1985 – Red Anchor’s Spring & A Fillies’ Autumn!

It seems appropriate at this moment in our chronicle to introduce the character of Patrick Hogan and the Cambridge Stud, given the remarkable success of his foundation stallion, Sir Tristram, during the 1980s decade and beyond. Born in 1939, Patrick was the seventh child of Thomas Hogan who had emigrated to New Zealand from County Galway, Ireland, in 1914 at the age of eighteen. Hogan senior had established a family dairy farm at Fencourt, near Cambridge, and being Irish, perhaps the only thing he loved better than cows were horses. Over the years, he came to establish the Fencourt Stud as an extension of his farm and it had been the home of such stallions as Blueskin II, Forearmed, Final Court, Persian Garden and Philoctetes. As old Tom, a lifelong smoker, aged and suffered from lung cancer, his two sons, Patrick and John, began to assume more responsibility for the stud, becoming partners in 1965, and ultimately taking over with the death of Tom in the 1972-73 racing season, although more of the farm was bequeathed to John the eldest rather than Patrick the youngest.

Patrick Hogan had left school at the age of fifteen and by then was already obsessed with horses. In 1959, when he reached the legal age of twenty according to the rules of the New Zealand Racing Conference, Patrick bought his first thoroughbred mare, Nom De Plume, a well-named daughter of Gold Nib and already in foal to Marco Polo. Purchased from Seton Otway’s Trelawney Stud in Cambridge for 450 guineas, much of which came from a loan by his father, Nom De Plume dropped a winner for Hogan and he was off and running. In 1960, at the age of twenty-one, Patrick married Justine, who was the same age and henceforth would be his partner in everything, horses and all. Hogan’s thoroughbred breeding adventures on the family farm increased in the early 1960s, where he and his brother John made their first venture into the stallion business by importing Hyperion’s grandson, Hermes (G.B.).

Old Tom had found the stallion based on a recommendation of the British Bloodstock Agency but the asking price of $NZ120,000 was beyond the Hogan family’s remit. It was Patrick and John who convinced their father of the wisdom of buying this son of Aureole but syndicating half-ownership to a wider group of twenty individual breeders. The dark bay horse did well and is probably best remembered now as the sire of that mudlark and Melbourne Cup winner, Van Der Hum, but when Hermes died suddenly in the summer of 1974, Patrick was back to square one. Patrick and his brother were quite different in temperament and outlook and chose this moment to go their separate ways. Leaving John to return the family farm to agriculture, Hogan was paid out $90,000 for his share of Fencourt Stud. Supplementing this money with a bank mortgage of $130,000 in 1975 he was able to buy a former dairy farm of 135 acres in Discombe Rd, Cambridge – about five kilometres from Fencourt – and launch his own stud. Times were tough but the 36-year-old Patrick and his wife Justine would come good after a shaky start.

Seeking a foundation stallion for his newly formed Cambridge Stud, Patrick Hogan made a trip to the northern hemisphere in quest of a suitable candidate in either England, France or the U.S.A. However, circumscribed by a budget of just $NZ200,000 Hogan discovered that any horse he liked, he simply couldn’t afford. And with time running out, it seemed that he wasn’t going to have a stallion to stand at Cambridge Stud in that 1976 season after all. However, within three weeks of his return from Europe, he received a letter from a bloodstock agent in the South Island, Tim Langer, who advised him of a likely stallion in France and enclosing the full pedigree. The horse’s racing record was ordinary but as Hogan scrutinised Sir Tristram’s tabulated chart going back nine generations, he fell in love. Given the exigencies of the coming breeding season and the work to be done on his fledgling stud, Hogan could neither afford the time nor the money to return to Europe and inspect the stallion himself.

Accordingly, he asked his English agent, Sir Philip Payne-Gallwey, of the British Bloodstock Agency to go and make the inspection on his behalf. Payne-Gallwey, who would later go on to spectacularly manage the racing interests of Stavros Niarchos, was a respected judge of a thoroughbred. Having only recently been in France in the company of Hogan, he tripped across the English Channel yet again to Charles Milbank’s establishment and inspected Sir Tristram for the first time. Curiously enough, both Payne-Gallwey and Hogan had inspected other prospective stallions at those very same stables only a matter of weeks before on their earlier trip but hadn’t been shown Sir Tristram, who was in a nearby box, because the stallion hadn’t satisfied Hogan’s original selection criteria.  There was a confirmed sighting this time however, although the agent’s advice wasn’t overly encouraging for Hogan. Payne-Gallwey considered the horse distinctly unprepossessing and was critical of his hindquarters and bent hocks, and none too complimentary about the stallion’s walk when viewed from behind. But after some doubts and hesitation, Hogan went ahead and bought the horse anyway, mainly on the strength of his pedigree and his sound conformation in front of the saddle. It helped too that the horse, like Patrick, was Irish and the Gaelic wisdom of his father rang in his ears: “There is no such thing as the perfect animal, and there is no such thing as the perfect horse.”

What was it about Sir Tristram’s pedigree that so fascinated Hogan? The stallion was by Sir Ivor, a champion racehorse and the winner of the 1968 English Derby and Two Thousand Guineas among other good races. Lester Piggott had described him as the best horse that he’d ever ridden. Despite such performances, Sir Ivor wasn’t proving overly successful at stud in the northern hemisphere and until the coming of Sir Tristram wasn’t represented at all in New Zealand. Isolt, the dam of Sir Tristram, was a daughter of the redoubtable Round Table and as such Sir Tristram enjoyed a strong double-cross of Princequillo in his fourth and third removes on his sire’s and dam’s side respectively. Moreover, he possessed a further double-cross of the legendary broodmare, Selene (5 x 4), dam of the great Hyperion. Selene was a daughter of Chaucer, whose sire and dam were the fabled St Simon and Canterbury Pilgrim. But even leaving the Selene line to one side, Chaucer himself appears three other times in Sir Tristram’s pedigree through his grandson Pharos, who was out of Chaucer’s other celebrated daughter Scapa Flow. These stunning duplications overwhelmed Hogan. And for those with a touching faith in atavism in thoroughbred pedigrees, Stockwell (G.B. 1849), the Emperor of Stallions, appeared countless times throughout.

Raymond R. Guest, the American businessman, international owner-breeder, polo player, and one-time U.S. Ambassador to Ireland, had bred Sir Tristram at the Ballygoran Stud in County Kildare, Ireland where he was foaled in April 1971.  Sir Tristram’s race record was not particularly distinguished. Nineteen starts in France and the U.S.A. had resulted in just two wins, six seconds and three thirds in average quality races for earnings of around $NZ40,000. As a staying two-year-old, he was given a Timeform Annual Rating of 115, and as a three-year-old he was Guest’s representative in the centenary running of the Kentucky Derby, in which he finished eleventh in a field of twenty-three. Sir Tristram was intended for the English Derby, an event his owner had won twice before with Larkspur (1962) and Sir Ivor (1968), but the horse split a pastern on his return to France before he could take part in the race won by Snow Knight. The injury required the insertion of three steel pins. It is interesting to reflect that another Sir Ivor horse destined to stand stud duty at John Kelly’s Newhaven Park in Australia, ran second in the English Derby to Snow Knight that year – none other than Imperial Prince. Sir Tristram raced on as a four-year-old but from 14 races in France that season, he won but once, although he did achieve 8 placings before being retired at the end of the 1975 season.

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After his regulation six months’ quarantine stay in England that also included surviving a fire, Sir Tristram landed in a rather dishevelled state in New Zealand on 5 September 1976 at a cost of $NZ160,000 including insurance. While the physical description of the horse rang  true to Hogan upon first acquaintance, his temperament didn’t. Hogan had been led to believe that the stallion had an accommodating nature but he proved something of a nasty bastard, although Hogan himself eventually established an uneasy compromise even if some of his Cambridge Stud staff didn’t. Hogan gave the horse the stable name of ‘Paddy’, as much in recognition of an uncle back in Ireland as the stallion’s  bad temper. Patrick and Justine retained 20 of the 40 shares while 17 of the 20 of the former shareholders in the ill-fated Hermes paid up. The remaining 3 shares were taken through telephone calls. Although relatively late to the party, Sir Tristram covered a total of 54 mares in his first book that spring at a service fee pitched at just $NZ1,500 with a live foal guarantee. Thirty-seven living foals resulted. Sir Tristram’s first crop of two-year-olds created little fuss with perhaps the exception of The Knight, winner of the V.R.C. Flemington Stakes. However, when one of their number, Sovereign Red, later emerged as the leading three-year-old in Australia in the spring of 1980 with victories in the Caulfield Guineas and Victoria Derby, the blue touchpaper was lit. The South Australian Derby winner Tasman was another distinguished son of Sir Tristram in that first crop, which ultimately resulted in 19 winners from 27 runners.

Throughout 1981-82 the excitement began to mount. The New Zealand filly Noble Heights won the C.J.C. New Zealand One Thousand Guineas among other races and at the end of the season took out the Wrightson Filly of the Year award. Even more significantly, that second crop would include Gurner’s Lane who apart from winning the V.R.C. and A.J.C. St Legers at three, would pull off the 1982 Caulfield-Melbourne Cup double as a four-year-old. Other progeny of Sir Tristram that emerged during the calendar year 1982 included Dalmacia (S.T.C. Rawson Stakes and A.J.C. Epsom Handicap) as well as Cossack Prince (S.T.C. Hill Stakes and Peter Pan Stakes) and Grosvenor (V.R.C. Sires’ Produce Stakes, V.A.T.C. Caulfield Guineas and Victoria Derby) from the stallion’s third crop. Proof that the progeny would stay over even longer distances came when the three-year-old filly Queen’s Road won the 1982 Q.T.C. Brisbane Cup of 3200 metres. Was it any wonder then that a phalanx of cashed-up international buyers, a mix of the great and the good, the bad and the ugly, descended upon Trentham for the New Zealand National Yearling Sales in late January 1983, intent on the acquisitive scramble? The wanton profligacy of the monied classes was rarely seen to better effect. It was to be a record-breaking sale and Sir Tristram would dominate it, inducing a seemingly compulsive buying disorder among some of the biggest bidders for his progeny.

As the auctioneer extolled the virtues of the new wonder stallion in the most extravagant language, Robert Sangster immediately stepped into the limelight on the first day when he paid top price of $240,000 for the colt by Sir Tristram out of Herlena Heights. The colt was a three-quarter brother to Noble Heights and later registered as Desert Warfare. The fireworks were even more spectacular on the second day when Sir Tristram shattered his own record in a matter of minutes. A new record yearling price was set when the ANZ Bloodstock Agency shelled out $420,000 for a grey colt by Sir Tristram out of the former champion race mare Surround. This ill-fated youngster was later registered as Frame. The same agency also paid $280,000 for a full brother to the Victoria Derby winner, Grosvenor, subsequently raced as National Gallery.

No sooner were those in attendance at Trentham recovering their breath from the audacious bid for the Surround colt than Robert Sangster stepped up to pay $700,000 for a full sister to the previous Caulfield and Melbourne Cups winner, Gurner’s Lane. By Sir Tristram and out of the Sovereign Edition mare, Taiona, this temperamental chestnut filly was later registered as Trichelle, and like Frame and National Gallery, went into the Adelaide stables of Colin Hayes. Bart Cummings spent $280,000 for the Sir Tristram – Puzzi colt, subsequently named Noble Peer. We will reconnect with most of these youngsters later in this chapter.

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Yet for all the spectacular bidding on yearlings that occurred across the Tasman that summer, the man who walked off with the greatest bargain of all was the 30-year-old emerging Rosehill trainer, V. P. Sutherland, at the earlier Waikato sales, a prelude to Trentham. Victor Paul Sutherland was born the son of a dairy farmer in Milton N.S.W. on 15 August 1945, the day the Japanese surrendered in World War II. It was called V. P. Day (Victory in the Pacific) and it was from these initials that Sutherland was named by his parents. He  had begun his career in racing as an apprentice jockey to Hawkesbury trainer, Harry Paton. Paul rode some twenty-five winners, but very early in his riding career Paton advised him that he was never going to make it as a jockey and that he should exchange the saddle for the stopwatch, given his all-round qualities as a horseman. It took the young man with the hardscrabble face but a ready fund of humour, some time to accumulate a grubstake and when he first assumed a trainer’s licence, it was with stables located at unfashionable South Nowra. In those days, his horses did most of their work in the saltwater and sandhills of nearby Seven-Mile Beach.

