1987 – Myocard & The Doc!

Anybody that can play Rugby Union for Australia, graduate as a Doctor of Medicine (MBBS) from Sydney University, and then after establishing a profitable orthopaedic practice, switch careers to become a successful horse trainer, is no ordinary man. When that same man in his new profession during the course of four years selects two future winners of the A.J.C. Derby out of the New Zealand National Yearling Sales, I think that he can be said to be a remarkable judge of a thoroughbred. Enter Dr Geoffrey Alexander Chapman! Clearly a man with a preference for the road less travelled, the good doctor viewed life as an adventure, not the compounding of a prescription. Born at Cobar in December 1939 to a father who ran sheep and cattle properties at different times, Chapman senior wasn’t a good businessman but he knew his animals. Something of it rubbed off on young Geoff who spent his first six years at the Cobar stations of Poon Boon and Booroondara before the family moved to a property on the outskirts of Dubbo around Christmas/New Year of 1946-47.

A bright student largely home taught by a mother who possessed a degree in Science during his primary school years, Chapman was enrolled as a boarder at the Farrer Memorial Agricultural High School at Tamworth in northern N.S.W. Chapman spent five happy years at the school and upon successfully completing the Leaving Certificate enrolled initially in the Degree of Agricultural Science at Sydney University, staying in college digs. It was long discussions with his fellow college boarders that convinced Chapman to switch to a Degree in Medicine after completing his first year of university. Chapman embraced life at Sydney University playing Rugby for them and serving three months of his National Service with the university’s regiment where he even joined the boxing troupe.

Now Welsh Rugby has a saying: ‘Get your retaliation in first’. It was a philosophy to which Chapman might have subscribed. An aggressive backrower who threw more than enthusiasm into his scrums, Chapman was instrumental in dominating the lineouts against Drummoyne when Sydney University won the 1961 Rugby Union Grand Final 6-0. Chapman was then selected as a flanker for the Wallabies (No.476) in 1962 and played three Tests against New Zealand. He was that rarest of Rugby Union Test players – a goal-kicking forward. Indeed, in his first Test at Wellington in late August, he scored all 9 points in Australia’s 9-9 draw with the All Blacks. Australia was unlucky not to win as it was only a penalty awarded against Chapman for activity in the ruck in front of the posts in the last minute of the game that enabled the All Blacks to draw level.

It proved to be a one year only Test career and Chapman was a surprise omission from the Wallaby team to tour South Africa in 1963. Rumours of certain off-field incidents in New Zealand had seemed to put him offside with the Australian selectors. Still, Chapman would garner sweet revenge. The Wallabies returned triumphant from that South African tour which saw them become the first team to win successive Tests against the mighty South African Springboks and square a Test series 2-2. In recognition of their performances, a celebratory match was conducted at the Sydney Sports Ground on 21 September between the heroic Wallabies and N.S.W. It was assumed it would be an easy, hollow victory for the recent tourists with a formal black-tie dinner honouring their achievements to follow afterwards. Chapman was selected in the N.S.W. team as a goalkicking lock and it was Chapman’s winning penalty goal late in the match that saw the Wallabies humbled by 20-18. Miffed by the upset, the Rugby Union hierarchy sniffed, and the black-tie dinner was subsequently cancelled. Still, Chapman’s omission from that and later Wallaby squads allowed him to concentrate on his studies. Upon completion of his medical degree, Chapman relocated to Dubbo to practice medicine.

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The Turf had always held a fascination for the good doctor and back in Dubbo he soon joined the committee of the Dubbo Turf Club with its racecourse on Merrilea Rd. Chapman even trained a couple of horses there on the side. The colt that eventually persuaded Chapman to forsake a medical practice for a training practice was sold on Tuesday, April 13 1971, the first day of the Inglis Easter Yearling Sales. By the imported American stallion Ruler out of a Bob Major mare named Minstrel Lady, and thus boasting the famous Nearco/Hyperion cross in his pedigree that Chapman so prized, The Doc got the bay yearling bred by Dave Casben at Yarramalong, near Muswellbrook, for just $850. The reason why he fell cheaply was that he bore a ganglion or a small cystic tumor on his fetlock. Chapman knew it was harmless, particularly after Percy Sykes confirmed the fact, but it was enough to make other buyers shy away.

Chapman registered the colt as Lord Ben and raced him with a scrum of mates from the Dubbo Turf Club. Indeed, Chapman trained him to win three juvenile races at Parkes, Narromine and Dubbo in the Western Districts before sending him to town. Chapman by now was very close friends and something of a surrogate son to the renowned veterinary surgeon Percy Sykes, the eminence grise of Tommy Smith’s Tulloch Lodge. For five or six years Chapman had even acted as unofficial ‘chauffeur’ to both the older men as well as Tony McSweeney, on their annual visits to Flemington over the four days of the V.R.C. Spring Meeting when they all usually stayed at the Australia Hotel. Chapman in those days had even honed his basic training skills back in Dubbo with some of Tommy Smith’s rejects.

But accommodation at Tulloch Lodge wasn’t usually extended to a cheap colt of plebian bloodlines hailing from the Western Districts. But Chapman assured Smith that the colt had ability and he was curious to see what the ‘bone and muscle’ regimen of Tulloch Lodge might achieve. “I told Tom he was a Derby prospect, a potential stayer,” Chapman recalled. Tom thought differently. “He’s by Ruler and they can’t stay. You stick to doctoring and I’ll train the horse. Send him down and I’ll see what I can do,” replied Tommy. Subsequently gelded, what he did was win the 1972 S.T.C. Canterbury Guineas from the future A.J.C. Derby winner Gold Brick, and he was unlucky not to win the Rosehill Guineas as well, when flashing home late from near last to finish third behind Longfella and I’m Scarlet. Smith hadn’t entered Lord Ben for the A.J.C. Derby, one of the few three-year-olds in his stable that he hadn’t. Sent for a brief spell and brought back with the W.A.T.C. Summer Carnival in mind, Lord Ben resumed in mid-November in a Rosehill Welter before cracking a sesamoid bone. Chapman reclaimed the colt, had him pin fired and once again sent him to the paddock. Back in lightwork in April 1973, Lord Ben was galloping better than ever on the Dubbo track.

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Ever since Lord Ben’s Canterbury Guineas’ victory, Chapman had been contemplating a switch of careers but the matter lay fallow during those months of the horse’s recuperation. Now, seeing how well the three-year-old had bounced back, Chapman decided to close his medical practice to become a full-time horse trainer. One reason for his decision was that the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons was beginning to emphasise the importance of fellowships as a key component of specialist surgeons. Gradually bush surgeons who had operated on gall bladders, hysterectomies and tonsils were being put out of business. Chapman had no interest in pursuing a fellowship. “I’d been messing about as a hobby trainer for ten years. I thought to myself, this is no good. It’s no use reaching sixty and suddenly deciding that I wanted to be a horse trainer and not a doctor. Life is too short for that.”

Accordingly, Lord Ben would not be returning to Tulloch Lodge. Bert Lyell’s stroke and sudden death in May 1973, saw Chapman buy the Rosehill stables of the former kindly trainer and he moved into them at the end of June with thirteen horses including Alpine Lass, who would become distinguished in her own right as the ancestress of the future Written Tycoon. When questioned by the journalist Bert Lillye about his impulsive career transition, Chapman responded: “I can only go broke, and I’ve been that way before.” Lyell had trained the likes of Shakedown, Somebody, Spillane and Oromedes to win principal races from those old yards, and Chapman was up for the challenge. Ray Bradley, the Western Districts jockey and former Harry Plant apprentice, came along as his first stable foreman. Percy Sykes told him: “If you don’t train a principal race winner in the first two years then you haven’t got what it takes.” So, that was the challenge!

In those early months at Rosehill, his fellow trainers there thought more of Chapman as a doctor than a trainer. As The Doc remembered it: “They kept coming to me with ailments, looking for a bit of free medical advice. Yes, I was regarded as a bit of a joke when I first set up at Rosehill. The other trainers quietly nudged each other, smirked and whispered among themselves that I went to sleep one night a doctor and woke up next morning  a horse trainer – but there was more to it than that.”  Indeed, there was. It was to be a rollercoaster ride that would last twenty years and more but The Doc would certainly hit the heights. The first year was to prove a struggle although Lord Ben and Alpine Pass kept the wolf from the door. After winning the S.T.C. Opera House Cup (2000m) at Rosehill in October, Lord Ben gave The Doc his first Melbourne Cup runner although the son of Ruler went the post at 100/1 and ran accordingly. Still, vague notions of future achievements buttered no parsnips and Chapman remained uncertain on the road he was travelling. The Doc’s fortunes really only turned for the better at the 1974 Queensland Winter Carnival. When Chapman announced that he was going to take Lord Ben to Brisbane with Bradley doing the riding, some of the sporting cognoscenti likened it to Don Quixote and his faithful sidekick Pancho Villa, tilting at windmills. But Chapman knew what he was about.

