C. autumn feature double.  Kellow was rather unlucky not to collect as many respected pressmen, Jack Dexter among them, considered that only interference had cost Heroic the race. As the horses entered the straight Valbee fell, and Heroic and Cairns had to jump over the fallen horse, and in so doing clipped both hind fetlocks. Heroic wasn’t spared during that week at Randwick. He had finished third behind Windbag and Pilliewinkie in the Autumn Stakes two days before the Sydney Cup, and two days after it, he beat both of those horses in the Cumberland Stakes. Heroic ended the week and his four-year-old season by then going under to Windbag by a half-length in the A.J.C. Plate, followed by an unsuccessful protest.

It was after that A.J.C. meeting that Kellow, who was due to go to England for a holiday, offered Heroic at public auction through William Inglis and Son.  With a 20,000 guineas reserve placed on him, I don’t think it was a serious overture to the market and bidding only reached 10,500 guineas before the chestnut stallion was passed in.  As events transpired, it was just as well for Kellow’s fortunes on the Australian Turf that buyers weren’t willing.  In the spring of his five-year-old season, Heroic returned to his best, winning each of his three starts viz. the W.R.C. Underwood Stakes, V.A.T.C. Memsie Stakes and the W. S. Cox Plate at Moonee Valley, beating the likes of Manfred and Limerick in the process. It was intended to start the horse in the Melbourne Cup for which he was handicapped on 9 st. 10lb but during the week after his run at Moonee Valley, he developed inflammation and swelling in his near foreleg that ultimately precluded an appearance.

It was in early January 1927, just as Heroic was being prepared for his final racing campaign, that Charlie Kellow announced he had completed negotiations with Herbert Thompson for a three-year-lease on his great champion for stud duties to begin later that year at Oakleigh and Tarwyn Park Studs.  Thompson, a good friend of Kellow, had been given the first offer on the horse and the terms were an annual rent of something over £2,000 p.a. with Kellow reserving the right to send five mares of his own to the stallion free of charge each year.  Despite the friendship of the two principals, it was a stiff price even for those heady days.  The great horse demonstrated that he was still at or near his best when he resumed racing a few weeks later and proceeded to lead all the way in the William Reid Stakes at Moonee Valley setting a new course record. Heroic followed up this performance with wins at Williamstown and Caulfield in the C. F. Orr Stakes and the St George Stakes respectively to take his tally to six wins on the reel.

The sequence was only broken when Heroic was asked to carry 10 st. 3lb in the Newmarket Handicap won by Sol Green’s imported horse, Gothic. Heroic, perhaps unsurprisingly given his weight, failed to run in the first ten. After finishing second behind Spearfelt in the V.R.C. Governor’s Plate, two days later at his final appearance at Flemington in the weight-for-age King’s Plate, Heroic managed to win for the first time around Flemington’s turns and over the two-mile trip. Brought to Sydney, he became a victim of the torrential downpour that marred the autumn meeting that year and ran unplaced at each of his four Randwick starts, including Piastoon’s Sydney Cup when he was asked to carry 9 st. 13lb. Charlie Kellow had hoped that the close of that A.J.C. Autumn Meeting might have seen Heroic eclipse Gloaming’s Australasian record of stakes won, but it wasn’t to be. Hughie Cairns rode the chestnut at his final appearance on the Turf, which came when he ran unplaced in the City Tattersall’s Cup on the last day of April.  His career statistics were: 51 starts for 21 wins, 11 seconds and 4 thirds, with prize money of £38,062.

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Twenty-one days before Heroic faced the starter for the last time, Windbag retired from the racecourse. It came at Warwick Farm in the Chipping Norton Stakes when he ran the minor placing behind Amounis and Limerick but then returned to scale favouring his off foreleg. At 10.55 a.m. on the following Monday, George Price put the scratching pen through his name for the Sydney Cup although he still hoped that the son of Magpie might honour his engagements in the Randwick weight-for-age contests. Alas, it wasn’t to be and his retirement from the racecourse was announced. Windbag’s complete career statistics were: 36 starts for 18 wins, 8 seconds and 2 thirds and prize money of £35,989. He had met Heroic six times on the racecourse and finished in front of him on every occasion bar one – the 1926 A.J.C. Cumberland Stakes. Given the circumstances of his acquisition and that Percy Miller’s brother owned him, it surprised many that Windbag didn’t stand stud duty at Kia Ora. But, no, instead he went to Alex Hunter’s Northward Park Stud at Seymour in Victoria.