An important aspect of Sutherland’s modus operandi in those early days was to ride old and tried New Zealand gallopers before buying. It is largely forgotten now, but Sutherland was responsible for bringing those two Melbourne Cup horses, Holiday Wagon and Arwon, to N.S.W. Still, as Sutherland observed: “As quick as I landed horses of above average ability, I would lose them because of restricted training facilities at Nowra.” Nonetheless, he soon became the leading trainer in the N.S.W. Southern Districts, largely on the strength of crocks and aged horses from other stables. There was a rawhide quality to Sutherland’s training in the early days but his confidence grew as the winners rolled in. He trained his first metropolitan winner when Rocky Mountain won at Canterbury in August 1972 but quickly followed it up with further city success with Trafalgar Square. Even then, Sutherland had the young man’s urge for wider skies and broader horizons. Nonetheless, it wasn’t until January 1977 that the pulsating restlessness and ambition of his life saw Sutherland successfully apply to the A.J.C. for a No. 2 trainer’s licence. Soon after, he relocated to Rosehill. Upon his relocation, Sutherland pursued old and tried New Zealand gallopers even more successfully with the likes of Big Bickies, Wotta Krakka, Happy Landing and Tuna Too. Indeed, rarely had he engaged in the yearling market to any marked extent until that summer of 1982-83.

Sutherland’s budget hardly extended to the sky-high prices being commanded at Trentham that year and the alternative catalogue offered at Waikato was more to his taste and wallet. Indeed, he had gone there in quest of Aythorpe yearlings, given that he already had two very promising two-year-olds in his Rosehill stables by that Irish-bred stallion of the Nasrullah line, in the shape of All Chant and Te Puninga from his second crop. But it was while he was at Waikato that Sutherland became fascinated by a physically imposing son of Sea Anchor being offered by Peter Setchell’s Millfield Stud. Trained by Dick Hern, the Irish-bred Sea Anchor’s most notable victory on the racecourse had been the 1976 Doncaster Cup as a four-year-old, but he had been among his season’s finest three-year-olds having won the King Edward VII Stakes at Royal Ascot before finishing fourth behind the great Grundy in the Irish Derby. Sea Anchor was beginning to attract attention having sired the previous year’s V.R.C. Wakeful Stakes winner, Royal Regatta, and the promising New Zealand two-year-old, Beechcraft. This Sea Anchor yearling that had taken Sutherland’s fancy was out of a rather lacklustre English mare named Decoy Girl. Although Setchell was accredited as the breeder he hadn’t been responsible for the mating. Rather that had been made by Hanui Farm at Karaka where Sea Anchor was the resident stallion. Peter Setchell and his brother, Graham, had only later bought Decoy Girl with the foal in utero.

Sutherland was a man who bought horses on looks and feel rather than pedigree and he was none too bothered by the lack of black type on the catalogue page. He would later recall: “I followed the horse around for half an hour at the Waikato yearling sales. I just liked the way he walked and his general demeanour, so I decided to buy him. Then I discovered Robert Ng wanted to buy him too, so I let him bid. He got him for $NZ15,000 and he agreed I should train him and share in the ownership.” The horse, of course, was Red Anchor. Sometime after returning to Sydney, Sutherland was commissioned by the Singapore-based Ng to syndicate the colt for $30,000. The Parramatta Road car dealer John Gigante, and the future founder of Aussie Home Loans, John Symond, together with their wives, bought into the yearling along with the prominent owner-breeder, Allan Hely, chairman of Festival Records. Sutherland claimed a one-sixth share. Sutherland arranged to have his team of yearlings broken in and as the weeks went by, it soon became apparent that it wasn’t the six youngsters by Aythorpe that excited him most, but rather the lone Sea Anchor colt.

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Red Anchor’s partner in the saddle during those first, early morning gallops at Rosehill as the mist of dawning grey dappled into daylight, was the former champion apprentice of New Zealand, Bruce Compton. One of five children, Compton had grown up in Hastings and was fortunate to serve his apprenticeship with the Takanini trainer, George Cameron. Cameron had been a good jockey in his own right and unlike many masters, invested time in his apprentices, who also happened to include the leading jockey, David Peake. Like Sydney’s Theo Green, Cameron believed in backing his judgement by affording his apprentices good rides out of his own stable and it was this that helped Compton on his way to three apprentices’ premierships in New Zealand. Compton had then ridden extensively overseas in places like Mauritius and Malaysia before returning to New Zealand to win the 1980-81 jockeys’ premiership, equaling Bill Skelton’s 15-year record of 124 winners in a season.

Paul Sutherland had been impressed by Compton’s saddle craft on his frequent buying raids across the Tasman and sounded out the 31-year-old jockey about linking up with him in what would prove an initial four-year stint. Four accidents in as many weeks riding against inexperienced apprentices and part-time claiming shearers, as much as the extensive travel, convinced Compton to quit New Zealand and try Australia instead. It was a fortunate happenstance that the two men came together when they did and Compton was as much donor as beneficiary in the partnership. Compton’s first winner for Sutherland had come at a Canterbury midweek meeting in October 1982 on Manwari Prince. Manwari Prince was one sort of conveyance; Red Anchor was to be quite another. He was to become Compton’s favourite galloper. Compton never forgot that morning in the autumn of 1984 when after a track gallop and while still in the saddle of Red Anchor, he sidled up to Paul Sutherland who was clutching his stopwatch. “How fast do you think you were going?”, quizzed Sutherland. “Oh, fifteen seconds to the furlong,” responded Compton casually. “More like a tick over twelve”, declared the trainer. And that was part of Red Anchor’s charm. Relaxed and easy going, he was a deceptive galloper possessed of a generosity of temper who always moved faster than it seemed.

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The 1983-84 racing season for two-year-olds proved topsy-turvy insofar as consistency was concerned. As expected, the progeny of Sir Tristram were generally slow to develop although by the time of the Melbourne autumn carnival two of their number were forward enough to be the top fancies for the $60,000 V.R.C. Sires’ Produce Stakes. Frame, the grey son of Surround that had cost $420,000 at Trentham; and Tristalight, from the T. J. Hughes stable that boasted some smart two-year-olds that season. The Sires’ Produce Stakes that year proved a sensation when Frame, the 6/4 on favourite, collapsed and died soon after passing the winning post in last place. Jockey Brent Thomson informed Robert Sangster and Colin Hayes that the colt was never travelling well and began to stagger and cough as he was pulling up. Thomson jumped clear of the horse as he struggled to stay on his feet. It was yet another reminder of the risks in paying extravagant prices for untried yearlings. The race was won narrowly by the Sydney colt Street Café, who had a short half head to spare over Tristalight after a memorable duel down the Flemington straight, with Lord Of Camelot a length and a half further away in the minor placing. The victory came on top of the V.A.T.C. Blue Diamond Stakes that the homebred Lunchtime colt had given owners Jack and Bob Ingham, and trainer Theo Green just nine days earlier.

Meanwhile, Paul Sutherland was patiently bringing along his Sea Anchor colt. After finishing unplaced in a barrier trial, Red Anchor had made his racecourse debut in a juvenile race over 900 metres at Rosehill on the last Saturday of November. Despite blowing out to 400/1 in the market and being outpaced early, Red Anchor finished third in the nine-horse field. After a very close second to Bletchencore over 1200 metres on a heavy Randwick track in early January, Red Anchor then broke through for his first victory over the same Randwick course and distance at a midweek meeting nine days later. The race was the A.J.C. Reading Handicap, named after the distinguished A.J.C. Derby winner of 1939. Even then, Paul Sutherland harboured ambitions of winning the very same classic with his imposing chestnut. Red Anchor was then put aside for the rich autumn plums.

The colt failed to make it into the S.T.C. Golden Slipper Stakes when he was beaten into second placing in the S.T.C. Pago Pago Quality by the eventual Slipper winner and favourite, Inspired. Nonetheless, it was a hugely impressive performance from a colt with a Derby pedigree as Red Anchor, partnered by Ron Quinton, was only beaten by one-and-a quarter lengths after starting from the extreme outside barrier of sixteen. It was the only race during his juvenile season when Bruce Compton wasn’t in the saddle. Certainly, Tommy Smith was impressed with the run. Immediately after the event Sydney’s leading trainer offered to buy the chestnut for $400,000! The six-person syndicate that owned Red Anchor knocked back the bid, but as we shall see, Tommy eventually got his horse!

Red Anchor repaid Sutherland’s faith in his remaining four starts that season. The colt went under by a neck to Victory Prince in the A.J.C. Sires’ Produce Stakes before then outstaying the same colt in the longer A.J.C. Champagne Stakes on dead ground. I was present at Randwick on both days and can remember inspecting Red Anchor in the unsaddling paddock after the Sires’. The result that year continued the recent trend of upsets in the race when the 8/11 favourite Inspired could only struggle into fourth place behind the 80/1 bolter, Victory Prince. The slow early pace didn’t suit Red Anchor that day and under hard riding by Bruce Compton in the straight, the son of Sea Anchor only just fell short. I was struck by the wonderful temperament for the racecourse that nature had bestowed on Red Anchor.

In the birdcage before the race, he moved around with the fine air of unstudied elegance despite his robust size and developing strength. After the torrid encounter with his rivals, he hardly turned a hair. Along with quite a few other people, I made up my mind to back him in the Champagne Stakes ten days later and was rewarded, although he did start the 11/8 favourite. Red Anchor showed great courage to win that day under heavy punishment after appearing beaten a couple of times in the straight. And yet he prevailed to better Victory Prince by a long neck, with a further short head to the Tommy Smith-trained Fair Verdict. Never let it be said that Bruce Compton was ever found wanting in a tight finish, something he proved time and again the following season when he finished runner-up with 76 wins to Mick Dittman in the Sydney jockeys’ premiership!

Even the curtains of recurrent showers that fell after the race couldn’t cool the ardour of the crowd in their suspicion that they may have just witnessed something rather special. Certainly, Paul Sutherland’s post-race insights should have heightened such suspicions. He declared: “Red Anchor will now go to Brisbane for the Q.T.C. Sires’ Produce Stakes on June 2 and the Castlemaine Stakes nine days later. After that he will be spelled for about four months. He will miss the spring races in Sydney to concentrate on the A.J.C. Derby next autumn. Red Anchor is winning top races as a two-year-old only because of his class. The best of him will not be seen until he is a three-year-old. He is a top classic prospect.” A top classic prospect indeed! These were words to ponder and would come to have a haunting aspect as Red Anchor’s career eventually unfolded in another man’s hands.

As an aside, that last day of the A.J.C. Autumn Meeting proved very much a red-letter day for Sutherland for the up-and-coming trainer won no less than four races including the A.J.C. St Leger with Port Fair. Taken to Brisbane, Red Anchor did indeed win the Q.T.C. Sires’ Produce Stakes (1400 metres) before finishing runner-up to Prince Frolic, beaten a short half head after conceding the winner four kilograms, in the rich Q.T.C. Castlemaine Stakes (1600 metres). Bruce Compton was pilloried in some quarters for his ride in that race. Those last four performances were enough to see Red Anchor rated equal fifth in the Australia-New Zealand classification of two-year-olds for 1983-84. Weighted on 56.0 kg, he was just 2kg shy of the joint topweights, Inspired, and the Kiwi filly, Vin D’Amour. While Street Café was rated third on 57.0 kg, the only one of Sir Tristram’s slow-developing progeny to be rated was Tristalight on 52.5 kg.

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Tommy Smith wasn’t in Australia when Red Anchor performed his heroics at Eagle Farm at the close of his two-year-old season. Sydney’s leading trainer had left on his annual England and European holiday, trusting his brother Ernie to manage the stable in his absence. Nonetheless, even before flying out, he had a strong suspicion that he might be preparing Red Anchor when he resumed racing as a three-year-old. The three principal owners of the colt, Messrs Gigante, Symond and Hely had all raced horses successfully with Smith in the past. Back in the mid-seventies, Gigante and Symond had raced the likes of Times Right and Avoid Island through Tulloch Lodge, while Allan Hely had been involved in quite a few of Smith’s stable syndications. During Red Anchor’s rise to juvenile prominence, Tommy had lost no opportunity in advising these old clients just how good he thought Red Anchor could become, if only he was crunching his oats in Tulloch Lodge. And resisting Tommy when he was on the warpath and hellbent on acquiring your particular racehorse was akin to arguing with a brass band. Sutherland was only too aware of Tommy’s interest, but believed until now that flattery and indulgence were the best means of keeping the threat of a stable switch at bay.