Lord Ben did exceptionally well in the Queensland capital and at his only start before the Doomben Cup was a strong finishing fourth to Gay Master in the Tattersall’s Cup at Eagle Farm. On the Tuesday before the $51,200 Cup at Doomben, Lord Ben worked in great style over 1000 metres tempting the stable to dive into the 20/1 on offer. Weighted on just 48kg and drawn in barrier 10 in the sixteen-horse field, Lord Ben partnered by the 29-year-old Bradley, landed the prize by three-quarters of a length from the Bart Cummings-trained Gladman. Before the race, Chapman’s training future seemed tentative. After the race, it was assured. For nothing in a trainer’s life can equal that moment when he trains his first Group 1 winner and triumph is unalloyed by equivocation. Not a man renowned for abstemious habits but rather a bon viveur possessed of both a wicked sense of humour and a love of good red wine, one suspects Chapman gave the Grange and Hill of Grace a bit of a nudge that night. Eighteen days later at Southport, Lord Ben added the Prime Minister’s Cup to his curriculum vitae with Bert Lyell’s old jockey, Bill Burnett in the irons. Ray Bradley wasn’t available as he had copped a six-week suspension for causing interference in the Doomben Cup.

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No sooner had Lord Ben’s Queensland heroics rescued the stable from insolvency than a lucky recent recruit won the Silver Slipper Stakes for Chapman on his home course of Rosehill. St. Louis Blue, the horse in question, had been bought for $7,000 at the Inglis Easter Yearling Sales by his owner Geoff McK.Roberts and had been intended for the stables of Fred Allsop, but the Randwick trainer died less than a fortnight after the fall of the auctioneer’s hammer. A grey colt by the first season stallion Royal Rocket, ‘Louis’ had been bred at Bob Watson’s Roseneath Stud at Cobbitty. At the official Randwick Two-Year-Old Trials in early September, St Louis Blue had run the fastest time of the day for colts. The flying grey equalled the course record of 52.6 seconds for the Rosehill 900 metres when winning by four lengths from Denise’s Joy and fourteen others in the hands of Ray Bradley. St Louis Blue won three races on the reel that spring and in the last of them broke his own shared record for 900 metres at Rosehill when he covered the distance in 52.4 seconds. Chapman entertained high hopes of winning the Golden Slipper with the son of Royal Rocket but after easing him in his work in the late spring and early summer came the onset of shin soreness. Alas, despite his early promise, St Louis Blue never went on with it as an older racehorse.

St Louis Blue wasn’t the only smart juvenile that Chapman had in his stable during that 1974-75 season. Skirnir, was another of those relatively cheap yearlings boasting a Nearco/Hyperion cross that Chapman picked up at the Sydney Easter Sales. Costing just $9,500, Skirnir won the 1975 Q.T.C. Sires’ Produce Stakes in the hands of Roy Higgins and The Doc was hailing the son of Corinto as a potential Derby colt particularly after he won the inaugural Gosford Classic in late August. Skirnir did back up to run fourth in the Canterbury Guineas but finished a long way behind the winner Rosie Heir. Rather than opt for the Rosehill Guineas, Chapman elected for the weight-for-age Hill Stakes as Skirnir’s final Derby trial in which he ran fifth behind Skyjack. The son of Corinto ultimately took his place in the A.J.C. Derby field and while he led the field from the 800-metre mark to the home turn, he quickly compounded in the straight to finish a well-beaten seventh behind Battle Sign. Skirnir, like St Louis Blue, won metropolitan races later in life but never lived up to his early promise. Skirnir was one of those horses that raced better without the whip, something that wasn’t discovered until much later. It was only after he was gelded as a four-year-old that Skirnir redeemed some of his earlier promise by winning a hattrick of races in the metropolitan area albeit over distances much shorter than a Derby trip.

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Chapman was learning on the job and making the occasional mistake. Leonotis was the next good galloper to come along. Sired by the New Zealand-based, American stallion Sharivari, Leonotis had cost just $4,000 as a yearling and was owned by a Queensland syndicate headed by Dr John Hennessy, a pioneer of in vitro fertilisation in Queensland. Leonotis burst upon the Sydney scene when he won on debut as a two-year-old at Randwick in February 1976 at the cricket score odds of 330/1 in the hands of the apprentice jockey Les Masters. As a three-year-old, Chapman made the mistake of trying to make a stayer out of him in both the spring and the autumn, whereas his true forte was the mile, at the end of which he could produce a whirlwind finish. He was only looked upon as a useful Welter performer until as a spring five-year-old he won both the S.T.C. Rosehill Cup (8/1) and the A.J.C. Epsom Handicap (16/1) in successive starts with devastating finishing bursts. The following autumn, Leonotis won both the V.R.C. Blamey Stakes and the A.J.C. Chipping Norton Stakes while he remained in that same rich vein of form. At the end of that 1978-79 season the son of Sharivari was sold to race in the U.S.A. where he won two more races and added another $U.S.92,775 to his Australian earnings of $170,740.

In the immediate wake of Leonotis, Chapman trained a number of useful gallopers including the likes of Time To Fly, Tintagle Lady, Mr Stradavari, Most Impressive and King Rum but his greatest disappointment came when he was given the 1978 Waikato and New Zealand Derby winner, Kaiser, to train. No sooner did he have the colt in his Rosehill stables than he ruptured a suspensory ligament and had to be retired. It wasn’t until a former Rugby teammate sent him a rising two-year-old filly initially named Merkin that Chapman won his next Group race. Jim Lenehan, a fellow Wallaby and champion fullback, had bred the filly and had offered her at the 1983 William Inglis Easter Yearling Sales only to see her passed-in for $16,000 when the reserve was $25,000.

A daughter of Willowy, with whom Chapman had won the 1976 A.J.C. Fernhill Handicap for the Lenehan family, it was axiomatic that he would get the filly to train when she failed to make her reserve price. Blessed with genuine speed, Merkin won Chapman his second S.T.C. Silver Slipper Stakes nine years after winning his first with St. Louis Blue. But within days of the victory, the propriety of the filly’s name was being questioned. As mentioned earlier in this chronicle, it seemed that the authorities had the wool, or rather hair, pulled over their eyes. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the noun, Merkin, as ‘an artificial covering of hair for the female pubic region’. The sensitivities of the A.J.C. committee were offended and a name change was forced upon connections. The Lenehan family then came up with Giostra, which is Italian for carousel or merry-go-round, something that Chapman, along with the A.J.C. committee, must have felt he was on. Sadly, the renamed Giostra never again scored black type.

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It was only when John Denoon came on board Lord Ben Lodge as an owner that Chapman was finally able to bid for the cream of the yearling crop at public sales. Born on the North Coast of N.S.W., Denoon at the time was 39-years-old and one of the leading property developers in Australia. Having graduated from the University of N.S.W. as a quantity surveyor, he had emerged on the Sydney property scene back in 1968 when renovating North Shore federation houses with his university colleague Peter Wills. The relationship soon developed into a successful business partnership under the rubric of Wills Denoon and Partners, Architects, Planners and Building Economists, becoming a leading consultancy firm on architecture and building economics with offices in Neutral Bay and later North Sydney.

Gradually Denoon widened his network of commercial contacts to include Consolidated Press and Industrial Equity, which led to larger joint-ventures. It was in 1980 as the gung-ho economic boom began to gather steam fuelled by cheap interest rates, leveraged debt and burgeoning sharemarkets, that Denoon broke ranks with his former colleagues to establish John Denoon and Associates Pty Ltd, a property and construction consulting business advising financial institutions. Then in February 1984 he founded his private company Carringbush Pty Ltd to develop the 43-storey Carringbush Tower site on the corner of George and Bathurst Streets in Sydney. Denoon and his company hit the headlines when they paid $13.5 million for the Water Board site after it had been abandoned by the Government Insurance Office as a development proposition.

Such, then, was Denoon’s commercial status when Geoff Chapman first came into his orbit. Denoon had raced horses in the past. Since the beginning of the 1980s Denoon had taken shares in a few horses such as Kia Kaha, Mundahi and Regal Rogue, all trained by the ageing Albert McKenna at Randwick. Ill-health and hospitalisation saw McKenna downsize his team and transfer some of his boxes to a young emerging trainer in John Morish. It was in the wake of these adjustments that Denoon switched patronage to The Doc at Rosehill. The stable switch coincided with a dramatic escalation in Denoon’s expenditure on thoroughbreds. As Geoff Chapman reminisces: “John Denoon was an exceptional owner. He just said to me, you do whatever you like, and I’ll pick up the bill. You train them and put them in whatever races you choose and I’ll just collect the trophies.” Unsurprisingly, the good doctor thought it was an ideal arrangement. And for four or five seasons in the late 1980s and early 1990s that was pretty much what happened.

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The first expensive racehorse to show promise for Chapman under the Denoon aegis was Stephen. A $75,000 yearling purchase, this Luskin Star colt was out of the unbeaten Stephia, the 1977 V.A.T.C. Debutante Stakes winner and one-time hot favourite for the Blue Diamond Stakes who broke down before that race and was then promptly retired to stud. Stephen was a two-year-old winner at Randwick and carried Denoon’s colours in the 1985 A.J.C. Sires’ Produce Stakes, although he ran poorly behind Wonga Prince. Still, the early promise shown by Stephen even before he had raced only served to confirm Denoon in his determination for glory on Randwick’s green sward. And so we arrive at the 1985 New Zealand National Yearling Sales. John Denoon’s instructions to Chapman when they crossed the Tasman were simple. “Just buy me the best horse in the sale.”