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Heroic and Windbag each appeared to have all the credentials necessary to be a success at stud – a distinguished pedigree, a wonderful conformation and constitution, and that magical blend of speed and stamina that had seen them successful on the racecourse at the highest level in each of their four seasons and at distances ranging from five furlongs to two miles. The only question mark in relation to Heroic related to his heavy inbreeding and moody temperament. But breeders rushed him and long before his racecourse career had ended Herbert Thompson filled his book for the breeding seasons of 1927 and 1928.  The arrangement was that each broodmare sent to him had to be for two seasons at 200 guineas a season.  It was to be a stunning career.  Heroic was to top the Australian winning stallions’ list on no less than seven successive occasions from 1932-33 to 1938-39.  His first crop of yearlings was offered in the autumn of 1930, at a time when the Depression was beginning to bite.  As a consequence, only six lots at those Easter sales realised four-figure amounts, and yet two of them were by Heroic.  It was an interesting debut because two other Australian-bred stallions in Manfred and Windbag had the first of their progeny on offer at the same sales.

The buyers’ faith in Heroic to achieve as much in the stallion paddock as he did at the post was soon confirmed; his colts and fillies showed brilliant speed from the moment they first appeared in public.  Heroic was only just deprived of siring a Maribyrnong Plate winner in his first season when Bold Bid went down to La Justice in the last few strides.  Other smart juveniles like Gloriole, Gallantic, Lady Heroic and Heroic Prince that same year assured his reputation. That first season Heroic had 10 individual winners of 18 races worth £7,550, which placed him 20th on the list of winning sires.  It was a record for an Australian-bred sire. This compared with the leading stallion Night Raid with 4 individual winners of 21 races and £27,449 and, after all, he had Phar Lap to help him.

In his second crop, Heroic franked his reputation for getting early comers when his son Vauntry was the crack juvenile of the spring winning both the Debutant Stakes and the Maribyrnong Plate.  In his second season, Heroic had 29 winning horses that between them won over 50 races in that 1931-32 season, which placed him 6th on the Winning Sires’ List.  Heroic then won the Sires’ Championship for the first time the following year with only three crops racing.  Thereafter he remained at the top of the list until impotence prematurely ended his stud life.  During this time, the success of outside mares with Heroic was extraordinary.  E. L. Baillieu only sent him one mare, the imported Medmenham, and was blessed with Ajax as a result. But the biggest beneficiary turned out to be Charlie Kellow himself.  Apart from the lease income, he derived from Heroic, Kellow, with the few mares he sent to the great horse each season, managed to breed two champions in Hall Mark and Nuffield.  As we shall see, each of them was destined to give Kellow the blue riband of the A.J.C. Derby. Another top galloper that Kellow bred from his free services to Heroic was Gallantic, a filly who him both the V.R.C. Oaks and the A.J.C. Adrian Knox Stakes and later proved such a good matron.

While Heroic commanded all the headlines as a stallion, it is easy to forget just how successful Windbag proved in the breeding barn as well. The son of Magpie let down into a magnificent stallion at Northwood Park and Percy Miller patronised him with twenty-one of his own high-class mares in his initial book, which quickly filled before the month of May had ended. Windbag’s first yearlings, many of which strongly resembled him in appearance, were offered at the same time as Heroic’s in the 1930 William Inglis catalogue and while they didn’t quite command the same high prices, they sold well. The most expensive from his first crop was a fine class colt out of Myosotis who was knocked down to Ike Foulsham for 650 guineas on behalf of Gus Blair. He won fame as Chatham. The very lot sold before Chatham that day at Newmarket was by Windbag out of Kanooka, a daughter of The Welkin, and he went to H. C. Taylor of Queensland for 200 guineas. He won fame as Winooka. Getting such progeny in his first crop guaranteed success for Windbag and by the end of his stud career, he had sired 18 individual stakes winners of 65 stakes races. While he never did top the Winning Sires’ Lists, he did finish second twice behind Heroic in 1932-33 and 1933-34, and he was among the ten leading stallions in Australia for a decade.

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Before I leave this particular chapter of our Derby history, permit me to return for a moment to the men and horses that made the 1924 renewal such a fascinating contest.  We should not lose sight of the distinguished career at both post and paddock that awaited Spearfelt after being narrowly beaten by Heroic on that famous day.  In the absence of Heroic, Spearfelt took out the Victoria Derby by six lengths and then three days later went within a head and a neck respectively of winning the Melbourne Cup when third in the race.  The following autumn he won both the V.R.C. St. Leger and King’s Plate at Flemington before coming to Sydney and going down to Windbag after that wonderful duel down the Randwick straight for the A.J.C. St Leger.  On the following Monday in the Sydney Cup, Spearfelt was one of the favourites when he fell with five other horses.  That fall left the horse without confidence for a long time and his trainer Vin O’Neill made a mistake when he forced him to race as a four-year-old.  But as a five-year-old he was magnificent. That season when partnered by Hughie Cairns, who probably did more than anybody to bring Spearfelt undone in the A.J.C. Derby, the stallion won the Melbourne Cup when burdened with 9 st. 3lb equalling the Australasian record for the distance.  The following autumn Cairns steered Spearfelt to victory in the Australian Cup, establishing both new time and weight records for the race with his impost of 9 st. 13lb.