However, in the wake of the Castlemaine Stakes, a disagreement arose between Sutherland, in a contra mundum mood, and the other owners almost as soon as the horses had passed the post at Eagle Farm. Whereas the latter wanted to afford the colt a brief sojourn in the Queensland sunshine before pressing on with a Melbourne spring campaign, Sutherland preferred a more extensive rest, avoiding Victoria entirely in the spring and waiting for a Sydney autumn campaign culminating in the S.T.C. Tancred Stakes and A.J.C. Derby, and possibly even a start in the Sydney Cup. Sutherland was concerned that the heavy-topped colt who suffered with flat heels needed more time to mature and strengthen lest he incur future fetlock and tendon trouble.

Of course, of all the principals involved, Sutherland had the least to gain and the most to lose from a stable transfer. But racing can be a ruthless business. Red Anchor’s owners persisted and Gigante, Symond and Hely struck a fairly generous offer with Sutherland to buy out his one-sixth share before the month of June had expired. Fortune, in the shape of an inspired yearling choice at Waikato had been kind to our Rosehill trainer. Why should he not bask in its smile? Sutherland was looking to expand his stables and the windfall gain from selling out his share in the horse enabled him to buy Kevin Hayes’ Rosehill stables. Upon his return from Queensland, Red Anchor went into Tulloch Lodge.

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Tommy Smith returned from his six weeks abroad on Friday, 13 July, although with Red Anchor now in his training arsenal there seemed nothing like Black Friday about it. Sydney’s master trainer lost no time in inspecting the colt and plotting a spring campaign. Looking large and lusty, Red Anchor was bronzed with a rich radiance from his time spent in the Queensland sunshine when he resumed racing in the $30,000 Roman Consul Stakes (1200 metres) at Randwick on the first day of September 1984. Inspired, the previous season’s top juvenile, went off as the 5/4 favourite in the field of thirteen but was never in the race. Despite being trapped three-wide for much of the journey, Red Anchor, with Mick Dittman steering his course for the first time, proved too strong. There was no little irony in the fact that it was the Paul Sutherland-trained Royal Troubador, ridden by Bruce Compton, who chased Red Anchor home. Immediately after the race, Smith announced that the horse would be taken directly to Melbourne as he wasn’t forward enough to contest the A.J.C. Spring Champion Stakes (2000 metres) some three weeks later, a result of Red Anchor’s brief let-up after his belated June campaign in Queensland. I might mention that in Red Anchor’s absence, Smith still managed to quinella the Spring Champion Stakes that season with two other horses in his stable in Luck’s A Lottery and Black Ivory.

Red Anchor flared into fame like a meteor in the heavens during that Melbourne spring campaign. First up on the last Saturday in September came the Moonee Valley Stakes (1600 metres). Red Anchor was let out at 11/4 with the Colin Hayes-trained National Gallery the 9/4 favourite. What the bookmakers were thinking of, taking such liberties with the Sea Anchor colt, passed comprehension. Despite being on the wrong leg for much of the journey on the tight, anti-clockwise circuit, Red Anchor easily swept past Lord Of Camelot to win by two lengths, with National Gallery, a further neck away. Both Smith and Dittman had remained at Randwick for the second day of the A.J.C. Spring Meeting rather than ventured to Melbourne. In the latter’s absence, Gary Willetts had substituted in the leathers and upon dismounting, declared Red Anchor in the same class as Rose Of Kingston.

A fortnight later and with Dittman back in the saddle in a fourteen-strong field, Red Anchor raced away with the Caulfield Guineas with Lord Of Camelot again languishing in second place three lengths further adrift. Spirit Of Kingston, a Bletchingly filly who was a half-sister to Rose Of Kingston and raced and trained in the same interests, finished third. The race was run in the relatively slow time of 1 minute 37 seconds due to the slow early pace, but the result proved that Red Anchor could settle even in the most unfavourable of circumstances. Perhaps it was just as well that he did, as his owners had rejected an offer of $3 million for the colt on the Tuesday prior. Surprisingly, it was only Smith’s second success in the mile classic, his first coming with Tulloch twenty-seven years earlier. When interviewed by journalists at Randwick after the race, Smith observed: “He has never been extended in either a race or a track trial since he came into my stable. I won’t compare him with Kingston Town yet, but we might start making comparisons after he wins the Cox Plate and Victoria Derby.” Unlike Kingston Town, Red Anchor had no trouble negotiating Caulfield at the first time of asking.

And so, to Moonee Valley – and the weight-for-age championship of Australasia. Alas, the 1984-85 racing season suffered a paucity of genuine weight-for-age horses. That season there were no fewer than thirty-one different winners of the thirty-nine weight-for-age races of either Group One or Group Two status. Accordingly, the racing landscape and conditions suggested that it was an ideal year for a top class three-year-old. The last of the age group to win the race had been the wonder filly Surround in 1976, while the last time a three-year-old colt had done so was Taj Rossi in 1973. Red Anchor looked the goods. Certainly, the betting market thought so for he went to the post as the 8/11 favourite with the four-year-old Beechcraft next best at 11/2.

In fine weather and on a dead track Red Anchor defeated another three-year-old in Street Café by three-quarters of a length and in so doing clipped 0.6 seconds from the previous race record established by Surround for the 2050 metres journey. The performance, however, was more dour than brilliant. Mick Dittman worked hard for his winning percentage, both during the 2 minutes 3.7 seconds of the race itself and the preceding week when he had to strip 2.5 kg from his sparse frame to make Red Anchor’s weight of 48.5 kg. The jockey was distressed as he slumped in the jockeys’ room afterwards but had no hesitation declaring the winner as the best horse that he had ever ridden. Dittman had plenty of time to ponder his judgement that afternoon for the stewards stood him down from his remaining mounts on the day. Whereas it was only Dittman’s second and last W. S. Cox Plate, it was Tommy Smith’s seventh and last.

The 68-year-old Master of Tulloch Lodge was now in the twilight of his training career and Red Anchor would be the last in the long line of his champion weight-for-age horses. Despite his age, it was obvious that the fire of Smith’s genius was again being rekindled by this handsome red chestnut colt. The Victoria Derby now beckoned. The trick that spring had been to retain Red Anchor’s brilliance for the mile at Caulfield while teaching him to relax enough in his races to ensure he stayed the Derby distance at Flemington. Red Anchor’s temperament made the task relatively easy. It was noticeable that unlike so many Smith-trained gallopers, Red Anchor required no surcingle or rings to assist Dittman in his steering. Nor did this no-nonsense colt need blinkers, nose roll, or headgear of any sort. Just a simple bridle and reins.

Imperturbable both in the parade ring and in his races, the son of Sea Anchor was a straight-goer possessed of a delightful daisy-cutting galloping action. These qualities were never seen to better effect than seven days after the W. S. Cox Plate, when Red Anchor stepped out at Flemington, again as an 8/11 favourite. Only eight horses opposed him in the Victoria Derby with National Gallery the second elect at 3/1 and Geoff Murphy’s Clovelly Bay the only other runner under double figures. On fast ground and in glorious sunshine, Red Anchor stamped an indelible mark on the Australian Turf. National Gallery, with Brent Thomson in the irons, had enjoyed keen stable support in course betting. If there was a question mark over the favourite, it was whether he could run out a strong 2500 metres, particularly after he seemed to struggle to get past Street Café on the turn at Moonee Valley a week earlier. Mick Mallyon aboard National Gallery’s stablemate, Callenza, decided to pose the question.

Callenza set a strong pace early, albeit given a slight breather at the back of the track, before going on with his task down the side of the course past the old Chicquita Lodge. With Callenza still piloting the field swinging for home, Dittman sitting quietly, and Brent Thomson tracking him on National Gallery, the course broadcaster, Bill Collins, now excitedly exclaimed: “We’ll find out who can stay!” And find out they did! No sooner had the field straightened than National Gallery got to within three-quarters of a length of Red Anchor. But, as Dittman already knew, and Thomson was about to discover, this Derby was over. At  that moment, Red Anchor was off the bridle and just being nudged along. However, once Dittman went for the whip, he had lift off. The acceleration was breathtaking! It seemed like the flight of a meteor, and those left in his wake felt the force of the pull. At the winning post, Red Anchor won easing down by four lengths in the smart time of 2 minutes 35.9 seconds, with National Gallery and Clovelly Bay languishing in the minor placings. “What a horse!”, declared Bill Collins. “He’s the best three-year-old you’ve seen since Tulloch!” Given that Kingston Town’s reputation was forged during the autumn of his three-year-old season, it seemed an incontrovertible statement.

Robert Sangster still smarting over the expensive National Gallery’s vanquishment, acclaimed Red Anchor as “an outstanding horse, unquestionably in world class”. As he dismounted and reflected on what had just happened, Dittman remarked: “I’m certain he would win the Melbourne Cup on Tuesday, if he was in it.” It might have been forty-three years since any three-year-old had done so, but nobody was prepared to gainsay Dittman at the time. Of course, when the nominations for the Cup had closed, the horse wasn’t even in Tulloch Lodge. Had he been, Smith most assuredly would have nominated him! Despite the euphoria, Smith again refused to compare him with his all-time favourite Tulloch. It was the trainer’s thirty-first Derby and his fifth at Flemington. And so, Red Anchor, trembling on the very edge of greatness, completed his three-year-old spring campaign undefeated in five from five. Smith did try and persuade the owners to push on with a summer program in the Golden West, but John Gigante declined the beguiling siren calls. He, along with the other connections, now had his heart set on the A.J.C. Derby.

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Recalling that subsequent W.A.T.C. Summer Meeting, still brings a nostalgic twinge of sadness to me. Red Anchor might not have gone to Perth, but the expensive and valuable National Gallery did. As we have seen, National Gallery, by Sir Tristram out of the Hermes mare My Tricia, was a full brother to Grosvenor. Bought for $280,000 as a yearling at Trentham, he was raced by a five-member syndicate comprising Robert Sangster, Norman Carlyon, Ananda Krishnan, Patrick Hogan and Colin Hayes. Hayes had set him for the rich W.A.T.C treble of Group One races viz. the Western Australian Derby, the Rothwells Classic and the Australian Derby. Apart from the valuable first prize money in each of those races, there was a $300,000 bonus for any horse that could win the treble. Although the local colt, Importune, a late foal and slow developer by Imposing who had won a string of listed races, was backed into 6/4 favouritism for the first of the treble, National Gallery was untroubled in relegating him into second place.

A fortnight later, there were no intimations of mortality as the magnificently conformed dark brown son of Sir Tristram again stepped out at Ascot, this time in the Rothwells Classic. Although over ground 600 metres shorter than the Derbies, National Gallery still went off as the 5/2 favourite. As in the W. A. Derby, his jockey Mick Mallyon elected to ride the colt on the rails near the rear until the straight was reached. At around the 800 metres mark, however, Mallyon felt the horse lose power, but kept on riding. By the home turn, he knew that something seriously was amiss and gradually eased National Gallery out of the race. However, it wasn’t until some fifty metres from the winning post that the colt staggered to a stop. Mallyon quickly jumped off. National Gallery took a few more steps like a drunken sailor only to drop dead.

It was a hot and humid summer’s day on sun-baked ground and the presumption was that the distressed colt, recently revalued at $2,000,000 given his stud potential, had died from a sudden heart attack. Over those years of bloated W.A.T.C. prizemoney that seemed to correspond with the Western Australian mining boom, Ascot in high summer exacted a heavy retribution on some of our most promising three-year-olds and those acquisitive owners who tried to extend spring campaigns into summer. Here, in front of the public grandstands was visual, visceral evidence of the fact. In National Gallery’s absence, both the Rothwells Classic and the Australian Derby fell to the lot of Importune. Sadly, the death of National Gallery was to be a harbinger of misfortune to come among the three-year-old ranks later that season.

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Rarely over the years have I looked forward more to the Sydney autumn racing carnival than in 1985. Anticipation is much of the pleasure although I might have been better subscribing to Schopenhauer’s philosophy. The presence of Red Anchor on a racecourse would have stirred the passions in the breast of any racing afficionado. The colt now widely acclaimed as the best in Australia had been back in harness for a few weeks and resumed racing in the A.J.C. Apollo Stakes (1400 metres) at Randwick on the second Saturday of February. The fizz of anticipation among the crowd was palpable as one walked through the famous entrance gates that day. Thereafter Red Anchor’s campaign was intended to be the A.J.C. Hobartville Stakes and Chipping Norton Stakes, the S.T.C. Canterbury and Rosehill Guineas, S.T.C. Tancred Stakes, A.J.C. Derby and Sydney Cup. This was the autumn glory’s golden flood of group races in those days. On the eve of the weight-for-age Apollo Stakes, Tommy Smith declared with more than a hint of Panglossian optimism: “Kingston Town went through the 1980 autumn unbeaten in six starts and there is no reason this colt can’t do the same in eight! He will win the Apollo and every other race he starts in!” Sadly, as events transpired, the Apollo was the only race he did start in.