Given the ridiculous prices that were realised during the two days at Trentham, it proved a major challenge. It was to be a sensational two days of selling although contrary to some predictions, there was to be no seven-figure bid despite the 20% devaluation in the New Zealand dollar effected two months earlier. Overall sales were $NZ28,357,500 for 397 lots at an average of $NZ71,429. Both average and aggregate were up by roughly 45% over the previous year. Sir Tristram proved to be the top-selling sire; his 43 lots realised more than $NZ6 million at an average of $141,000. However, as was the case the year before, the highest average belonged to Imposing whose 14 lots realised $NZ159,857.

On the first day, Bart Cummings spent $NZ971,000 on eight lots including the day’s top price of $NZ425,000 for a colt by Sir Tristram out of the former smart filly Sharp Walk, a daughter of the 1971 Golden Slipper winner Fairy Walk. The price was just short of the $NZ450,000 record for a yearling colt in New Zealand, which Aucklander John Stubbs paid for a colt by Sir Tristram out of Gay Poss the previous year. Just as Stubbs’ expensive purchase sunk without trace so too did this Sharp Walk colt who was subsequently registered as Golden Walk; she fell in to win a Ballarat Maiden in June 1987 in the hands of Darren Gauci and was never heard of again. Cummings’ other major buy on that first day was another Sir Tristram colt out of the Sovereign Edition mare Myora for which he went to $NZ200,000. Registered as Prince Witan, he at least would win the 1986 Geelong Derby Trial Stakes and was the Cummings’ stable representative in that year’s Victoria Derby. The second highest price elicited on that first day was the $NZ400,000 paid by ANZ Bloodstock for the Sir Tristram-My Tricia filly, a full sister to Grosvenor. As Kyrie Eleison she would win the 1987 Manawatu Thoroughbred Breeders’ Stakes.

The sales hotted-up on the second day when a record $NZ15.77 million was outlaid at an average $NZ77,279. ABCOS Adelaide paid $NZ650,000 for the Sir Tristram-Taiona chestnut colt, a full brother to Gurner’s Lane and Sovereign Red. Alas for the buyers, Taiona had long ago produced her last star on the racecourse and this bloke, subsequently registered as Government House proved a huge disappointment. As we shall see, he would be the Colin Hayes’ stable representative in the Victoria Derby. He would fall in to win a 1200m race at Morphettville in his lead-up to the Victoria Derby but virtually did nothing thereafter. ABCOS Adelaide, again acting on behalf of a syndicate comprising ANZ Bloodstock managed by Norm Carlyon, Swettenham Stud managed by Robert Sangster, together with Patrick Hogan and trainer Colin Hayes, also paid $NZ360,000 for a bay colt by Sir Tristram from the In The Purple mare Ultraviolet. They had a bit more luck with this one. Named Military Plume, as we shall see, he would leave his mark both on the racecourse and in the breeding barn. At this stage of the sales proceedings, Geoff Chapman had kept his powder dry.

It was a little later in the afternoon on that second day that the good doctor made his move. Acting on behalf of John Denoon’s instructions, he’d already discovered what he regarded as the best yearling in the sales – a chestnut colt by Imposing from the Zamazaan mare Calera, and thereby a half-brother to that good stayer Calaboose, whom Albert McKenna had trained to win both the S.T.C. Lord Mayor’s Cup and City Tattersall’s Cup just the year before. John Denoon was familiar with Calaboose as he had raced horses through McKenna’s stable prior to transferring his patronage to Chapman. When the chestnut entered the sawdust-covered sales ring, the leading bookmaker Mark Read tried to blast the opposition out of the park with a pre-emptive opening bid of $NZ350,000. But Chapman was not for turning. Successive bids from the respective parties upped the ante until Read stopped at $NZ525,000 and The Doc got his horse for $25,000 more. Chapman commented: “I’ve looked at plenty of yearlings and this one is as close to perfect as you can get. He was impossible to fault.” While John Denoon repaired to the bar to toast his newly acquired first Group 1 winner – for that’s what the colt would prove to be – Chapman remained ringside for a Derby prospect of his own.

When it came to buying yearlings, Lord Ben was the classic archetype of what Geoff Chapman looked for in a thoroughbred. From the very earliest days when his budget was severely constrained until the halcyon days when he was riding high and paying six-figure sums, The Doc bought horses strictly on type but often with a Nearco-Hyperion cross that would almost guarantee they could run ten furlongs and more. Lord Ben was the first to satisfy the formula. Ruler, the sire of Lord Ben, was a grandson of Nearco, while Minstrel Lady, the dam of Lord Ben, was a great-great-granddaughter of Hyperion. In combing through that 1985 Wrightson catalogue, Chapman had identified all those yearlings with the Nearco-Hyperion cross. The Imposing-Calera colt had satisfied the demanding pedigree criteria, given that Imposing was a great-great grandson of Hyperion, while all four grandparents of Calera boasted Nearco blood. There were a few other yearlings at those same sales that satisfied the very same criteria, but one especially seized Chapman’s imagination. The Doc never forgot the sublime moment when he looked over the door and into the box sheltering the Ivory Hunter-Double Game colt at Trentham and experienced an epiphany. Chapman recognised him as the spitting image of Nearco, right down to some white hairs just above his off-hind hoof.

A quick glance at the pedigree page in his catalogue convinced Chapman that the horse was well within his restricted price range. Ivory Hunter, a poorly performed son of Sir Ivor, descended from both Nearco and Hyperion who appeared in this yearling colt’s sixth and fifth removes respectively. Double Game, a daughter of the Irish stallion Double Jump, winner of the 1964 Gimcrack Stakes in England, had already produced a winner of the Manawatu Sires’ Produce Stakes in Young Shaun to the New Zealand stallion Kirrama seven seasons earlier. Moreover, she too boasted both Nearco and Hyperion each in the fifth remove through her dam Dictynna. Sold on account of the Sir Henry Kelliher Trust, Chapman got the yearling colt for just $NZ37,500. Although The Doc had intended to retain full ownership for his wife Robin when the hammer fell, John Denoon, once apprised of the purchase, requested a half-share for him and his wife, and a quarter share for another couple who he just then wanted to introduce into racing, Stan and Marilyn Dumbrell. Dumbrell, of course, would ultimately go on to underwrite Tim Donnelly’s transition to training. Chapman accordingly diluted his wife’s interest and the five-person syndicate that would own the 1987 A.J.C. Derby winner came into being.

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The Doc knew he had a smart colt from the moment of Myocard’s very first gallop. He was an uncomplicated, kindly, plain racehorse with no real quirks. However, the trend for pushing the best two-year-olds early in the season had undergone a pronounced change over the years. The prizemoney available on races such as the A.J.C. Breeder’s Plate and Gimcrack Stakes, let alone the V.R.C. Maribyrnong Plate, had declined in relative terms compared to the riches available for juveniles in the autumn. Accordingly, although Chapman knew the son of Ivory Hunter was the best youngster in his stable, the colt never made his public debut until five days before Christmas when he won an official Rosehill heat over 900 metres for two-year-old colts and geldings in the hands of Geoff Allendorf. Apart from the appearance of Myocard, the day is best remembered for the domination of the Brian Mayfield-Smith stable, which won five of the first six heats. It was a harbinger of a changing of the guard in Sydney’s training ranks and foreshadowed the end of T. J. Smith’s unbeaten sequence of premierships later that season.

Myocard’s racecourse debut was delayed until a midweek Canterbury race meeting on the last Wednesday of January 1986. One of the reasons for the delay was that Chapman and Denoon were reluctant to properly disclose the colt’s ability until they had secured his full brother who was being sold on the second day of the New Zealand National Yearling Sales at Trentham on Tuesday, January 22. Chapman managed to get Cardiac (as he was subsequently registered) for just $20,000 and was the cheapest of all the lots he bought on that visit to Trentham when he spent just under $400,000.  Eight days later, and in the hands of jockey Geoff Allendorf, Myocard was untroubled to defeat his seven opponents in a midweek two-year-old handicap at Canterbury over 12oo metres when a well-supported 5/2 third favourite. Next came two unplaced February runs at Gosford and Newcastle in the Gosford Slipper and Penfolds Classic respectively. But those travelling experiences set Myocard up nicely for a tilt at the Brambles Classic (1200m) on the Kembla Grange racecourse.

The Kembla Grange track is almost identical in size and shape to Randwick. Some 2200 metres in circumference and 25 metres wide, the length of its straight is 420 metres, giving fast-finishing backmarkers every opportunity. The race boasted a first prize of $50,000 and trophies worth $500; it attracted a capacity field of eighteen starters with Myocard drawing wide. Myocard, a 20/1 outsider and again in the hands of Geoff Allendorf, produced a brilliant finish from the rear of the field to win easily in a course record time of 1 minute 9.3 seconds, with Hit It Star and Diamond Shower filling the minor placings. Chapman conceded after the race that while it wasn’t the case that it was one of those days where it was ‘the horse or the house’, the Kembla Grange bookmakers hadn’t been left unscarred. Moreover, it was the style of finish that fired a belief in connections that in Myocard, a genuine Derby colt was at hand. The Brambles Classic wasn’t the first ‘black type’ race won by the owners John Denoon and Stan Dumbrell – they’d won the Tattersall’s Plate with a former Kiwi galloper South Of Belmont at Randwick earlier in the season – but Myocard promised so much more. That night both The Doc and John Denoon were dancing on moonbeams. Not only did they have a prospective Derby winner but they also had his year-younger brother – bought for a proverbial sixpence!