Brought to Sydney for the 1927 A.J.C. autumn meeting, Spearfelt went in the suspensory ligament when racing in the Chipping Norton Stakes at Warwick Farm. O’Neill was doubtful that the horse could race again, and, after conferring with the owner, decided to put the horse up for auction at William Inglis and Sons’ annual sale of racing and breeding stock a few weeks later.  The son of Spearhead was passed in at a paltry 500 guineas. The so-called breeding experts shunned him because he was from a Challenger mare.  Spearfelt returned to Victoria and was sent to the Yarra Bend Stud, near Bendigo, which was conducted by Messrs A. H. Wilson and S. Sargood.  There, in November 1927 he commenced his stud career with just a few mares, but this first instalment was to be rather short-lived.  The horse thrived so much that his connections made an ill-judged decision to again try him on the Turf and he was back in O’Neill’s Melbourne stables before the end of the year. Spearfelt’s racing record would look so much better had he not been asked to race eleven times as a six and seven-year-old, for he finished unplaced each time.  He was finally retired for good in October 1928.  His full racing record stood at 57 starts, for 9 wins, 8 seconds and 8 thirds and £28,173 in stakes.

Offered once again as a prospective stallion, this time at Yuille’s in Melbourne, he realised 1350 guineas.  It was at the Alma Vale Stud of Queensland breeder Tom Jennings, at Greenmount on the Darling Downs, where Spearfelt got his real chance as a stallion.  There he became one of the most successful sires in the Commonwealth.  Despite the clear disadvantages of a Queensland base vis-à-vis N.S.W. or Victoria where prize money was so much more liberal, Spearfelt was twice runner-up to Heroic on the Leading Sires’ List as well as finishing third to the same horse and The Buzzard in 1938-39.  Just when the title looked like eluding him, Spearfelt topped the list in the 1942-43 racing season thanks largely to Abspear and Dark Felt.  In the Sydney Cup of that season, four sons of Spearfelt ran for the prize including the favourite, Eureka, who missed a place; but the other three led by Abspear ran first, second and third.  Spearfelt proved a wonderful acquisition for Queensland bloodstock and went on to sire the winners of four Queensland Derbies, five Queensland Cups and three Brisbane Cups.  One of his sons, Spear Chief, was responsible for arguably the greatest upset in Australian racing when he defeated Ajax at 40/1 on in the Rawson Stakes.

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Earlier in this chapter, I mentioned that Hughie Cairns, who seemed so perfectly suited in the saddle to both Heroic and Spearfelt, met with a violent and premature death at the age of just 45.  It came on a very black Saturday in July 1929 at Moonee Valley, when he partnered a horse called Quick Deal in the Gellibrand Hurdle.  It was at the very last hurdle that both horse and rider fell.  Cairns appeared to be thrown clear, but the horse turned a complete somersault and his hindquarters landed across the jockey’s head and chest.  Cairns died shortly after being admitted to the casualty room.  This fearless jockey was one of the few who had combined both riding on the flat and cross-country with equal success.

A native of Palmerston North he found the saddle quite by chance.  His first job was as a cadet steward on a ship that now and then conveyed racehorses from one coastal town to another in New Zealand.  A chance conversation with one of the trainers led him to relinquish the sea for the Turf and in due course, he joined the Otaki stables of F. Highett.  Cairns fell in his first nine rides over steeples but persevered to eventually master his craft.  After riding successfully for about seven years he came across the water to join the Caulfield stables of fellow Kiwi, D. J. Price in the years just before the Great War. Success came quickly in his adopted land and Cairns won both the Grand National Hurdle and the Australian Hurdle twice.  But it was the link with the Foulsham and Godby stables that made Cairns famous.  Apart from Heroic and Spearfelt, other good horses with which he enjoyed success on the flat were King Carnival, Demetrius and Cannon.  He was one of those exceptional Victorian jockeys of the period – equally at home at Randwick as either Flemington or Caulfield racecourses. Happily married to Mollie Maguire of theatrical fame, Cairns took pride in his home ‘Merunqua’, on the Ormond Esplanade at Brighton, named after one of his Grand National Hurdle winners. A very good golfer and billiards player, Cairns’ premature death in the sport he loved triggered great sadness in Melbourne.