Fourteen horses, including five from the Neville Begg stable, opposed him in his comeback but with Dittman in the saddle, Red Anchor was dispatched as the 2/7 favourite on the strength of his billing as a wonder horse. He won effortlessly and Begg had to be satisfied with his La Cassiere and Lotka’s Star filling the minor placings. The chorus of praise for Australia’s new turf champion became even louder. I was a witness at Randwick that day. I don’t think that it is the enchantment that time and distance lend to such a scene to say that anything seemed possible after that performance. But a terrible calamity was now impending that none of us saw coming. Twelve days later, on the Thursday morning prior to the Hobartville Stakes, Red Anchor ran 800 metres in 52 seconds on the steeple grass at Randwick suggesting that all was well, and he was coming along nicely. However, after light work on Friday morning, around lunchtime the colt developed swelling in the top of his off-fore fetlock joint very near the suspensory ligament. The stable management rang Tommy Smith. The veteran trainer might have believed he was hearing an echo in history of another champion three-year-old when he took that telephone call. Kingston Town’s leg troubles came immediately to mind.

Scratched from the Hobartville Stakes in which the Brian Mayfield-Smith-trained Phillip scored a hollow victory in a five horse-field, Red Anchor’s injury at first didn’t seem serious. Indeed, by the following Monday the colt had improved sufficiently to be trotted and cantered at Randwick. There was swelling but seemingly no soreness. The injury initially baffled the veterinary surgeons, John Peatfield and Percy Sykes, the latter having been called out of semi-retirement by Smith. Sykes recommended for the splint bone to be x-rayed and for the horse to be put on an Ionocare machine, a low-current, electric-field therapy apparatus, interspersed with icepacks on the joint. Smith gave Red Anchor a relatively quiet time until the Tuesday morning prior to the $100,000 S.T.C. Canterbury Guineas when the horse galloped 1200 metres in 1 minute 21 seconds at Randwick.

Sadly, soon after the gallop the red chestnut was clearly favouring his off foreleg. There was nothing to be done but spell him in the Camden paddocks and hope for the best. Informed by Messrs Peatfield and Sykes, Smith harboured hopes that time would remedy the weakness and that Red Anchor would return to Tulloch Lodge. Alas, it was not to be. Unwilling to take the risk and with several studmasters expressing interest in acquiring the stallion, Messrs Giganti, Symond and Hely cashed in their chips. Before the month of March had expired and a week before the running of the A.J.C. Derby, it was announced that Red Anchor had been sold to Sir Tristan Antico’s Baramul Stud and its associated companies, and syndicated for breeding purposes.

Baramul was chosen not just because its offer was competitive but also for the strength of its broodmare harem. Red Anchor was syndicated into forty-two shares sold at $75,000 each, including insurance costs, rendering his total stud value at $3.15 million dollars. Baramul, of course, was the stud established in the Widden Valley by A. O. Ellison in 1947 and where the legendary Star Kingdom had reigned supreme for so long. Sir Tristan Antico had purchased the stud in December 1984 after the octogenarian Ellison elected to unburden himself of the large property and moved closer to Scone when he bought the small stud of Kilwinning, taking just eight mares with him. Now, Red Anchor was to become Antico’s foundation stallion at Baramul. The stud and Antico’s associated companies retained sixteen shares, while Red Anchor’s former owners held thirteen shares with the balance put out to market. One of the conditions of the sale specified that Red Anchor was not to race again.  Never once unplaced in his fourteen starts, Red Anchor had won nine races, including four Group One victories and amassed $779,970 in prize money.

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Paul Sutherland’s fears of pushing Red Anchor into an exhausting spring campaign as a three-year-old, the ostensible reason for his parting of the ways with the colt’s owners, had proven to be only too well-founded. No doubt Sutherland did drink the dregs of disappointment during that glorious Melbourne spring of 1984 as he watched Red Anchor’s string of victories from the sidelines while struggling to maintain a stoic detachment, but the colt’s breakdown gave him no satisfaction. There are no certainties in retrospect but it is an intriguing speculation to wonder how differently Red Anchor’s career might have unfolded had he stayed with Sutherland at Rosehill. A popular and pugnacious character, and unlike Smith, well liked by his peers, Sutherland was never one to dwell in the past. Taking the money from the sale of his share in Red Anchor, Sutherland expanded his stable accommodation and numbers, and pushed on with his quest to succeed Tommy Smith as Sydney’s leading trainer. Indeed, the defection of Red Anchor to the rival stable had only spurred on the quest.

But it was a quest that Sutherland never realised. The closest that he ever came to claiming the Sydney trainers’ premiership was when he finished runner-up to fellow Rosehill trainer Brian Mayfield-Smith in the 1986-87 season with 88 ½ winners. Nonetheless, in doing so, he did relegate Tommy into third place, an achievement from which he derived immense satisfaction. Interestingly, Sutherland didn’t regard Red Anchor as the best horse that he ever trained. To the end of his days, and they ended in Nambour Hospital in August 2016 at the age of seventy-one, he always maintained that honour belonged to Tross, a big, unsound gelding by Moss Trooper, who made his racing debut as a late season five-year-old. Sutherland bought a half-share of the horse for $25,000 after he had broken through for his maiden victory at Newcastle in the same month that he lost Red Anchor. Some have dismissed this as merely the jealous bravado of a disappointed man but anyone who witnessed Tross win the 1984 Warwick Farm Spring Cup would understand the trainer’s enthusiasm. But for bowing a tendon, Sutherland always believed that the horse would have won a Melbourne Cup. But I seem to have digressed.

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The rich autumn three-year-old races were thrown wide open with the defection of Red Anchor. While the Melbourne filly Spirit Of Kingston’s win in the S.T.C. Canterbury Guineas excited the prospect of a third A.J.C. Derby for David Hains and the Kingston Park Stud in the space of just six years, Noble Peer’s triumph in the weight-for-age V.R.C. Australian Cup two days later with Harry White up, saw this son of Sir Tristram surge to Rosehill Guineas and Derby favouritism. Noble Peer was the grey colt out of the Dancer’s Image mare, Puzzi, for which Bart Cummings had given $280,000 at the Trentham yearling sales just over two years earlier. Sporting the ‘pink jacket, red sash, white cap’ of the South African businessman Gerald Jaffee, Noble Peer had been slow to mature, and Cummings had been extremely patient. Now, it all appeared to be coming together.

Yet the duration of Noble Peer’s reign at the top of A.J.C. Derby charts was as brief as it was sudden. The colt with Ron Quinton in the saddle was sent to the post as the well-backed 6/4 favourite in the sixteen-strong field for the Rosehill Guineas with Luck’s A Lottery (4/1) and Spirit Of Kingston (5/1) next fancied. After having been perfectly positioned coming down the side of the course, Quinton suddenly felt Noble Peer falter approaching the home turn, the horse having bowed the tendon in his off foreleg. The colt dropped back through the field and hobbled past the post in a distressed condition with Quinton quickly dismounting soon after. It was only with some difficulty that the horse was removed from the track. Such was the injury that Noble Peer never again appeared on a racecourse and was immediately retired to stud. It is interesting to observe that because of disquieting reports that Noble Peer had pulled up sore after early morning trackwork the previous Thursday, the horse was subject to a veterinary inspection by the club before taking his place in the Guineas’ field.

The race was narrowly won by the brilliant Spirit Of Kingston, a short half-head in front of the Newcastle-trained Castanillia, with Luck’s A Lottery again filling a minor placing. The time for the race was 2 minutes 2.6 seconds. A tall, deep-barreled filly, this black/brown daughter of Bletchingly and a half-sister to Rose Of Kingston, had shown distinct promise from her very first gallops but had been slow to physically mature. As a two-year-old, she had been brilliant enough to win both the listed V.R.C. Waltzing Lily Handicap and the prestigious Black Opal Stakes in Canberra but had fallen short when she went around in both the V.A.T.C. Blue Diamond Stakes and the S.T.C. Golden Slipper Stakes. Nonetheless, she had shown staying pretensions when taking out the minor placing in the Sires’ Produce Stakes at Randwick.

In the spring, Spirit Of Kingston had shown her liking for the expansive grounds of Flemington where she won both the Edward Manifold Stakes and the V.R.C. Oaks. There was no little irony in the fact that Ron Quinton could have ridden this winning daughter of Bletchingly in both the Canterbury and Rosehill Guineas, but for his loyalty to the owner Gerald Jaffee in going to Melbourne to partner Hula Drum in the V.R.C. Newmarket Handicap when the latter race clashed with the Canterbury Guineas. In Quinton’s absence, trainer Bob Hoysted had booked John Marshall instead, and the young jockey now had banked winning percentages from both Guineas. Moreover, there was the prospect of even more to come given that the two Sydney race clubs had posted a $250,000 bonus for any horse that could win the Triple Crown of both Guineas and the Derby and Spirit Of Kingston had by now been elevated to Derby favouritism.

Performances apart, much of the reason for Spirit Of Kingston becoming the Derby favourite was the fact that physical breakdowns seemed to stalk all of the best three-year-old colts that summer and early autumn like a spectre with a scythe. I can’t remember a racing season quite like it. If the demise of National Gallery and the career-ending injuries to Red Anchor and Noble Peer hadn’t been enough, in the same week as the Rosehill Guineas came news of the scratching of both Importune and Sir Vigilant from the A.J.C. Derby. Importune, the Western Australian colt that had so dominated the W.A.T.C. Summer Carnival had been brought to Sydney by part-owner and trainer Ted Hickling but had pulled up sore one morning after working steadily at Randwick and returned to Perth without so much as a start in Sydney.

Sir Vigilant, winner of the W.R.C. Wellington Derby and New Zealand St Leger, was brought across the Tasman by the Woodville trainer Murray Baker but injured a fetlock joint just four days before the Rosehill Guineas, and like Importune, returned home without appearing before the public. I might observe that Sir Vigilant was one of the very few of Sir Tristram’s 1981 progeny that had registered a Group One victory at this stage of the season. Both the Hobartville Stakes winner, Phillip, and the Victoria Derby placegetter, Clovelly Bay, had also fallen by the wayside. All this attrition would have the predictable effect of serving up a relatively small and seemingly undistinguished Derby field at Randwick.

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For all the big money that had changed hands at the New Zealand National Sales for Sir Tristram yearlings back in January 1983, most of the buyers at this stage of proceedings had come up short. Only National Gallery and Noble Peer had won at Group One level in Australia. Sir Vigilant, a homebred by Sir Tristram had also done so in New Zealand but had never been offered for sale as a yearling due to an injury suffered as a youngster. Nonetheless, there were a handful of owners of three-year-old fillies by Sir Tristram who now were beginning to feel quietly confident about their prospects in the latter part of the season and none more so than the colourful, forty-year-old Melbourne sportsman, Nick Columb. A passionate man of strong opinions who was not shy about expressing them, Columb had been born in Europe at the end of World War II. He had arrived in Melbourne with his parents in 1950 at the age of four, after the once wealthy family had deserted Bucharest and their native Romania following its invasion by Russia. Nick loved telling the story of how his family’s wealth and network of influential contacts enabled his father to buy his exit out of a Bucharest gaol in 1946 and then to lay on a special railway car with a secret compartment in which father, mother and little Nick were secreted away for their ride across the Austrian border, later moving to France, and eventually Australia.

Educated at Brighton Grammar School, Columb began a law degree at Monash University and stayed there for two years before “he began falling asleep in lectures.” A cadetship at the Melbourne Herald (now the Herald-Sun) came next and he stayed for almost a decade as a journalist covering crime and the courts and sports, including racing. The Turf editor there, and Columb’s boss at the time, was the pompous and self-basting Jack Elliott, which would have set up an inevitable clash of two giant egos. Elliott eventually told him to go and make his fortune elsewhere as he wasn’t going to get it in newspapers! Columb, miffed, moved on to become the marketing director for a national advertising agency although it was becoming clear even to himself that his outsized, confident, gregarious, ebullient nature suited him less to playing the role of employee than entrepreneur. Shrewd intelligence, sound judgement, and a willingness to borrow and take risks during his late twenties and all of his thirties, saw him accumulate a property portfolio that included a hotel, several private hospitals and eventually the Morning Star Estate at Mt Eliza.

Financial security now enabled Columb to indulge his passion for racing. After some early disappointments, the 1980-81 season saw him enjoying a shared interest in two top gallopers in the shape of Full On Aces and Little Brown Jug. Soon afterwards, he linked up with the Epsom trainer Ross McDonald, who was the same age as Columb. After a couple of early failures, the pair hit paydirt when in 1982 they enjoyed a series of wins including both the Marlboro Cup and George Adams Handicap with that good sprinter/miler Magari, a son of Maybe Lad. Magari became the most improved horse in Australia that year and some of his early victories were accompanied by some smart stings in the ring, perhaps none more so than when he won the Stefan Sprint at Eagle Farm, although the money that day went on at Rosehill and knocked the leading interstate bookmaker Bruce McHugh there for six.