In his next two appearances, Myocard finished twelfth in the Golden Slipper Stakes, five and a quarter lengths behind the winner Bounding Away; and an unlucky second to the same filly in the A.J.C. Champagne Stakes over the 1600 metres. In the latter event, Chapman had even taken the precaution of entering a natural frontrunner in Atatari as well, thereby ensuring a genuine test of stamina for the juveniles on a Randwick course slowed by rain. The stable then supported Myocard confidently in the betting ring which saw his price firm from 15/1 into 7/1. Myocard’s performance to concede the brilliant fillies Bounding Away and Diamond Shower 1.5kg and yet get within one-and-three-quarter lengths of the former and beat the latter by a head, was arguably the best and bravest defeat of the entire Sydney autumn carnival. Myocard was one of the small team including Atatari that Geoff Chapman campaigned in Queensland later that autumn.

The horse wasn’t entered for the $72,000 Q.T.C. Sires’ Produce Stakes for which the winner was eligible to incur a penalty for the much richer $225,000 Q.T.C. Castlemaine Stakes. In its stead, Myocard raced in the Strawberry Road Two-Year-Old Stakes (1200m) at Doomben and run a week earlier than the Sires’, which he comfortably won after coming from ninth on the home turn. Then came the Castlemaine. Myocard might have only run fifth in the event, but he was less than a half-length away from the winner, One Guinea. Moreover, his was the run of the race. Unsuited by the muddling pace, Myocard and Jim Cassidy finished brilliantly out wide, having been last at the top of the straight. Such was the closeness of the finish that John Denoon asked the Q.T.C. stewards to check the photograph. After his Queensland sojourn, Myocard was sent to Cedar Brush Farm for a winter spell with Chapman announcing that the son of Ivory Hunter wouldn’t be brought back into work in time for the Victoria Derby but would target the later Sydney autumn carnival instead.

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When the Australian-New Zealand Classifications for Two-Year-Olds of the 1985-86 season were declared, there were no prizes for guessing which horse came out on top. Bounding Away – bred, owned and trained by Tommy Smith – was rated a full 3.5kg superior to anything else, and deservedly so. This daughter of Biscay out of the Sovereign Edition mare Who Can Say, had fizzed and flared across the juvenile season, tasting defeat but once in her seven starts, and her wins included the V.A.T.C. Blue Diamond Stakes, S.T.C. Golden Slipper Stakes and the A.J.C. Champagne Stakes. Smith had bought Bounding Away’s French-bred maternal granddam Zurycida in England for a modest sum. Although a non-winner herself, Zurycida dropped three stakeswinners trained by Smith viz. Zahedi, Ireland and Who Can Say. While Zahedi won the 1973 Q.T.C. Sires’ Produce Stakes and Ireland the 1978 A.J.C. Anzac Day Cup, Who Can Say won the 1980 S.A.J.C. Sires’ Produce Stakes before a leg injury prematurely ended her career.

Bounding Away had started her racing career at Randwick on January 25, four days before Myocard made his debut, and not having been in work all that long; she nonetheless showed remarkable acceleration to win the Sledmere Handicap. Bounding Away’s only loss came at Randwick in the Sires’ Produce Stakes when she was beaten three and a quarter lengths by Diamond Shower on a dead track. Perhaps there were mitigating circumstances. Dittman forced her too early that day and besides she had suffered cuts to her legs in the Slipper when galloped on and had required veterinary treatment in the nine days between races. Indeed, Smith was fined $1,000 for not informing the A.J.C. stewards that Bounding Away had been treated with dexa-tomanol even though the ministration of the drug was correctly outside the proscribed time. But for that Sires’ defeat, Bounding Away would have won more than $1 million in stakes as a two-year-old. As it was she fell short by just $32,250. Bounding Away might not have been the greatest horse that Tommy Smith ever trained, but coming along in the twilight of his career, she certainly gave him more pleasure than any horse he had ever owned. Never mind the Biscay sire line, given her Sovereign Edition blood with Tommy training her, she, too, loomed as an A.J.C. Derby and Oaks prospect the following season. There was no little irony in the fact that Bounding Away arrived in the very season that Smith’s 33-year reign as Sydney’s leading trainer came to an end.

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Geoff Chapman and John Denoon might have resolved to resist a three-year-old spring campaign with Myocard, but the pair had an able substitute within the stables who would not be afforded such furlough. I refer to Imprimatur, the name of the $NZ550,000 Imposing colt purchased on the same day at Karaka as Myocard. Like Myocard, he had not been pushed as an early two-year-old. Indeed, Imprimatur didn’t make his racecourse debut until mid-February, seventeen days later than that of his esteemed stablemate. It came in an 1100-metre two-year-old handicap at Warwick Farm on Hobartville Stakes Day. Ridden by Mal Johnston, Imprimatur blew in the betting from tens to fifteens before finishing a nice fifth. The chestnut colt’s next start came a few weeks later when he finished an impressive fourth at set weights behind Haida Prince in the Todman Slipper Trial (1200m) at Rosehill. Chapman knew that the expensive youngster wouldn’t have been competitive in the Triple Crown of juvenile classics at Rosehill and Randwick and thus spelled the colt with a view to the A.J.C. Spring Champion Stakes and the Victoria Derby later in the year.

Imprimatur broke his maiden status with Malcolm Johnston in a 1250-metre handicap at Canterbury in late August at his second run back. Ten days later, he ran fourth in a big field over 1600 metres at Randwick in readiness for the Newcastle Spring Three-Year-Old Stakes, which he ultimately won by a half-neck from Top Avenger. That run on a slow track topped the chestnut off nicely for his tilt at the A.J.C. Spring Champion Stakes for which he was backed in from 20/1 to go to the post at 16/1 with Johnston retaining the irons. The reason for the bookmakers’ generosity was the presence of the all-conquering Victorian colt Drought (8/11) in the field, who was coming off successive wins in both the Peter Pan Stakes and the Gloaming Stakes at Rosehill. So often the Spring Champion Stakes in those days fell to frontrunners; coming early in the season, it was frequently conducted at a muddling pace, with some jockeys uncertain as to whether their mounts could run out a strong 2000 metres and were thus reluctant to take the initiative. Other jockeys, riding potential Victoria Derby chances, often waited back in the field hoping to come off a strong pace.

Enter Malcolm Johnston. A brilliant frontrunning rider, Johnston was seen at his best on Imprimatur that day. Despite a wide gate in the twelve-horse field, he seized the initiative soon after the start, which saw Imprimatur put the first 1000 metres by in a leisurely 65.7 seconds. It was only after the 800m post that Johnston clapped on the speed. The better favoured horses couldn’t catch him. At the winning post, Imprimatur still had a half-length to spare over Drought, with Tristram taking the minor placing. Winning that Group One race with Imprimatur gave Chapman immense satisfaction. So often those yearlings that command high prices and bold headlines at auction fail to deliver. A trainer’s judgement can suffer as a result. On this occasion, Chapman’s judgement in buying the costly yearling came up trumps, although, it wouldn’t always do so with some of his expensive yearling acquisitions in the years ahead.

Sadly, it proved to be Imprimatur’s finest hour on the racecourse. As we shall see, the balance of his career proved most disappointing. Taken down to Melbourne, the son of Imposing failed in both the Caulfield Cup behind Mr Lomondy and the W. S. Cox Plate won by Bonecrusher. Next came his assignment in the Victoria Derby. A capacity field of eighteen accepted for the race with Drought the reigning favourite. The winner of four of his past seven starts, the Jim Meagher-trained Drought was coming off a gallant fifth in the W. S. Cox Plate. Second elect was Dundas Lane, a son of Vice Regal. Prepared at Epsom by the 37-year-old Lance Smith, who was only in his second season as a trainer, the horse was in brilliant form having scored a hattrick of wins at Flemington and Caulfield including the Norman Robinson Stakes, in his last three appearances.

Imprimatur, after his recent failures, was once again reunited with Malcolm Johnston, and let loose at 40/1. Miracle Mal reprised his winning tactics from Randwick and led the charge on Imprimatur until rounding the home turn. Even then the chestnut held on gallantly and was only run down by Raveneaux and Drought, with the winning margin a head, and a further length and a quarter to Imprimatur. The result proved a bitter disappointment for Pat Hyland who had been the regular rider of each of the first two horses but had a prior Derby booking for Drought. Ron Quinton was the lucky substitute partner for Raveneaux, the Jim Moloney-trained son of the Victorian-based stallion, Voodoo Rhythm.