Flush with funds from Magari’s triumphs in the spring, Columb had carefully combed through the offerings by Sir Tristram at the New Zealand Yearling Sales in January 1983 before deciding to spend $135,000 on a bay filly with a sour temper out of the Arctic Explorer mare, Renarc, bred by Patrick Hogan at Cambridge. Columb then invited four friends viz. Messrs. Sheppard, Smorgon, Styles and White to share in the horse with him although he remained the senior partner, and the filly was to race in his colours. Registered as Tristarc, she was given time to develop by McDonald and didn’t make her public debut until late March 1984 over 1000-metres at Flemington when she finished thirteenth behind Finneto. Incidentally, the winner was no slouch and later became best known as the dam of that dual W. S. Cox Plate winner, Fields Of Omagh. Impetuous and contrary with the delicate susceptibilities of a mule, Tristarc proved a handful for her various jockeys in her five unplaced starts as a juvenile. Still, McDonald knew Tristarc could gallop and even brought her over for the Champagne Stakes at Randwick where she got within five and a half lengths of Red Anchor at the finish to run seventh. She rounded out her juvenile season at Doomben and then wintered in the Queensland sunshine before beginning her three-year-old season.

Tristarc resumed racing at the end of September and finished unplaced in a sprint at Moonee Valley. Following a further unplaced run at Flemington, she only returned her first prizemoney of $460 in October 1984 when runner-up in a big field in a Ballarat Maiden Plate (1500 metres). In a bid to qualify her for the V.R.C. Oaks, McDonald took her over to Morphettville where she managed to break through for her first win in a weak handicap over 1800 metres. Returned to Melbourne, Tristarc eventually took her place in the V.R.C. Oaks field. Curiously enough, she wasn’t Nick Columb’s or Ross McDonald’s only starter in the Flemington fillies’ classic. The two men were blessed with another high-class three-year-old filly that season in the shape of a brown daughter of Century called Centaurea.

A homebred and a half-sister to Magari, Centaurea was more brilliant than Tristarc and had come to hand more quickly. Having secured her maiden win at Eagle Farm in August, Centaurea had shown her promise when finishing a close second to Spirit Of Kingston in a capacity field for the V.R.C. Edward Manifold Stakes at Flemington in early October. Having finished a useful fifth in the V.R.C. Wakeful Stakes on the Saturday prior, Centaurea was slightly more fancied than Tristarc for the V.R.C. Oaks although each were sent to the post at generous prices. Whereas Tristarc in the hands of Glynn Pretty, knocked up badly to finish fifteenth, Centaurea, with new jockey Peter Cook, claimed the minor placing in the race won by Spirit Of Kingston from Our Lafite. Whereas Centaurea had then continued to race through the summer, running unplaced in the W.A.T.C. Australian Derby and eventually carrying the great English jockey Lester Piggott to victory in the S.A.J.C. Australasian Oaks, Tristarc had gone straight to the spelling paddocks.

In the autumn of 1985, Nick Columb and Ross McDonald were thus confronted with the enviable task of plotting separate campaigns for the two fillies, with one culminating in the A.J.C. Derby and the other in the A.J.C. Oaks. Tristarc was demonstrating in trackwork, if not in races, that she was the genuine staying article and that a Derby challenge to the colts was well within her compass. Sir Tristram’s most talented staying daughters often showed remarkable maturity and improvement towards the close of their three-year-old season and Tristarc was appearing true to the pattern. Centaurea on the other hand, had travelled a long and winding road in her strenuous interstate program that had already encompassed racecourses in Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide.  Moreover, despite her placing in the V.R.C. Oaks, her inglorious drubbing in the Australian Derby when she finished some seventeen lengths off the winner, Importune, suggested that rather than 2400 metres, perhaps something less was her ideal trip.

Accordingly, while Tristarc’s seasonal debut in Sydney came in the Rosehill Guineas, Centaurea’s came over the same course and distance one week later in the Storm Queen Stakes, which was restricted to three-year-old fillies. Before coming to Sydney, Tristarc had resumed for a minor placing in a 1400-metre listed race at Caulfield in late February before a satisfying fourth in the A. V. Kewney Stakes over 1600 metres at Flemington. Sent to the post as a despised 80/1 outsider in the Rosehill Guineas, with her, by now, regular rider Wayne Treloar, the filly came from fourteenth on the home turn with a stout finishing burst to finish an eye-catching sixth. It was enough to inspire stable patrons to strongly support Tristarc for the A.J.C. Blue Riband. Moreover, those very same patrons were cashed-up after Centaurea subsequently landed the Storm Queen Stakes (2000 metres) as the 13/8 favourite from a capacity field just seven days before the Derby was scheduled to be run.

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Thirteen horses were accepted for the A.J.C. Derby including three fillies. Spirit Of Kingston reigned as the 3/1 favourite for the race. And why not? Spelled after winning the V.R.C. Oaks from Our Lafite and Centaurea in the spring, Spirit Of Kingston had resumed in mid-January for a minor placing in a Flemington Welter before heading to Morphettville to run in both the Queen of the South Stakes and the Australasian Oaks finishing in minor placings in both races. In the former she was the runner-up to Star Style Girl and in the latter, she was beaten less than a length into third by Centaurea and Katikate. However, once having arrived in Sydney, Spirit Of Kingston blossomed and had won both the Canterbury and Rosehill Guineas at her two most recent starts. Having emulated the achievement of her half-sister Rose Of Kingston in winning the V.R.C. Oaks, David Hains and Bob Hoysted were now sanguine as to her prospects of doing the same again in the A.J.C. Derby, although each man sounded a familiar note of caution to those friends wishing to support the filly in the market.

The A.J.C. Derby was the fifth race on the card and the field and race conditions are shown in the table below:

Silver Award occupied the second line of betting. A rangy grey gelding by the imported Royal Rocket trained by Ray Guy at Rosehill, Silver Award was a homebred retained by his breeders and as an August foal was the oldest horse in the field. Silver Award owed his prominence in Derby betting to having finished a handy fourth in both the Guineas at Canterbury and Rosehill and few doubted that he would stay the Derby trip. Bruce Compton who once dreamed of riding Red Anchor in the race had the mount on Silver Award, a horse that required a strong jockey. Next in line was Castanillia, a bay gelding bred in New Zealand and sold cheaply as a yearling. Castanillia was prepared by R. M. Hoysted at Broadmeadow. Apart from having won the Gosford Guineas, this son of Amyntor had only gone down narrowly to Spirit Of Kingston in the Rosehill Guineas.

Despite the defection of Red Anchor, the powerful Tulloch Lodge stable still managed to get two runners into the Derby field in Luck’s A Lottery and Home Office. Luck’s A Lottery was a bay gelding who had been purchased at the New Zealand National Yearling Sales for $26,000 and raced by a syndicate headed by Bill Ritchie and carrying his well-known colours of “black, red stars, sleeves and cap”. Sired by the American stallion Double Nearco and out of a Mellay mare, Luck’s A Lottery’s form had been most consistent having finished third at his three most recent starts in the Gosford, Canterbury and Rosehill Guineas. Home Office was a relatively cheap chestnut colt by Sir Tristram that had been sold at the New Zealand National Yearling Sales for $30,000. The most lightly-raced horse in the field, Home Office had won two of his six starts although at his most recent appearance had finished a disappointing seventh in the Rosehill Guineas. While the W.R.C. Wellington Derby winner, Sir Vigilant, failed to make it to the starting post, the runner-up in that race had, in the shape of the Zamazaan colt, Sir Zephyr. Trained by B. J. Smith at Wyong, Sir Zephyr carried the red, white and blue stars and stripes of the colourful Paddington hotelier, Ray Stehr. I hadn’t  paid much attention to Tristarc on Rosehill Guineas Day but I made a point of looking her over on Derby Day only to overlook her in favour of another filly, Spirit Of Kingston, as the carrier of my modest wager.

In the parade ring before the race, Tristarc, quoted at 14/1, appeared to me to be in one of her more fastidious and fragile moods. She returned to Sydney with her reputation as something of a madam enhanced, having lashed out with her hind legs at a race meeting at Caulfield the previous June, inflicting a fractured cheekbone and other facial injuries on Adelaide owner Don Aston who was merely present in the enclosure innocently inspecting his own horse. Aston spent the rest of that day and overnight in the Alfred Hospital on the Commercial Road. I was somewhat relieved that there was a fence between the crowd and Tristarc at Randwick as the filly’s fire and fury seemed barely-contained. Moreover, she was laden with more gear than Madonna on tour viz. the rogue’s badge – blinkers, as well as cheekers and a breastplate. By comparison, Spirit Of Kingston sported nothing more than a breastplate and a simple nose roll. And the nose roll was entirely appropriate for this tall, statuesque, near-black filly to the manner born with her high head carriage and with earnings of $409,740 already stashed in the bank. There was almost a regal swagger as the public’s favourite moved about the parade ring at Royal Randwick, seemingly only too aware of her aristocratic lineage and the obeisance of the adoring multitude lining the enclosure.

As the field mustered behind the starting gates and Nick Columb climbed the steps to take his seat in the owners’ stand, he gazed at his racebook and saw that of the thirteen-strong field, only four horses had earned less prizemoney than Tristarc (whose earnings stood at just $10,060), while none had come close to costing more than the $135,000 outlaid for her as a yearling. In fifteen race starts Tristarc had won only once. But Ross McDonald was imbued with a confidence that he shared with Columb. Tristarc was now at her peak and her latest track gallops impressive. Moreover, the riding tactics were going to change. Before legging him up, McDonald instructed Treloar to get going at the half-mile and to give her plenty of punishment. McDonald assured him that provided the filly’s temperament didn’t let her down, her condition most certainly wouldn’t. And so, with the money on – for Columb was a dashing punter – the moment of truth for this expensive Sir Tristram filly had arrived at last. Columb and his fellow group of owners, knew that the next two and a half minutes would result in either salvation or damnation.

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Wayne Treloar was convinced that this would be no armchair ride from the moment the gates crashed open. Drawn in eight, he was immediately surrounded by other horses as Tristarc tried to find her legs. Soon after the start this cantankerous daughter of Sir Tristram performed the equine equivalent with the bit of a toddler’s dummy spit, and wouldn’t settle. Gently, Treloar chastened her back onto the bridle although it wasn’t to last with her several mood swings during the journey, which was conducted at a pace neither too fast nor too slow. Conscious of McDonald’s instructions, Treloar began to move on the filly at the 1200 but then really got to work as the thirteen-horse field passed the 800-metres mark on the High-street side of the course. As the frontrunners negotiated the home turn, Sir Zephyr led narrowly from Luck’s A Lottery on the rails, with Tristarc fanning out and by now was within a length of the leading pair.

Silver Award was tracking a wide fourth and Spirit Of Kingston was nicely positioned fifth on the rails. Soon after straightening, Sir Zephyr dashed away with what appeared to be a winning break. Only then did Tristarc come back on the steel and really start to  focus. It is worth watching that final furlong on YouTube. Though smarting under Treloar’s unrestrained fury as he wielded the whip in his right hand, Tristarc ran straight and true, and was magnificent as she claimed Sir Zephyr nearing the shadows of the post. Indeed, so fast did Tristarc finish that Treloar stopped riding even before the line was crossed to win going away by three-quarters of a length. Silver Award finished strongly out wide to claim the minor placing. And so, for the second time in three years a filly had won the A.J.C. Derby, just not the filly that most of the general public had expected.

Still, there were no hard luck stories in that Derby, as the best horse had clearly won. Spirit Of Kingston did suffer a chequered passage but failed to offer anything like her best form in the run home and trailed in a tired fifth. Tristarc, in the full foam of wrath and sweat, was led in by a beaming Nick Columb, resplendent in light fawn suit and shoes, with an exhausted but wary Treloar still clutching the reins and with the Clerk of the Course mounted on his grey, riding shotgun. The race might have been over but the tantrums not necessarily so. Treloar received medical attention in the jockeys’ room after weighing-in but recovered quickly enough to attend the presentation. If prolonged endurance is supposed to tame the bold, as Byron once observed, Tristarc failed to confirm that theory as Australia’s prime minister, Bob Hawke handed over the trophy. “With glossy skin, and dripping mane, and reeling limb, and reeking flank” our antiheroine lashed out promiscuously with her back legs scattering the boisterous huddle of officials, journalists and photographers foolish enough to stray too near her loins. Basking in the afterglow of his personal triumph, Treloar praised the filly’s courage: “She is a mighty little stayer with loads of stamina. She might be cranky, but she’ll do me as a racehorse.”

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Tristarc’s A.J.C. Derby triumph brought renewed attention to the talents of the filly’s trainer, Ross McDonald. McDonald, a friendly big bear of a man with huge hands, a gruff voice, a sweet tooth and a dry sense of humour, toyed with the idea of becoming an apprentice butcher before gravitating into racing as a horse breaker. He soon forged a reputation as one of the best in the business with a knack of breaking in the unbreakable. An immensely practical horseman, there was an entire absence of pose about him and a transparent honesty. Perhaps his application for a trainer’s licence was always going to happen, particularly after he became romantically involved with Margaret Hoysted, the daughter of Bon Hoysted, the original trainer of Manikato. McDonald’s first lucky break in racing, apart from meeting Margaret, came when he was offered an unbroken thoroughbred named Fire Sun, who was running wild with a mob on a Riverina station. The station manager told McDonald that if he could catch him (although the manager doubted that anyone could), he could have him for the same $150 that the abattoirs were prepared to pay at that time. Foaled in 1967 and of undistinguished parentage, Fire Sun was classified as a non-thoroughbred in the Australian Stud Book, but it was a challenge McDonald couldn’t resist.

It was the classic face-off between an irresistible force and an immovable object. Previously undefiled by spur or bridle, the horse bucked every day for the best part of four years, but McDonald eventually tamed his fire (helped by a gelding operation) and placed the bay in Bon Hoysted’s Epsom stables. The Hoysted name had first come before the Victorian racing public with hurdlers and steeplechasers and so it was a reversion to type. As we have seen in our 1950 chapter, Bon Hoysted’s father, Fred, had first won the Grand National Steeple with Rakwool in 1931. Forty-three years later, his son achieved the same feat with Fire Sun. Moreover, the same horse the week before had taken the Australian Steeple as well, on each occasion being ridden by Matt Van Strien. The money won on both races enabled Ross and Margaret McDonald to buy their first home! Yes, until then it had been a time of struggle, but there was meaning and hope in the struggle, and now anything seemed possible. I might also mention that Bon’s older brother, Bob, made it a rare family double that same year of 1974 when his horse Robert won the Grand National Hurdle! Something about the family genes, I suppose.

Fire Sun’s success certainly drew attention to Ross McDonald’s remarkable horsemanship, but it didn’t immediately usher forth many clients. Despite having a training licence of his own, McDonald spent most of his time breaking in his father-in-law’s horses and acting as his stable foreman. Indeed, when Manikato came along a few years later, McDonald occasionally acted as the big chestnut’s strapper. It was only with the sudden death of Bon Hoysted in May 1978 that McDonald took over Hoysted’s Epsom stables. Not all the stable clients were prepared to wait and see if this rough diamond of a man could sparkle with a stopwatch as well as a lunging rope. Max Seccull for one transferred the mighty Manikato to brother Bob Hoysted instead. But a few of Bon’s loyal followers remained faithful. Among the horses that McDonald inherited at the time was the rising four-year-old Jury, owned by Sir Alec Creswick, and with that son of Showdown, our newcomer to the training ranks, won the 1978 V.R.C. Hotham Handicap and ran sixth in the Melbourne Cup behind Arwon a few days later. Winners were hard to find in those days and McDonald’s next major victory came in November 1980 when the New Zealand-owned Raspadora claimed the $25,000 V.A.T.C. Eclipse Stakes.

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The 27-year-old Derby-winning jockey, Wayne (Smokey) Treloar, had broken through for his first winner at Randwick. Not that he came to Sydney very often. Born in June 1957 and raised in the Victorian goldfield town of Maryborough, some thirty-six miles north of Ballarat, Treloar’s first ambition with horses had been to become a trotting driver, initially linking up with Jack Moore, who prepared his team at the nearby Carisbrook racetrack, home to the local Maryborough Harness Racing Club. It was Moore who convinced Treloar to switch to Noel Kelly’s galloping stable at Ballarat instead, where he served his apprenticeship. Ray Setches was the stable jockey when Treloar first went there. Treloar’s ascension to the title of champion apprentice in Melbourne was almost as rapid as Malcolm Johnston’s in Sydney and in the early days, he was guilty of almost as many clashes with stewards. Wayne had his first race ride in February 1974 and his first winner came at his fourth ride on Angel’s Best in the Begonia Festival Cup at Ballarat. Brilliant but headstrong, and able to go to the scales at 46 kg in his first season, it was in April 1975 that Treloar first burst upon the metropolitan scene. In that month, Treloar rode a winner on each of the first three Saturdays and then scored a double at Caulfield on the last Saturday of the month. At Caulfield in June, Treloar rode his first metropolitan treble.

Noel Kelly had a fair stable of horses in those days and liked a bet. Blessed with a claiming kid that could ride seemed like heaven. Overnewton in the Rosny Plate at Caulfield in June 1975 on the day that Treloar rode his treble was but one example. Such was Treloar’s progress that Kelly had no hesitation legging him up on the stable’s Aqua D’Oro to win the 1975 V.R.C. Maribyrnong Plate. The young gun quickly gained acceptance among the leading trainers including Tommy Smith, Bart Cummings, Angus Armanasco and Kel Chapman. Smith particularly enjoyed calling upon Treloar’s services when he raced his horses in Melbourne and their first major triumph together came with Toy Show in the 1976 V.R.C. Newmarket Handicap at 25/1. Others soon followed including the 1976 V.A.T.C. Toorak Handicap on Visit; 1977 V.R.C. Craven ‘A’ Stakes and George Adams Handicap on Galway Bay; 1978 and 1979 V.A.T.C. Sandown Guineas on Just A Steal and Snowing respectively; 1979 V.R.C. Sires’ Produce Stakes on Mighty Kingdom; 1980 S.A.J.C. Sires’ Produce Stakes on Who Can Say; 1981 S.A.J.C. Derby and V.R.C. Derby on Brewery Boy.

Wayne Treloar claimed the Victorian apprenticeship title four times between 1974 and 1978. Prior to the autumn of 1985, Robert Heffernan had been the regular jockey for Ross McDonald and Nick Columb, a relationship that had started with Magari’s glorious string of successes back in 1982. Although Heffernan had regularly ridden both Centaurea and Tristarc during the previous spring, the relationship soured during the 1984 V.R.C. Spring Meeting, which, after the running of the Wakeful Stakes, saw Peter Cook replace him on Centaurea in the V.R.C. Oaks while Glynn Pretty partnered Tristarc. So, the timing of Treloar’s linkage with McDonald’s stable was to be as fortuitous as his timing on the mare of his lifetime in their ultimately five shared Group One triumphs together. Indeed, Tristarc would only be rivalled in Treloar’s affections with the arrival eighteen years later of that brilliant juvenile from Macedon Lodge, Bel Esprit, the future sire of Black Caviar.  It was to Kurt Stern’s Macedon Lodge, spectacularly located in the foothills of Victoria’s Macedon Ranges, that Treloar would first go to train when he eventually retired his jockey’s licence in August 2003.

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With Tristarc having won the A.J.C. Derby and Centaurea engaged in the A.J.C. Oaks on the following Wednesday, for four days Nick Columb could riot in his imagination that he might well become the first man to own both the Derby and Oaks winners at Randwick in the same season since the controversial John Bowden Clark had claimed both prizes with Camoola and Trieste way back in 1892. While Centaurea had never been entered for the Derby and had been solely targeted at the Oaks, the same wasn’t true of Tristarc. Columb and McDonald had been hedging their bets that if Tristarc both pulled up and ate up after Saturday’s race against the colts, she might well back up on the Wednesday in the Oaks. It wasn’t to be. The finely-framed filly clearly felt the effects of her Derby Day exertions and wasn’t paid up for the fillies’ classic, being sent immediately to the spelling paddock. The stable relied on Centaurea instead and were supremely confident until sweeping rains overnight and on the day itself rendered the course heavy. From an overnight 6/4 favourite, Centaurea blew badly in on-course betting to go to the post at 4/1 in the hands of Mick Dittman.

The brown daughter of Century floundered in the mud when the pressure was applied coming towards the home turn and she knocked up badly in the straight to finish an ordinary tenth, some seventeen lengths behind the winner, Our Sophia. Nick Columb and his friends who shared in the ownership of Tristarc might have paid special attention to the A.J.C. Oaks winner, for just six months later she would cross paths with Tristarc in a famous Caulfield Cup. I might mention that, but for the half-length margin of victory by Our Sophia, Sir Tristram would have had the honour of siring both the A.J.C. Derby and A.J.C. Oaks winners, for his daughter Chamela, trained by Kerry Walker, had gone that close in finishing the runner-up.

John Keats famous poem ‘Ode to Autumn’ opens with the words: “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”. Mist was about during those wet weeks in March and April of the respective S.T.C. and A.J.C. autumn meetings in 1985, and it certainly proved a season of mellow fruitfulness for the fillies. Spirit Of Kingston had won both the Canterbury and Rosehill Guineas, and for only the second time since 1944, a filly had bested the colts in the Derby. Moreover, Sir Tristram’s slow maturing three-year-old fillies came to the fore in Brisbane a few weeks later when the Geoff Murphy-trained Tristina beat the colts in the Queensland Derby and the Neville Begg-trained Tristram Rose won the Queensland Oaks.

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Only seven fillies have ever won the A.J.C. Derby viz. Clove (1865), Florence (1870), Nellie (1879), Picture (1898), Tea Rose (1944), Rose Of Kingston (1982) and Tristarc (1985). Of those, the first five won the race when it was run in late winter/early spring, while the last two won it in the autumn. Clove, Nellie, Picture, and Tea Rose never won another important race after the A.J.C. Derby, while Florence only subsequently won the Victoria and Queensland Derbies against her own age group. The only filly before Tristarc to win in the best of company afterwards was Rose Of Kingston who annexed both the V.R.C. Craiglee Stakes and the V.A.T.C. Coongy Handicap as a four-year-old. At the time it was run, the A.J.C. Derby in 1985 was widely regarded as one of the weakest in years, given the number of high-class colts that had fallen by the wayside in the lead-up to the race.

Many racegoers left Randwick on Derby Day doubting that the slightly-built filly with the sour temper would ever measure up to weight-for-age class as a four-year-old in the following season. How wrong they were! Tristarc resumed in August, twenty-four days into the new season, in the J. J. Liston Stakes (1400 metres) at Sandown, and on heavy ground could only run eighth in the unsuitably short event. Three weeks later over the same distance and on similarly rain-affected ground at Flemington, the mare finished an impressive runner-up to Fine Offer in the Craiglee Stakes. Only now was Tristarc beginning to approach full fitness and in the space of twenty-four days she would reel off a hattrick of victories in Group One races at Caulfield that would prove two things. One, that the mare loved Caulfield; and two, that she was easily the best horse racing in Australia that spring.

In the Underwood Stakes at Caulfield on the last Thursday in September, Tristarc prevailed by a long neck over the New Zealand galloper Lacka Reason and twelve others. Sixteen days later in the V.A.T.C. Caulfield Stakes, she was even more impressive in relegating the same horse into second place, this time with a length and a half to spare. Then came the Caulfield Cup and Tristarc was elevated to 5/1 equal favouritism with the George Hanlon-trained Our Sophia. At the time, Ross McDonald trained out of Jack Holt’s old stables at Mordialloc from where the latter had sent forth three winners of the Caulfield Cup beginning with Eurythmic in 1920. However, if McDonald was feeling the weight of history, he didn’t show it. In a capacity field, Tristarc was handicapped on 50.5 kg and had drawn poorly in barrier 16. Wayne Treloar sweated during the week in sauna baths to strip weight from his 52.5 kg frame to match Tristarc’s handicap, all the while suffering from a painful infection in his foot. Indeed, the jockey required a doctor’s clearance even to fulfil his Caulfield Cup engagement.

Treloar had no option but to ride Tristarc for luck from the rear of the field for the first half of the race, sitting quietly off the rails with only Mapperley Heights behind him. However, soon after the 1000-metre mark and with a congested cavalry of horses up ahead, Treloar seized the moment and took off. The game little mare, moving faster than she ever had in her life, sustained a sharp burst around the field to be a wide sixth, but just behind the leaders upon the sweep of the home turn. Soon after straightening Tristarc, wide out, hit the front. The question now was whether or not, having given so much, she could keep giving more all the way to the winning post. Neither Tristarc nor Treloar were intimidated by the challenge. And the challenge when it came, came from the A.J.C. Oaks winner, Our Sophia, who had been asked to do very little work during the running by her jockey Harry White.