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Myocard’s A.J.C. Derby campaign kicked off in a Flying Welter (1200m) at Rosehill in mid-January when he was partnered by Mark de Montfort. Although the event was won by the heavily backed 9/4 favourite Fort Denison, it was Myocard that grabbed the headlines when he flashed home to finish third – within a length and a half of the winner – after being held up on the rails to the home turn. De Montfort was impressed and even before dismounting, declared to the Doc: “I’ll ride this horse anywhere, anytime!” It was then off to Melbourne where Myocard ran fourth in The Debonair Stakes (1400m) at Flemington behind Raveneaux and then fifth in the Australian Guineas (1600m) behind Military Plume. In those two races Myocard had been ridden by Daren Gauci and Malcolm Johnston respectively and in both races was running on and clearly looking for more ground. A fortnight later he got it on a heavy track at Caulfield in the $100,000 Autumn Classic over 1800 metres, although this time he was in the hands of Shane Dye. The race proved a revelation with Myocard, having been confidently backed in from 6/1 to 4/1, circling the field from second last at the 900 metres to career away to an 8-lengths victory. Among the beaten brigade were the likes of Military Plume and Raveneaux. Upon dismounting, Dye exclaimed: “What a horse!”

Chapman then confronted a choice of whether to back Myocard up ten days later and clash with the seemingly invincible Bonecrusher in the V.R.C. Australian Cup, or wait a further five days for the easier Alister Clark Stakes at Moonee Valley. In the end, he opted for the Valley although Myocard and Dye were ultimately unsuited by the saucer circuit in a race that saw Vo Rogue run his rivals ragged. At this stage of proceedings Dye was slated to ride Myocard in the A.J.C. Derby and his lead-up races in Sydney. However, an urgent appendix operation on Bonecrusher’s regular jockey, Gary Stewart, a few days after the Australian Cup saw the mount on the New Zealand champion become available and offered to Dye in the S.T.C. Rawson Stakes. Dye jumped at the prospect and approached Chapman. “If that’s what you think you want to do,” responded the Doc, graciously releasing him from any further obligation to Myocard, which resulted in Mark de Montfort’s unalloyed pleasure at being recalled to the colours. As we shall see, never in the course of Australian racing history has one jockey’s appendix operation led to such a contrast in fortunes for two rival jockeys!

Chapman’s decision to bypass the Rosehill Guineas and take on the two weight-for-age stars, Bonecrusher and Waverley Star, in the $175,000 S.T.C. Rawson Stakes could have been construed as sensible, sporting or ill-conceived. Eight horses confronted the starter in that famous race with Myocard enjoying a 4kg advantage under the weight-for-age conditions. Bonecrusher went to the post as the 10/9 favourite, just edging Our Waverley Star at 11/8. On course, Myocard had blown out from 12/1 to 20/1 before some inspired stable money saw the only three-year-old in the field firm into 16/1. After all, the Ivory Hunter colt had run a dazzling trial gallop at Rosehill on the Tuesday morning. The day after that gallop, The Doc had declared in Sydney’s afternoon newspaper ‘The Sun’: “Myocard is the best three-year-old in Australasia and could pull a cart and beat Bounding Away over any distance.” A bit of good natured badinage between The Doc and Tommy Smith, the man he used to chauffeur around Melbourne at Cup time, made for a Barnum and Bailey promotion.

As it transpired, Bonecrusher was never on the bit during that Rawson Stakes while Waverley Star briefly led passing the Leger before Myocard charged past him. The Rosehill crowd was stunned into silence – I among them. In the twinkling of an eye, the much ballyhooed ‘race of the decade’ transformed itself into the ‘boilover of the decade’. Myocard went on to win by three lengths from Waverley Star in the good time of 2 minutes 2.9 seconds. Bonecrusher finished a further three lengths away in the minor placing. Here then, seemed the advent of a new force on the Turf the impact of which at the time seemed impossible to predict. De Montfort’s only real anxiety in the race had come when Myocard shifted in badly when insufficiently clear of Our Waverley Star causing that horse to be checked. The violation saw the jockey incur just a fortnight’s suspension, which meant he wasn’t denied pairing with Myocard in the S.T.C. Tancred Stakes on 11 April. I might mention that 40 minutes earlier on the same card, Bounding Away had scored an emphatic yet narrow victory in the Group 1 Orlando Classic. The prospective A.J.C. Derby was beginning to assume some fascination!

A field of ten accepted for the $500,000 S.T.C. Tancred Stakes at weight-for-age and with Bonecrusher a non-starter, Waverley Star went to the post as the 5/4 favourite with Myocard starting at 2/1. Clearly, not everybody had learnt the lesson of the Rawson Stakes. Myocard’s only two wins thus far as a three-year-old had been on rain-affected ground and many considered that he wouldn’t be as effective on a firm Rosehill track. All such misty notions evaporated when the Ivory Hunter horse powered past Waverley Star in the straight to win by 2 ¼ lengths, with a further 5 lengths to Foxseal in the minor placing. Again, Myocard showed a disconcerting tendency to duck in towards the running rail, although this time not hampering any of his rivals. It seemed to be a trait that he only exhibited on his home course. Ebullient after the victory, Chapman declared: “I’m a traditionalist. I want to win the A.J.C. Derby. It’s the best race in Australia and should be for the most money. Not those six-furlong dashes for chicken-hearted youngsters.” Bookmakers wasted no time in installing the Chapman galloper at the prohibitive odds of 8/15 for that very race to be run seven days later.

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Fifteen starters were originally accepted for the A.J.C. Derby although with the subsequent scratching of King Of Brooklyn the field was cut to fourteen. Myocard’s reduction of his rivals in the two recent weight-for-age races at Rosehill saw him go to the post at Randwick in the hands of Mark de Montfort as the prohibitive 8/15 favourite. The next best in the betting was the Murray Baker-trained New Zealand gelding Palliser partnered by Noel Harris. Prior to coming to Sydney, he had won his last two starts at Trentham (2000m) and Avondale (2200m) respectively. At Rosehill on the previous Saturday in his only race in Sydney, Palliser had staged a remarkable surge to come from last on the turn to defeat Joindre by a head over 2000 metres. Prior to the Derby on the day itself, the horse was inspected by the club’s veterinary surgeon and passed fit to race.

On the third line of betting was the champion filly, Bounding Away. Biscay’s daughter hadn’t been the dominant force on the Turf as a three-year-0ld that she had been as a juvenile. Indeed, going into the A.J.C. Derby, she had only won twice in ten starts in the current season viz. the A.J.C. Flight Stakes in the spring and the S.T.C. Orlando Classic in the autumn, although she had finished runner-up five times including the Rosehill Guineas at her most recent start. Perhaps her best performance of the season had come at Rosehill in the Orlando Classic in which she was weighted on 57.5kg in the 16-horse field. A deft ride by Mick Dittman had seen her get home with a long neck to spare over Dinky Flyer, a mare to whom Bounding Away was conceding two years in age and 2.5kg in weight and who would win the prestigious Group 1 (w-f-a) A.J.C. Queen Elizabeth Stakes two starts later. On the fourth line of betting in the Derby and just one point longer than Bounding Away was her conqueror in the A.J.C. Sires’ Produce Stakes, Diamond Shower, trained by Brian Mayfield-Smith.

Two interesting gallopers in the field that seemed over the odds at 25/1 and 140/1 were Joindre and Precocious Lad respectively. Joindre was a chestnut colt by Twig Moss and had cost $11,000 at the ABCOS National Yearling Sale in Adelaide; he had won both the W.A.T.C. Australian Derby and Western Australian Derby in Perth during the summer. Ted Martinovich, a Fremantle chiropractor and part-time trainer, had prepared the chestnut for the Derbies but afterwards the television personality and proprietor of the Transmedia Stud, Mike Willesee, had bought a half-share in the horse, valuing the colt at around $1 million, which saw him transferred into Brian Mayfield-Smith’s Nebo Lodge in late summer. In his only two races for Mayfield-Smith prior to the Derby, Joindre had run an eye-catching fifth in the Phar Lap Stakes and then was beaten a head by Palliser in the Tulloch Stakes.

The New Zealand colt Precocious Lad had been transferred into the Rosehill stables of B. J. Smith. As the winner of both the Sires’ Produce Stakes at Trentham and Manawatu, Precocious Lad had been expected to be a Derby force but had finished a disappointing tenth in the Tulloch Stakes at his most recent appearance and was now the rank outsider in the Derby field. While Precocious Lad was the longest-priced horse in the Derby field, the second-longest priced was Imprimatur. Just as Myocard’s winning prospects during the autumn had brightened, so Imprimatur’s had dimmed. Unlike Myocard, Imprimatur wasn’t afforded a proper spell after his spring exertions and was suffering from some niggling physical issues. While he had run the minor placing in the Canterbury Guineas, Imprimatur had fared poorly in both the Rosehill Guineas and Tancred Stakes at his two latest starts leading into the classic.

Each of Chapman’s horses had drawn well with Imprimatur on the rails and Myocard in gate 4. In contrast, his closest rivals on paper were drawn wide with Palliser in 12 and Bounding Away in 13. The Doc was never one to burden his jockeys with too many instructions. All he said to Mark de Montfort, given Myocard’s propensity for ducking into the inside rail at his two most recent Rosehill appearances, was: “Don’t get stuck on the fence.” Yet on a Randwick track officially rated as dead following recent rain, after 200 yards Myocard was stuck on the fence, well out of his ground, and back ninth in the field of fourteen. Imprimatur in the role of pacemaker was ensuring the classic was being run at a good clip despite the loose surface. When the pace steadied near the 1300 metres, Barbarino Boy shifted in slightly and inconvenienced the favourite. However, once he got Myocard balanced again, from thence onwards until the home turn, Mark de Montfort coolly negotiated a series of clever inside runs.

It was on the home turn that the real controversy of the race occurred.  Myocard had moved up to be just behind the leader, his expensive stablemate Imprimatur. However, with horses on his outside, de Montfort seemingly had nowhere to go. Yet no sooner had he resolved to just poke up on the inside rail and trust to luck than he managed to extricate himself with more than tolerable éclat.  For it was at this moment that Shane Dye looked around, first to his outside, and then to his inside. Seemingly recognising Myocard’s distinctive striped blinkers, Dye rolled Imprimatur away from the rails to afford a saloon passage to his favoured stablemate.  In so doing, Imprimatur brushed Balciano. The thunder of hooves rolled up the Randwick rise and from amidst the tempest one horse surged clear of the others.

As the famous and popular racecaller Johnny Tapp saw it: “Myocard has left them standing! Myocard shot away at the 100 mark. Hail the new King!” Indeed, the colt showed remarkable acceleration to dash through the opening and career away for a five lengths victory, leaving the outsiders My Precocious Lad and Joindre to fill the minor placings. The dangerous favour afforded the favourite by Dye made not the slightest difference to the result although Myocard’s job was made easier.  The filly, Bounding Away, suggested The Oaks was likely to be hers by running an honest race to finish a nice fourth, despite weakening in the last fifty metres.

Make no mistake. This was one of the great A.J.C. Derby performances in the nigh half-century since World War II. Johnny Tapp was well within his rights at that moment to hail Myocard as the new King! Although sadly, it proved to be a short-lived reign for the son of Ivory Hunter was never destined to win another race. Geoff Chapman and John Denoon were in roaring spirits in the immediate aftermath of the Derby. Chapman gave slashing answers to the quizzing journalists before the official presentation and sashing of Myocard by the Prime Minister of Australia, Bob Hawke. The trainer later shouted the ground-floor Members’ Bar for two hours to celebrate the victory. Yet at the very moment that Myocard’s connections were receiving their trophies and the plaudits of the crowd, the A.J.C. stewards under John Schreck’s leadership, had hauled jockey Shane Dye into their room and were subjecting him to the third degree.

A brilliant but headstrong young jockey destined for the top of his profession, they questioned his tactics aboard Myocard’s stablemate, Imprimatur, on the home turn. Their concern focussed on how Myocard, sitting behind his stablemate, had so fortuitously managed to enjoy a saloon passage soon after entering the home straight. Schreck’s intense staccato style of questioning had the 20-year-old New Zealand rider shifting uneasily in his seat, something he rarely did in a race. The stewards adjourned the inquiry until after the last when it was resumed only to be adjourned again until the following Tuesday.

Dye was then charged under section 137 (a) of the Australian Rules of Racing, which dealt with improper riding. In a dramatic sequel to the Derby, Dye was suspended for six months. Pleading not guilty, he lodged an immediate appeal to the A.J.C. committee only for it to be subsequently dismissed. For mine, looking through my binoculars on that Saturday afternoon, it was an open and shut case. There was nothing subtle about the manner in which Dye looked around twice at that critical juncture of the race. In his defence, Dye blithely claimed he was wanting to see how the dangers were faring and that Imprimatur himself had lugged off the rails. Moreover, Dye claimed to have heard de Montfort call out to him – something de Montfort challenged and Dye later recanted, conceding it may have been another jockey’s voice. (As Oscar Wilde once said: Win or lose, it’s not how you play the game, but how you place the blame.) Still, at the time it occurred, Imprimatur was an 80/1 shot who was clearly coming under pressure and already beaten. Dye, of course, rejected Schreck’s allegations with contumely and there would always be a sense of self-righteous arrogance and antipathy in his many colourful debates with The Sheriff during the coming years. Often these were marked by the jockey’s inability to respect the motives let alone seemingly appreciate the arguments of his interlocutors in the stewards’ room.

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It had always been Geoff Chapman and John Denoon’s intention to run Myocard in the A.J.C. Sydney Cup in which three-year-olds had been seen to advantage in recent years during that epoch. Indeed, four of the last Sydney Cups had been won by three-year-olds viz. Double Century (1979), Kingston Town (1980), Our Paddy Boy (1981) and Veloso (1983). In each of the four years during that period when the older horses had won, the A.J.C. Derby winner of that year hadn’t started. And so, given the form that Myocard was in and his convincing margins of victory, the Cup looked a soft snap on paper. However, there were mitigating circumstances that rendered the colt’s task more difficult. Myocard’s campaign had begun in mid-January and had already encompassed eight races. Moreover, while each of his first seven starts as a three-year-old had been carefully spaced a fortnight apart, his Derby triumph came within just seven days of his tough win at weight-for-age in the S.T.C. Tancred Stakes. Now he was being asked to back up again just a week later and stepping up in distance to 3200 metres in his fourth run in five weeks. The Doc was fond of saying that old Rugby forwards were always at their best when backing up for a second game in a week, but it wasn’t necessarily true of his horses.

Something that the public didn’t know was that the standard-bearer for Lord Ben Lodge had finished that Derby with a swollen knee having been inadvertently struck by Imprimatur in taking that controversial split soon after the turn, as well as having been galloped on from behind earlier in the race. Indeed, for a couple of days back in the stables, Chapman had been treating the horse with antibiotics. Moreover, Myocard’s handicap weight in the Sydney Cup was to be even greater than Kingston Town’s. The withdrawal of the two topweights, At Talaq (57.5kg) and Mr Lomondy (56.5kg), left Foxseal, Limitless and Rising Fear at the top on 54kg, but under the A.J.C. rules they had to carry the minimum topweight of 55.5kg. This increase saw all acceptors rise 1.5kg in the weights. Clearly this disadvantaged three-year-olds more than the older horses and Myocard’s handicap went to 53kg or 1.5kg more than weight-for-age. Combined with a poor ride from de Montfort, it all proved too much.

In a Sydney Cup for the ages and a race still animatedly discussed because of the leviathan wagering activities on-course by Kerry Packer, one of the two winning owners, Myocard went under by a mere half-length to the five-year-old Major Drive, after de Montfort had dashed the colt to the lead at the 200m mark. It had been a brave performance by the Derby winner, who was carried four wide after having been set alight 800 metres from home. Myocard was the sort of horse that would run through a brick wall if asked to do so and such thoroughbreds often need to be protected from themselves. The Doc would come to deeply regret subjecting Myocard to the demands of those 3200 metres, admitting publicly: “He should never have raced in that Sydney Cup. Just sheer unadulterated greed on my part.” No doubt that Kerry Packer, too, regretted that Chapman had started the colt. The Melbourne jockey Greg Hall who partnered Packer’s Major Drive had convinced Australia’s richest man that Myocard was probably unbeatable at the weights and Packer had bet accordingly, wagering almost $5 million on the contest. Winning jockeys in Group 1 races usually anticipate a generous sling from owners but any parsimony from Packer in the circumstances was perhaps understandable. Still, the ledger was more than squared a few years later when Hall partnered Merlene, part-owned by Kerry Packer, to a famous Golden Slipper victory. Hall copped a fine and suspension for a robust ride that day, but a grateful Kerry more than compensated! However, that’s another story.

I might mention that the six weeks of the 1987 S.T.C. and A.J.C. Autumn Carnival, and particularly Derby Day and Sydney Cup Day at Randwick, involved some remarkably heavy on-course wagering – and largely because of the presence of Australia’s richest man, Kerry Packer. One rails bookmaker in particular, Bruce McHugh, a future progressive  and popular S.T.C. committeeman, admitted that his turnover tax during the extended carnival was a little over $2 million. Given that turnover tax was then levied at 2.25%, this implied actual turnover of around $88 million in less than eight weeks. This was an extraordinary sum of money, although just how much of it could be attributed to The Goanna was speculative given that the respective parties had a gentlemen’s non-disclosure agreement. On April 25, Sydney Cup Day, bookmakers’ turnover was a massive $52 million – $44 million more than on Anzac Day in 1986. On the following Monday morning, McHugh surrendered his bookmaking licence and retired from the game for good, but still a very wealthy man. He was just one more in a prolonged exodus of Sydney’s bookmakers that was stripping the racecourse of much of its colour and excitement.