The large crowd yelled excitedly as the two Melbourne-trained mares staged a desperate pas de deux down the Caulfield straight to dispute the finish, with Our Sophia just failing to run Tristarc down by the narrowest of margins. Lacka Reason finished a length and three-quarters away in third place. Technically, Treloar’s vigorous and dashing ride that day was a dazzling tour de force, one of the best of his career. It still bears watching on YouTube today. Infected foot or not, as Treloar said upon dismounting from the little bay mare: “I feel no pain now!” Still, his pleasure at the victory was partially soured by being fined $200 for the characteristic bravura flourish of his whip in triumph, a la Mick Mallyon, as he passed the winning post. Tristarc ran the 2400 metres in 2 minutes 30.9 seconds. Considering the slow early pace and that the track was officially dead, it was the finest performance in Tristarc’s life on the racecourse as she became the first mare to win the race since How Now in 1976. In the aftermath of the Cup, Columb told surrounding journalists that U.S.A. interests had offered the syndicate one and a half million dollars for the mare but that the madam wasn’t for sale.

Jim Bowler, the V.R.C. handicapper could have penalized Tristarc up to 4.5 kg for the Melbourne Cup but in the end felt obliged to give her just 3 kg more, taking her weight to 52.5 kg. Although 2 kg less than weight-for-age, it still meant that Tristarc would have to match Light Finger’s weight carrying record for a mare, to win. It proved too much and she finished a brave eighth on rain-sodden ground at Flemington, just four and a half lengths behind the winner, the aged gelding, What A Nuisance. There was talk of retiring the mare after the Melbourne Cup and sending her overseas to be mated with a top international stallion, but Columb’s love of racing prevailed. Spelled, Tristarc returned for an autumn campaign based solely in Sydney and for which she was temporarily transferred from McDonald to the Rosehill trainer, Kerry Walker.

Restricted to a campaign of just five weight-for-age races, it proved largely disappointing. To begin with there were three successive fourths in the A.J.C. Expressway Stakes, Chipping Norton Stakes and the S.T.C. Rawson Stakes. In that last event, Columb’s frustrations boiled over when, eyes flashing with indignation, he accused jockey Peter Cook of “riding against” Tristarc. Cook had been riding the Caulfield Guineas winner Drawn and kept Tristarc in a pocket for much of the stop-start race, in which Drawn ultimately failed to overhaul Late Show in a photo finish while Tristarc ran home solidly to finish fourth. Columb was asked to quieten down by the Deputy Chief Steward, Norm Swain, as he told Kerry Walker that he didn’t think Cook’s tactics were fair. Walker refused to comment and Les Bridge, the trainer of Drawn, wouldn’t be. After a poor fifth in the S.T.C. Tancred Stakes at her next start, there was a dramatic change of riding tactics in her final appearance as a four-year-old in the $125,000 A.J.C. Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Randwick. On dead ground and against just six opponents, Treloar attempted to lead all the way on the mare. It was a brave win and despite shifting ground at the 200-metres, simply refused to surrender when challenged by the 2/1 favourite Abit Leica, eventually winning by a length with the future Melbourne Cup winner At Talaq in the minor placing.

Tristarc was persevered with as a five-year-old but proved disappointing and reached the nadir of her racecourse misfortunes when an inglorious failure in the 1986 Caulfield Cup. She was retired to stud immediately after that race. In a career of 32 starts, Tristarc won 6 times and enjoyed 3 minor placings while earning prizemoney totaling $445,860. Sadly, she was to have a very short career as a broodmare. Having been served in successive seasons by the well-credentialed stallions Godswalk and Luskin Star, our A.J.C. Derby heroine was  exported to New Zealand in May 1988 where she died later that spring upon giving birth to a filly by the latter sire. Tristarc’s memory is perpetuated today in the running of the Tristarc Stakes at her favourite track, Caulfield, a group two event over 1400 metres for mares four-year-old and older, conducted under set weights and penalty conditions in October.

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To  own or to train two Group One winning mares in the same season is beyond the dreams of most racing men and yet that was what Nick Columb and Ross McDonald  both achieved during 1984-85. When Magari had scored in his five black type races in 1982, the bay stallion had done so with his jockey sporting the famous old Hoysted family colours of “red and black hoops, white cap”. By the time Tristarc and Centaurea came along, Columb had registered his very own colours of “pale green, dark blue hooped sleeves” and wanted them on show. Racegoers would become all too familiar with the livery over the next few seasons as Columb and McDonald together would be associated with two more high-class fillies in Imposera and Courtza. Imposera, a chestnut daughter of Imposing, cost $300,000 as a yearling at Trentham in January 1985, and in 1988 would deliver up a second S.A.J.C. Australasian Oaks to match the one won by Centaurea and a second Caulfield Cup to match the one won by Tristarc.

There is a funny story surrounding the close finish to Imposera’s Caulfield Cup that reveals something of Columb’s character. Imposera started at 50/1 that day but Columb was confident of victory and despite the price, fully supported his mare in the betting ring. So, there was a lot more riding on Imposera than just the $650,000 first prize or the capital value of the mare as she flashed across the finishing line in lockstep with the George Hanlon-trained Congressman. I should mention that there was nothing like the immediate resolution of close photo finishes back then, as there is now. Minutes went by as the judge called for a developed print to determine if he could separate the two horses with a magnifying glass. As Nick Columb tumbled down the grandstand steps, eyes still fixed on the semaphore board awaiting the result, he ran into his former boss at the Melbourne Herald, Jack Elliott, on the gangway.

There wasn’t much love lost between the pair after Columb’s abrupt departure from the newspaper all those years before. Nick yelled: “I’ve won!” Jack demurred and pontificated, stating that he wasn’t sure. Nick, believing that he had a trophy and a series of bets to collect, wasn’t about to stand around and argue. “Get fucked, Jack!,” came the retort as Columb skipped down the remaining steps on his merry way to the birdcage. Neither cant nor humbug ever was part of Columb’s colourful vocabulary. A few moments later came both the flashing confirmation on the semaphore board and  the course broadcaster’s reassuring voice over the loudspeakers, that, for the second time in four years in the Caulfield Cup, Nick Columb had beaten George Hanlon by a whisker!

Courtza, a daughter from the second crop of the Waikato Stud stallion, Pompei Court, had also cost Columb $300,000 as a yearling, at the 1988 New Zealand National Sales. Let it be said that Nick Columb never lost much sleep when it came to naming his racehorses. It always seemed to be some sort of combination of syllables from both the name of the sire and of the dam. Think about it: Centaurea (Century-Aurea); Tristarc (Sir Tristram-Renarc); Imposera (Imposing-Calera). But, hey, although it might offend the purists, if it ain’t broke, why fix it? Accordingly, Courtza’s name derived from her sire Pompei Court and her dam Hunza. And with that name in 1989 she became only the fourth two-year-old to win the rich and prestigious V.A.T.C. Blue Diamond Stakes and S.T.C. Golden Slipper double. Yet according to Columb, Courtza became Australasia’s champion two-year-old by winning the wrong sort of races.

“Five starts and she’s won $1.5 million. But all this is a bonus,” Columb maintained. “She shouldn’t be really doing these things as a two-year-old. What is she going to do when she finds her right distance?” Columb argued with anyone prepared to listen that Courtza would emulate the former champion filly, Surround. “Surround, who won the W. S. Cox Plate as a three-year-old, has always been my idol in racing and I think, in Courtza, we have a filly to equal her. I have never rated any of my other fillies that highly, but Courtza is something really special.” Of course, that’s the trouble with triumphs: they breed triumphalism. Unlike Tristarc, there was nothing of the madam about Courtza. She was a real lady, stylish and elegant and popular. Accordingly, most racegoers, like Columb, wished for her three-year-old career to unfold in glory. But be careful what you wish for, as that ancient Greek fabulist and storyteller, Aesop, warned us in “The Old Man and Death”. Courtza looked like she was back to her best in the early spring when she danced away with the Ascot Vale and the Veuve Clicquot. But then she failed in the Caulfield Guineas; could only run tenth in the W. S. Cox Plate, some eleven lengths behind the winner, Almaarad; and then finished a poor twelfth in the Wakeful. Courtza never did recover her juvenile form and after more failures the following year was whisked off to stud to be mated with Danehill.

Columb’s ability to select Tristarc, Imposera and Courtza as yearlings saw him gain the moniker of “Mr Lucky” from careless journalists and commentators. “Luck nothing!” insisted Columb. “These days I’m Mr Good Judgement!” For a number of successive years in the late eighties and early nineties, Columb attended the New Zealand National Sales and bought just one yearling filly each year. Big, bluff and blunt, Columb was in his element in the bear-pit at Trentham and Karaka. Given his rather limited means to acquire just one lot, relative to the extensive fortunes of many of his auction ring rivals deployed to buy multiple lots, he likened his targeted approach to a man armed with a rifle rather than a shotgun. But he was a deadly shot. His winning formula was simple. Buy a well-conformed filly from a fashionable stakes-winning family capable of staying the classic distance, and one that would have a high residual stud value even if she never made it to the racecourse.

Sure, some turned out better than others, but Columb’s overall record was outstanding. If one includes his involvement with Little Brown Jug and Full On Aces, Columb won no less than 17 Group One races. Crestkin, a daughter of Crested Wave, purchased at the 1987 sales was probably his worst, while Courtza at the 1988 sales was arguably his best. Not only was Courtza a stunning success on the racecourse but she proved even better at stud. In August 1993, long after the economic recession of the early nineties – “the recession we had to have” according to Paul Keating – had forced Columb and Courtza to go their separate ways, the mare, after a mating with the Irish stallion Last Tycoon, dropped O’Reilly in the lush paddocks of the Waikato Stud. While O’Reilly’s racetrack career lasted less than six months marred by injury, he still managed to win two Group One races in New Zealand. But it was at stud that he really left his mark. Retired to stand duty at his birthplace, O’Reilly eventually went on to sire 84 individual stakes winners of 164 stakes races.

Columb was lucky in one sense. Those golden years when the likes of Tristarc, Imposera and Courtza fell to him as relatively “inexpensive” yearlings, occurred in those pre-shuttle days – before the juggernaut of international studs and the globalisation of bloodstock, had completely crushed Australasian racing and breeding as we knew it, only to reconfigure it into new forms. Back then, before the commercial syndication of yearlings, there still remained a window of opportunity, though it was quickly closing, for an enlightened local sportsman cum investor, shrewd in his judgement of pedigrees and street-wise in equine anatomy or well-advised on the same, to consistently enjoy Group One success. Nick Columb for a few brief shining moments was among the most successful of Australian bloodstock buyers of the period. Courtza came to represent the apotheosis of Columb’s racing fortunes and her decline happened to coincide with the Australian economy’s decline as the 1990-91 recession bit deeply.

The froth and bubble of the good times quickly disappeared, and as banks desperately revalued assets and called in loans, Columb’s overstretched finances and property empire, largely built on debt, collapsed. In his own words: “I went to bed a rich man, woke up a poor one.” The year after buying Courtza, Columb’s single buy at the New Zealand National Sales was the filly by Tights from Lady Isolde for $200,000. Subsequently registered as Tisolde (what else would one expect from Nick!), although a winner at Moonee Valley and Caulfield, she never came within coo’ee of repaying her purchase price. Ditto, an expensive Straight Strike filly the following year. Columb was forced to liquidate his breeding interests, which at his peak, saw him sell a Sir Tristram-Centaurea yearling colt of his own breeding for $650,000 at the Magic Millions Sales in January, 1989. It was a record Magic Millions price at the time, eclipsing the $550,000 that Paul Sutherland had paid for a Danzatore colt only the year before.

Despite the downturn in his ownership fortunes, Nick Columb remained very active on the Turf. He was chairman of Victoria’s Thoroughbred Racehorse Owners’ Association for 15 years from 1987 until 2001 and for a time head of the national body, and later of the Asia-Pacific Racehorse Owners’ Association. In his last years, Columb acted as an international bloodstock consultant on behalf of the Hong Kong Jockey Club and proved that he hadn’t lost it when he purchased Pakistan Star as a yearling, a horse that went on to become an international Group One winner. As passionate as he was about racing, the Victorian Football League came a close second. A lifelong supporter of Footscray, after a number of years of service as a director, Columb became the club president in 1989.

Sadly, for supporters of the club, Columb’s term was less than glorious. At the time Footscray had debts of $2 million and was faced with a choice between extinction or merger. After a 106-year history, Columb signed the failed merger agreement with Fitzroy, which forced his own resignation as part of the conditions. Ultimately, the club later became the Western Bulldogs in the Australian Football League. Despite such a public failure, affectations of humility weren’t part of Columb’s character. He even made an unsuccessful bid to become Lord Mayor of Melbourne when he threw his hat in the ring as an Independent in 2008, campaigning on the slogan of “Passion for Melbourne”. It was in August 2018 that there came the news from Girona, Spain, that the 72-year-old Columb had died, having suffered a stroke some ten days earlier while on holidays there.

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Ross McDonald predeceased Nick Columb by some four years in December 2014, having succumbed after a five-year battle to heart and kidney problems that saw him hospitalised for the last six months of his life. Brave to the end, it was the 68-year-old McDonald’s own decision to switch off the dialysis machine that was keeping him alive. “He was a character, He was like a big bear, he had a big heart and he was a big bloke. He was an easy going fellow, It was like riding for your mate,” was Wayne Treloar’s verdict on the life and times of Big Rossco. “He could deal with the good and deal with the bad. That’s what a lot of people can’t handle, but he seemed to handle it all his life.”  A man’s man in the grand tradition of the Australian larrikin, McDonald, like Columb, suffered in the 1990-91 recession, and ultimately went bankrupt but managed to recover in the years afterwards. Indeed, his finest hour in racing came well after the crash.

When the V.R.C. made the decision to close Epsom racecourse to trainers in 1997 due to its extravagant cost when compared to other venues, McDonald relocated to Caulfield. It was at Caulfield that McDonald would enjoy his greatest moments in the sport, particularly with Weekend Hussler, the  brilliant son of Hussonet that he purchased for $18,000 at the Melbourne Premier Sales in the autumn of 2006 on behalf of a range of clients.  In that memorable 2007-08 racing season, Weekend Hussler invested even more glory in the famous Hoysted family colours by winning a slew of Group One races including the Caulfield Guineas, Randwick Guineas, Oakleigh Plate and the V.R.C. Newmarket Handicap. Inevitably, he was named Australian Horse of the Year. McDonald achieved remarkable success as a boutique trainer – a term he would have hated – in an era when big stables dominated the scene. Rarely did he have more than thirty horses on his books and yet some of the Turf’s biggest prizes inevitably found their way into his yard.

Upon McDonald’s death, Mick Price, his distinguished Caulfield training colleague, reminisced to the Melbourne’s Herald Sun: “I’d known him for thirty years since I was a strapper at Epsom. He helped me even though he wouldn’t have known my name, when I had a brumby that I couldn’t even get out of the box. He spent half-an-hour sorting things out. He would help out a fellow trainer without a second thought, that was the way he was.” Upon learning of McDonald’s passing, Nick Columb, who was then in China, contacted the Herald Sun to add his generous praise for his old friend: “He was an incredibly talented horseman but, above everything else, big bluff Ross was extremely kind and as soft as the sweets he loved to eat.” Ross McDonald left the racing scene knowing full well that he had successfully passed his training torch on to the next generation. Clinton McDonald, his son, was already an established Group One winning trainer at Caulfield in his own right, having prepared Regal Roller in 2004-05 to win both a Toorak Handicap and a Futurity Stakes. When the Caulfield training facilities were closed in late 2021, Clinton relocated to Cranbourne from where he trained Hayasugi to win the 2024 M.R.C. Blue Diamond Stakes.

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It is interesting to reflect on the subsequent achievements of the horses that went around in the 1985 A.J.C. Derby at Randwick. At the time it was considered a rather weak field.  And yet only four of the thirteen horses that started that day failed to win a group or listed race later in their careers. Sir Zephyr won the S.A.J.C. Derby while in the spring Silver Award would win The Dalgety at Flemington. Spritely Native would win both the A.J.C. Frank Packer Plate and the Metropolitan Handicap. And of the four that didn’t, two of them went on to produce a group or listed race winner at stud. While neither Home Office nor Spirit Of Kingston would later win black type, at stud the former would sire Purdy’s Office, winner of the National Sprint in Canberra, while the latter would drop Portland Player, winner of the 1996 Victoria Derby in David Hains’ famous colours. None of the colts that started in the 1985 A.J.C. Derby ever sired a Group race winner, which rather begs the question as to whatever happened at stud with that season’s champion three-year-old, Red Anchor?

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At the Baramul Stud in the Widden Valley, Red Anchor covered fifty-two and fifty-nine mares respectively in his first two seasons and was mated with some distinguished matrons including Gay Nineties, Lotka’s Star, Leather Lass, Regal Crest, Silent Squaw, Hasten Lass and Elegant Walk. The stallion’s first yearlings came up for sale at the 1988 William Inglis Easter Sales where his fifteen lots sold for an aggregate $1,064,000 or an average $70,933, which placed him twelfth on the list of stallion averages at those sales. It proved quite a sale for Sir Tristan Antico with the new studmaster establishing an Australian record aggregate for a single vendor ($3,174,000) thanks largely to his record-breaking Bletchingly-Verdi yearling colt which sold for $1,100,000 to Bart Cummings and his $700,000 Bletchingly-Gelsomino colt sold to Tommy Smith. Meanwhile, Red Anchor’s most expensive yearling at those same sales went for $200,000. Registered as Rouge Bateau and trained by Tommy Smith, although a city winner, he never came close to recouping his purchase price.

Appropriately enough, Red Anchor’s first winner, Charter, out of the good performer Gay Nineties, was owned by Sir Tristan Antico, trained by Smith and ridden by Mick Dittman when she won a juvenile handicap at Rosehill in mid-December, 1988. As Sir Tristan waited for the filly to return to scale that day, he commented to the surrounding pressmen: “Charter was only the second starter by Red Anchor, so it would appear that he has quite a future.” Alas, it wasn’t to be. Incidentally, it wasn’t just Red Anchor’s progeny that largely failed that season but so too did the two expensive Bletchingly colts bred by Sir Tristan. Registered as Fortunino, the Verdi colt never struck a tune, making it to four barrier trials but never to the races. Persistent leg problems saw the then four-year-old sold in July 1991 for a paltry $6,000 to a Cummings’ stable hand. Meanwhile, the expensive Gelsomino colt, registered as Mercury, although a smart two-year-old and winner of the S.T.C. Todman Slipper Trial, never went on with the job as an older horse and later at stud managed only two modest stakeswinners.

Quite a few buyers were prepared to overlook the relative underperformance of Red Anchor’s first crop, preferring to believe that the stallion’s progeny would need more ground and time. Consequently, at the infamous 1989 William Inglis Easter Sales in the following year, Red Anchor’s twelve lots sold for an aggregate $1,083,000 or an even higher average of $90,250, which placed him thirteenth on the list of stallion averages. In that year his most expensive yearling, a half-brother to the good two-year-old Temple Front out of the imported Irish mare Reluctant, bred by Antico, was bought by Bart Cummings for $525,000. Subsequently named Shy Mariner, the chestnut colt despite early promise couldn’t stay afloat on the racecourse and alth0ugh a winner, returned a mere $63,778 in stakes. When Shy Mariner was sold as a yearling that day at Newmarket, it was the moment when the fortunes of Sir Tristan Antico as the Master of Baramul were at their apogee. For it was very soon after those 1989 Easter Yearling Sales that the whole house of cards that was then the Australian bloodstock market collapsed under its own weight mired in debt, greed and tax avoidance schemes.

Red Anchor’s fluctuating stallion value represented a telling litmus test in itself. Originally syndicated into forty shares at $75,000 each in the autumn of 1985, Red Anchor’s initial valuation as an untried stallion was thus set at $3,000,000; in the fire sale of July 1991 as debt-burdened and panicked investors sought relief, eleven shares changed hands for a paltry total of $21,000, valuing Red Anchor at just on $80,000. Antico’s other foundation stallion, the Irish-bred What A Guest, originally bought at a price of $2,000,000 soon after the stud acquired Red Anchor, saw ten shares change hands for $12,000 at the same fire sale, thus valuing him at around only $48,000. Oh, how the mighty had fallen! Despite his sixteen seasons at stud where he covered 735 mares in total, Red Anchor in all ultimately sired just five individual stakes winners of seven stakes races. Only one of his progeny, Navy Seal, won multiple Group races including the Group One 1994 A.J.C. Epsom Handicap, while his only other Group One winner was the Lee Freedman-trained Hasty Departure in the 1989 West Australian Oaks. Red Anchor was euthanised in April 2001 after fracturing a front leg.

The respective fortunes at stud of the stallions Sir Tristram and Red Anchor, and as a corollary, the respective fortunes of their first-time studmasters, Patrick Hogan and Sir Tristan Antico, is an instructive lesson on just how critical for a stud’s future the choice of a foundation stallion can be. Sir Tristram, as we shall see, was to set Patrick Hogan off on the path of fame and fortune resulting in a knighthood while catapulting the Cambridge Stud into becoming the leading thoroughbred nursery in New Zealand. By contrast, Red Anchor was to help provoke the ruination of the Baramul Stud under Sir Tristan Antico’s ownership, and trigger a serious diminution in the wealth and standing of a man who already possessed a knighthood when he bought Baramul. Indeed, Antico’s life demonstrates the cautionary truth of the adage “that the way to finish with a small fortune in racing is to start with a large one”. The founder of Pioneer Concrete once declared publicly that someone getting it 80% right in business would make a fortune but someone getting it 95% right in racing didn’t have much margin for error.

Antico’s own history certainly proved the biting truth of those words. So often on the racecourse his expensive bloodstock, carrying the ‘orange, purple sleeves, black cap’ made famous by Bernborough, would win Group Two, Three and Listed races and have Tommy Smith and a fawning press pack acclaiming Group One inevitability. Rarely did his gallopers ever make the transition. Just consider this catalogue of Group Two and Three and Listed race winners that carried the Antico colours and yet never won in Group One company: Campanello, Tuscany, Cold Steel, Hot Diggity, Dynasty, Verdi, Lancelotto, Hermod, Gelsomino, The Challenge, Fiorita, Lanyard, Rigoletto, Temple Front, Acecay, Monsieur and Regina Madre.

The only two Antico horses that I can recall carrying the Bernborough colours to victory in Group One races – and some fifteen years apart – were Passetreul (1974 The A.J.C. Metropolitan) and A Little Kiss (1989 A.J.C. Flight Stakes and the 1990 Q.T.C. Queensland Oaks). Some of those listed above were homebreds but quite a few were expensive yearlings bought on Antico’s behalf by Smith. When they did step up to contest Group One company they were generally underpriced by bookmakers and overwrapped by Tommy himself. Sadly, Antico’s Group One misfortunes on the racecourse carried over to the stallions with which he hoped to breed Group One winners at stud. Once Red Anchor came onto the market as a stallion after breaking down as a racehorse, Smith actively encouraged his long-time client to buy the horse for Baramul.

Few of Australia’s industrialists were hit quite as hard as Antico during the 1990-91 recession and the decade beyond. It wasn’t only plummeting bloodstock values that saw prices halved in 1990 with a further drop the following year, that brought Antico to his knees. Poor judgement under his chairmanship of Pioneer International during the boom years of the late 1980s, particularly the decision to invest in Giant Resources in 1987, proved hugely costly and litigious. In July 1991 Antico was forced to sell almost his entire shareholding in Pioneer. As litigation costs mounted, in April 1994 much of his prized private art collection of works by Sickert and Dobell were auctioned. December 1997 saw the sale of his family home, the 2.7-acre Tregoyd estate in Raglan St, Mosman, overlooking Balmoral Beach, originally bought by him in 1954. Finally and reluctantly in July 1999, Antico parted company with his Baramul and Oakleigh Studs, selling out to the retail entrepreneur, Gerry Harvey.

While Antico continued to race horses during the 1990s after the financial crash, it was on a much reduced scale and he was often merely one member in a syndicate. Moreover, his relationship with Smith cooled as the veteran trainer transitioned Tulloch Lodge into the hands of his daughter, Gai Waterhouse, once the A.J.C. had belatedly granted her a training licence. Henceforth, Antico’s horses were placed more widely in other stables such as those of Jack Denham, Graeme Rogerson, Bart and Anthony Cummings, Sterling Smith and Neville Voigt. Interestingly, Regina Madre, the last of Antico’s black type winners to carry the Bernborough colours, was transferred from T. J. Smith to Jack Denham in 1991. Soon after the stable switch the filly scored a five-length win at Canterbury in January 1992. When Denham was asked by a colleague about Smith’s loss, Silent Jack for once wasn’t quite so silent. He drily muttered: “I feel as sorry for him as he would for me.” Sir Tristan Antico died in Sydney on Boxing Day, 2004 at the age of eighty-one, forty-four months after the death of his ‘dream’ foundation stallion, Red Anchor.