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For a horse that was being touted as Australia’s next Kingston Town in the wake of his successive triumphs at weight-for-age and in the A.J.C. Derby in the autumn of 1987, the balance of Myocard’s racing career makes sober reading. When the curtain came down on that A.J.C. Autumn Carnival, Myocard was a tired horse. Against his better judgement, Chapman extended Myocard’s three-year-old campaign into the Brisbane winter carnival. Sir Edward Williams, the distinguished former judge of the Queensland Supreme Court who was well into his 11-year stint as chairman of the Queensland Turf Club, was a friend of Chapman’s. Plea bargaining was something with which the judge was familiar but it was a different kind of plea Williams made to Chapman. The Q.T.C. chairman desperately wanted the emerging champion galloper to be the star turn at the club’s major meeting of the year. The club had been good to Chapman over the years and besides The Doc liked leaving his horses to spell in the Queensland sunshine after their autumn and early winter racing commitments were fulfilled. Accordingly, Chapman acceded to Williams’ request and journeyed north with faith in the Tommy Smith mantra regarding racehorses i.e. “if they’re going well – well, keep them going”.

Chapman ran his budding champion in three races at Eagle Farm. First up with Mark de Montfort in the saddle, he was beaten a half-neck in the Q.T.C. O’Shea Stakes as the 11/8 favourite. To some extent a victim of circumstances, Myocard had been drawn wide and stayed wide throughout the journey. Both Chapman and Denoon were thus disappointed with the course that de Montfort had charted on Myocard in their last two appearances together. It was this that saw Peter Cook then substituted in the colt’s final two Brisbane starts, when a disappointing fourth in the Queensland Derby as the 4/7 favourite; and an ordinary eleventh in the Brisbane Cup. Alas, Myocard succumbed to pneumonia while in Queensland and it ultimately proved detrimental to almost a third of the horse’s lung functionality. It was this that kept our Derby hero away from the racecourse during the spring of his four-year-old season.

Myocard only resumed racing in the A.J.C. Challenge Stakes in late January 1988. Rather than being reunited with Mark de Montfort in the saddle, the ill-fated Ken Russell gained the mount. Russell who originally hailed from near Rockhampton in Central Queensland, had won the previous season’s Brisbane jockeys’ premiership and had been lured to Sydney by The Doc. Myocard failed in the Challenge as he did in all eight starts that autumn, seemingly a mere shadow of his former self and only returning prize money in the $250,000 S.T.C. Rawson Stakes when he took the minor placing, some five lengths behind the new kid on the block, three-year-old Beau Zam. Just how far Myocard was off his game was demonstrated at his very next start in the S.T.C. Tancred Stakes when he finished some 25 lengths behind Beau Zam, who achieved the very Group 1 double at Rosehill that Myocard had the year before. Further failures followed in both the Queen Elizabeth Stakes and Sydney Cup at Randwick before Myocard went to the paddock. During that autumn Denoon and Chapman’s disappointment with Myocard also extended to Cardiac, his year-younger, full brother. A promising three-year-old who had run a nice fourth behind Campaign King in the Tatt’s Chelmsford Stakes in the spring, Chapman was aiming Cardiac for the 1988 A.J.C. Derby. But, alas, the youngster succumbed to a virus after finishing runner-up in the Gosford Guineas and died in the early weeks of autumn.

Brought back into Lord Ben Lodge for a spring campaign as a five-year-old, Myocard flattered to deceive when runner-up in the Campbelltown Handicap at Warwick Farm over 1400 metres. Further failures then followed at weight-for-age in both the A.J.C. Warwick Stakes and the Tattersall’s Chelmsford Stakes, but these didn’t deter Chapman from taking the Derby winner to Melbourne in quest of the Caulfield Cup although he never did make it to the starting gates. Myocard’s last race came at Flemington on September 10, 1988, when a disappointing fifth in the V.R.C. Lord Mayor’s Plate. The stallion then injured his leg when he took charge of his attendant during exercise in the middle of Caulfield racecourse on the following Thursday. It was the discovery of a chipped bone in Myocard’s near fore fetlock that saw him forced into a premature retirement to stud. The Derby winner’s complete racing record consisted of 33 starts for 7 wins, 4 seconds and 2 thirds and $1,223,585 in prizemoney. The auspices under which his new life at stud began were not altogether favourable but Myocard wasn’t a failure as a stallion and among other useful horses, he sired Arkady, winner of the S.T.C. Rawson Stakes and Frank Underwood Cup; and Mike, winner of the 2002 C.J.C. New Zealand Cup.

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Mark de Montfort, the 28-year-old jockey who partnered with Myocard in those three memorable Group 1 victories in the autumn of 1987 viz. the S.T.C. Rawson Stakes, S.T.C. Tancred Stakes and the A.J.C. Derby, had served his apprenticeship at Rosehill. Initially with Frank Penfold, lack of opportunities eventually saw him transfer his indentures across to the more prominent Rosehill trainer, Ray Guy. However, it was to Penfold rather than Guy, that de Montfort accredited his sound fundamentals in the saddle. The complete bush horseman and former rodeo rider, horse-breaker and riding school instructor, Penfold turned to city training relatively late in life but did prepare those two good gallopers and full brothers, Daneson and Pyramul, as well as much later, the top apprentice Tracey Bartley.

De Montfort had a none too easy introduction to racing. A week after joining Penfold’s Wentworthville stable at the age of fifteen, he suffered a broken leg when a horse he was riding reared and fell on him. The injury kept him sidelined for eight months and he only received his ticket to ride in races in July 1975. A week later while holding a horse for a blacksmith, it wheeled around and kicked out to break de Montfort’s right leg. By the time he was again passed fit to resume race riding, he’d broken his left arm. Throughout these convalescences, de Montfort could often be found in Johnny Tapp’s broadcast box studying the riding styles of the leading jockeys – Ron Quinton, John Duggan and Peter Cook in particular. Alas, Penfold neither had the numbers nor the quality of horses to do justice to de Montfort’s early promise. As the Derby-winning jockey remembered: “Under Frank I had seven rides in seven months and never passed a horse in a race.” However, he had Penfold’s blessing when he moved across to the more prolific Guy.

Ray Guy, who bore more than a passing resemblance to the television cowboy actor Jack Elam and possessed much the same rawhide qualities, certainly had both the ability and the cattle to launch de Montfort’s career. In de Montfort’s own words: “He put me on everything.” And there aren’t many apprentices that can say that about their master! The lad’s first winner came aboard the Guy-trained Tudor Vain in a Kembla Grange flying handicap in July 1976; his first metropolitan winner came the following month at Canterbury Park on Come True, also trained by his master. De Montfort was off and running. While de Montfort was never destined to win a Melbourne Cup, he did ride a Melbourne Cup winner in Arwon at Rosehill on the last Saturday of November 1977. The race is best remembered for a fiery post-race clash with fellow Rosehill apprentice Stephen Schofield and an equally fiery clash in the stewards’ room between the two lads’ masters in Ray Guy and Jack Denham. By December 1977, de Montfort had ridden 30 metropolitan winners, which saw his claim reduced to 1.5kg. At the end of the 1977-78 racing season, de Montfort was crowned as Sydney’s leading apprentice with 47 winners, ahead of Stephen Lake and John Marshall, who rode 32 and 31 winners that season respectively. One of the trainers that helped de Montfort to that apprentices’ title was The Doc, for whom he won races on both Skirnir and Leonotis.

De Montfort chalked up his first Group 1 winner when, in the absence of a suspended Ron Quinton, he partnered Red Nose to win the 1979 S.T.C. Canterbury Guineas for that master of apprentices, Theo Green. In a celebrated finish not only did Red Nose burst the Scomeld bubble that day but nosed out the Ray Guy-trained Brandy Sipper on the line. When an outside apprentice, who wasn’t a pupil of the Green academy, was asked to ride a Theo Green-trained galloper in a Group 1 event back in those days, you knew he just had to be good, for there was no finer judge or teacher of jockeys. While the winners kept on coming in the 1978-79 season for de Montfort, a new champion apprentice had meanwhile arrived upon the scene to deny de Montfort any more premiership titles. Wayne Harris that year took the first of what ultimately proved to be three successive Sydney apprentices’ titles.

It was in May 1980 that de Montfort graduated to become a senior jockey. In his time with Ray Guy, he had ridden some 254 winners although the best race he won for his master was arguably the 1978 A.J.C. Gimcrack Stakes on Silver Mystic. Three months later he’d split with Ray Guy to freelance, relocating to Randwick where he was soon picking up rides from Tommy Smith, Bart Cummings, Neville Begg, John Page and Les Bridge. The Smith connection proved particularly valuable and within his first fourteen months of relocation, de Montfort had won both the City Tattersall’s Cup on Dynasty, giving him a hattrick of victories in that race, and the A.J.C. Summer Cup on Port Carling for the stable. Memorably, de Montfort was also aboard the Smith-trained Rio De Janeiro when that horse spectacularly tried to hurdle the inside running rail in the Botany Bay Handicap at Randwick’s Australia Day Meeting in January 1981. The following year, de Montfort guided the Smith-trained Gelsomino to win the A.J.C. Flight Stakes, although it was only a Group 2 race at the time. However, ultimately Tulloch Lodge afforded de Montfort Group 1 glory when he teamed up with the Robert Holmes a Court-owned Chanteclair in the 1986 A.J.C. Epsom Handicap.

The Bridge association saw the young jockey win the rich 1985 A.J.C. Doncaster Handicap on the 100/1 Row Of Waves, which began a long run of success for the Bridge/de Montfort partnership and a friendship with the prominent owner, Peter Horwitz. Given that curriculum vitae, it was hardly surprising that The Doc was quite satisfied to leg de Montfort into Myocard’s saddle after Shane Dye deserted it for Bonecrusher’s. Both The Doc and de Montfort would each win 13 Group One races in their careers although curiously the only three they shared together were those three triumphs with Myocard. Despite, or perhaps partly because of the controversy surrounding Shane Dye’s ride on Imprimatur in the A.J.C. Derby, it was Dye who emerged as Geoff Chapman’s jockey of choice in the few seasons to come and it would be Dye who would ride more Group 1 winners for The Doc than any other jockey. Still, de Montfort did alright on his own in the years post Chapman, winning a Golden Slipper Stakes on Catbird; a George Ryder Stakes on Quick Flick; and a second Epsom Handicap on Final Fantasy.

Increasing weight would eventually slow de Montfort’s career and following riding stints in both Singapore and Mauritius he called it a day soon after the equine influenza epidemic swept Australia in August 2007. De Montfort then trained a small boutique stable of racehorses adjacent to Warwick Farm racecourse; his best galloper was the talented Mcclintock, winner of some $500,000 in stakes. Belatedly diagnosed with Bradycardia or an excessively slow heart rate in 2022 and no longer able to ride his own horses in trackwork, de Montfort finally hung up his saddle for good. For a time he worked for Racing N.S.W. as a mentor to apprentice jockeys.

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Apart from Myocard whatever became of the A.J.C. Derby class of 1987? The runner-up Precocious Lad proved a disappointment and the only black type race he won after his two-year-old season was the Group 2 Waikato Gold Cup. Joindre, the A.J.C. Derby minor placegetter was hard done by as he only ever raced once more afterwards and that was when he won the Sir Byrne Hart Quality Handicap at Eagle Farm the following month. Brian Mayfield-Smith was convinced he would have won the Queensland Derby but Joindre injured a tendon a week before the race and was promptly retired to stud. Bounding Away, who ran fourth in the A.J.C. Derby, stepped out four days later to win the A.J.C. Oaks in the hands of Mick Dittman. As impressive as Geoff Chapman’s feat was in training Myocard to win the A.J.C. Derby, Smith’s feat in winning the Oaks was arguably greater.

Myocard was bred to stay; Bounding Away was a sprinter. That Oaks was one of Tommy’s most satisfying training performances in his long career, for as he quite rightly boasted afterwards: “I taught her to stay.” Retired to stud later that spring, Bounding Away proved a good matron and her daughter by Ashkalani, In A Bound, would win the S.T.C. Queen of the Turf Stakes (Group 2) in 2004. Balciano was the other horse to go on to Group 1 success in the wake of that Derby when Neville Voigt trained him to win the A.J.C. Metropolitan Handicap later that year in the spring. The Colin Hayes-trained Cossack Warrior was the horse that emerged from that Derby as the most successful stallion. This half-brother to Cossack Prince by Bletchingly, went on to sire 5 individual stakeswinners of 16 stakes races including the Group 1 winner Platonic and that high class three-year-old, Brave Warrior.

And whatever became of Imprimatur, for whom Chapman had once held great hopes? The expensive son of Imposing only won one other black type race after his A.J.C. Spring Champion Stakes and that came at Rosehill on the last Saturday of March 1988 when he was able to lead all the way in the $100,000 S.T.C. Diner’s Club Cup, a Group 3 event over 1500 metres. And his jockey on that occasion? None other than Shane Dye, his partner in crime from that infamous A.J.C. Derby. Upon dismounting at Rosehill, a cheerful Dye quipped: “He owed me that.” Imprimatur was never a true stayer and suffered from physical problems. Retired to stud in South Australia, despite his promising bloodlines and conformation, and the faith that John Denoon showed in him by serving up a series of broodmares, he proved a failure as a stallion.

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But let’s get back to Geoff Chapman. Despite the complete eclipse of Myocard in the calendar year of 1988, it wasn’t entirely an annus horribilis for The Doc and his horses. On the eve of the 1988 S.T.C. Golden Slipper Stakes, Chapman’s new stables, Lord Ben Lodge, were officially opened. Costing some $2.1 million to construct, the new establishment was state-of-the-art in thoroughbred training facilities and a horseman’s dream. One would have expected nothing less from the entrepreneur/property developer, John Denoon, who largely funded the project. The complex was designed by Harry Ladd-Hudson of Devine Erby Mazlin (Aust.) Pty Ltd and was even a finalist in the Public Buildings category of the Royal Australian Institute Architects State Awards in 1988. It boasted 40 boxes and yards under one roof; two horse-walking machines; a 10-metre diameter horse pool and 12-tonne feed silos; computerised medical recording system; and a farrier workshop; all set on 5,000 square metres, over about seven blocks. Denoon was making a wholesale assault on the business of racing having bought a 150 hectares horse stud and agistment property at Cobbity, some 40 miles south west of Sydney. Named Lord Ben Stud, it boasted 66 paddocks, two 1600m training tracks and stabling for 32 horses as well as staff accommodation.

A remarkable transformation descended upon the Rosehill training scene during the 1980s. For generations, Sydney’s leading trainers had resided and trained almost exclusively at Randwick. Yes, as discussed in our 1962 chapter, William Booth was the first leading trainer to put Rosehill on the training map in the earliest years of the twentieth century. Thereafter, however, the suburban course had always played second fiddle to Randwick, while its licensed trainers were largely looked upon as country cousins relative to their eastern suburbs brethren. For years it was said that you couldn’t train an A.J.C. Derby winner on any track other than Randwick. It took until Talking in 1936 to prove the naysayers wrong.  Myocard was only the second A.J.C. Derby to be trained at Rosehill although other visiting winners in the 1980s such as Bonecrusher, Tristarc and Rose Of Kingston had been temporarily stabled at Rosehill, with their respective trainers preferring the solitude and calm of the suburban course, not to mention the superior quality of the training tracks compared to Randwick.

It was confirmation that Rosehill was now the place to be. Just consider the leading trainers and owners that began to base their operations at Rosehill during the decade of the 1980s. Firstly, there was Brian Mayfield-Smith at Nebo Lodge and his coterie of owners in Robert Sangster, Bob Lapointe and the ARABS syndicate. Then there was Paul Sutherland who was attracting the cream of the breeding industry with owners such as Sir Tristan Antico, John Messara, Patrick Hogan, the Kelly family and several other prominent studs such as Segenhoe and Ra Ora. Not to mention a third trainer in Jack Denham and his leading client, Geoff White, of White Industries. Now, there was Geoff Chapman and his main backer John Denoon. During my various excursions to Rosehill during 1987 and early 1988, I can remember watching Lord Ben Lodge as it rose under construction. I believed it would stand for a generation and more. It wouldn’t. No sooner had it been built than land values in the Rosehill/Parramatta area burgeoned while the “unpleasant economics of racing” became depressingly manifest. Those major players with property in the industry had to rationalise their values and discern the best purpose and financial return on that property. How that resolved itself is a story for a later chapter.

Apart from the opening of Lord Ben Lodge, the year 1988 also ushered forth the next Group 1 winner on Geoff Chapman’s curriculum vitae in the shape of the diminutive Crested Wave colt, Gennaker. Chapman had attended the 1987 Trentham National Yearling Sales in January in a very buoyant mood with Myocard back in training and on the threshold of greatness. Late on the second day at Trentham, The Doc bid successfully $NZ150,000 for a little brown colt by Crested Wave out of the unlucky race mare Pass The Dice on behalf of John Denoon and an associate, J. C. Roberts. Chapman had an advantage over most of the other prospective buyers that day because he had trained Pass The Dice, a daughter of the brilliant Kaoru Star. “Pass The Dice was an outstanding mare, a flying machine,” Chapman later explained. “But tragically she was unable to lose weight and could never show her true ability. She required special shoeing and was eventually sold as a broodmare to Ra Ora Stud.”

Now, a gennaker is a type of sail that combines characteristics of both a genoa and a spinnaker, and is primarily used for downwind sailing. It seemed as good a name as any for a colt by Crested Wave. A slow maturing type, Gennaker never made his racecourse debut until August of his three-year-old season and yet he managed to win the Group 1 A.J.C. George Main Stakes at weight-for-age the following month at only his fifth start. The Doc began to entertain dreams of Derby glory reminiscent of Myocard at the same age. Yet less than three weeks after the George Main Stakes, Gennaker was dead – having contracted osteomyelitis in his nearside sesamoids triggering a haematoma which then became infected by blood-borne bacteria. Gennaker’s death virtually coincided with the injury to Myocard that prompted that horse’s retirement. It was a dark hour for Chapman and Denoon and the newly opened Lord Ben Lodge. But there was one chink of light in the pre-dawn air – enough to build a dream on. A handsome, dapper, little two-year-old colt by Sir Tristram that Geoff Chapman had bought on behalf of John Denoon earlier that year at the 1988 January Trentham sales was revealing extraordinary potential, although his racing debut would be delayed for another six months. In due course, however, the colt would indeed deliver the two men their second A.J.C. Derby. But that story must await its proper turn in this chronicle.