The Big Book of Australian Racing Stories Page 4

  Three months go by—a coat like polished copper is beginning to glisten again. Symptoms are favourable. You try your first feed of oats. A very small feed of grain, mixed with a very large feed of hope. She eats them, and with no ill effects, praise be. No recurrence of the malady she seems to have overcome.

  Well, if she can eat oats, you can train her. Gimcrack Stakes—three months away. You don’t like early two-year-old racing, but that was the race you dreamed about for this little lady, because she’s pitched and balanced to go like greased lightning, and she’s bred to stay. Perhaps, if you’re very careful, you can go far enough to let her tell you what to do. She’ll tell you, never doubt it, if you’ve sense enough to know her language.

  And so now it’s work in earnest, but work you love. Your little horse thrives under it. Five in the morning until ten at night, your foreman watches, massages, feeds, exercises, does the thousand and one things one does when a horse is set to win a race. And in the case of this filly, two or three things that are not usually included.

  And then one day, with the Gimcrack Stakes six weeks away, you decide to let her ‘run down a furlong’. Ah, folks, there is a day for you. When, after months of preparation, you bring out the old stopwatch and prepare to learn your fate. Can she run a furlong in twelve seconds? Can she—or will she, as nine out of ten do, take longer? Can she, by some miracle, break twelve with her heavy irons on? Well, well, you’ll see in the morning. And if she, as the racing argot has it, ‘takes a week’, there isn’t anything that you can do about it—no, not a thing!

  And so, when the older horses have departed, and the trainers have gone where all good trainers go at breakfast-time, when the sun had chased the frost away, you stand, timer in hand, and watch your filly canter gaily to the mark, and breaking away like a flash, run in a blur of speed to a furlong pole. You click your watch, and peek at it, and then, startled, you look again, and you say, ‘Well, I’ll be . . .!’ and you almost went back on a promise made, in all good faith, to a little horse with black-tipped ears, and you nearly sent her home for something out of Star Sapphire.

  Perhaps it’s the wind that makes you shiver.

  Your watch, which is a perfectly good watch, tells the story. Your filly, in working shoes, carrying 8 stone 10 pounds, and allowed to please herself, flashed over that furlong in eleven seconds and two-fifths, and that, you know, isn’t galloping—that, as so many years of trying has so amply taught you, is simply flying! So who can blame you if you start to dream again?

  Two weeks go by, and daily your baby horse grows stronger, bigger, faster. Did I say faster? Yes faster, because one fine morning you take her far from prying eyes, and on a track where once years ago a crack sprinter in racing shoes ran two in twenty-three and three-quarters, but on which no horse since has done so well, your filly, in working shoes, flashes over that same two furlongs in twenty-three and one-quarter, and then you know that if she runs true to pedigree, and gets an even break in the race you’ve set her for, she will be very hard to beat indeed. Oh, very hard!

  That evening you go to a great friend who loves to make thousands grow where only one thousand was before, and you tell him, imploring secrecy, that you’ve got a filly big as a minute, beautiful as a sculptor’s dream, faster than chain lightning, and game as an Australian bulldog ant. And he says, as a doctor will say to his patient, soothingly, quietly, ‘Sure, Jim, I know. Have a drink.’ But you persist, and eventually he becomes enthusiastic, and forecasts that the noble brotherhood of the Ring are due for an outsize dose of sackcloth and ashes, and a notable lack of that legendary fruit of which the resting place is that equally legendary sideboard.

  Then he wants to know of her training. How many four-furlong sprints with the pressure on? And you say, ‘None at all. Absolutely none at all.’ And he laughs, and suggests that you talk of other things, and that’s that. You speak nervously of heredity, of the values in pace work, half pace, strong three-quarter pace, of ancestry. You talk in vain. Just over your shoulder when you came into his study, Fortune beckoned him: Fortune who, in the last analysis, governs every little thing there is in racing. Fortune had gone from that room before you left.

  The great day grows closer. There are barrier trials now, and daily the young ones who have been ‘tried’ and who have survived their early preparations thus far (so many don’t) spring into flashing life from behind tapes as the starter calls.

  Then one day there is a mighty gathering of babies at the official two-year-old trials, and heat after heat thunder down a lightning-fast track under racing conditions. Of the colts and the fillies, the fair sex take all honours. Two of them run four furlongs in forty-eight seconds, and that evening their names get headlines, and you know you’ll have opponents worthy of your steel, which is as it should be.

  At the trials, someone who knows you have a young one too, asks where your filly is, and you say, ‘Having her breakfast, I suppose,’ and he shakes his head.

  ‘Great practice this, Jim,’ he remarks, ‘learns them race conditions.’

  ‘Sure,’ you say. ‘They’re fine. I know other ways.’

  He grins. ‘You’ve quaint ideas, Jim—how’s dancing, or is it skating, nowadays?’

  You leave it at that!

  Ten days before the race, you send your own baby out ‘tipped’ and with her chosen horseman in silks and satins, in the saddle. And where the world doesn’t see, she beats seven others similarly equipped, flying like a little bay meteor over three furlongs from the barrier, and then the crack little horseman on her back has to fight like a tiger to stop her running three furlongs more at that same terrific pace. Bred to stay? Oh sure. I told you that. Or didn’t I? That dream is getting closer now!

  And from then on? Well no more gallops, no more strain. Just potter about, with a bit of strong three-quarter pace work here and there. Massage, good food, kindness—oh yes, plenty of that. You say she’s fit, your friends say you’re crazy, your foreman grunts. So what? So someone’s crazy! Maybe it’s you! You have the courage of your convictions in the racing game—when you’ve got convictions. So often you just don’t know, and neither does anyone else!

  But in an education that has encompassed most things, one thing remains to be done. Have you, who watch the babies run, ever thought of their ordeal when first they see the milling thousands, hear the roar of the ring, become a part of that electric atmosphere that it is the racecourse? Stage-fright, fear, anxiety, bewilderment, leave many a baby horse half beaten long before the starter’s voice sends them thundering away.

  And so that she may get used to it, you take your filly to the races—to a meeting where voices bellow, and strangers come to gaze at her. Where men in red coats on white horses canter by, and all the ordered pandemonium of the Sport of Kings surrounds her.

  You take your colt too. Oh yes, you have a colt, with a coat like a cloak of burnished brass, and the disposition of a Pirate King.

  She takes it well. You parade them both, and your friends come in dozens to see them, and long and loud are the praises for your golden-coated colt, and long and pregnant are the silences that follow your humble suggestion that the filly is lovely too.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ they say, if they say anything at all, ‘rather small though—a mite miserable—go for a couple like a scalded cat—but that colt! Now, mister, there’s a racehorse!’ And the colt, with its burnished-copper coat, and his disposition of a swaggering buccaneer, stands high in the air with his front feet pawing at a point yards above your head, and sends his shrill clear reply over ring and paddock: ‘Boy, you’ve said a mouthful!’ But what he doesn’t tell them is that the little lady no one cares for could give him a stone and a start and a beating any time you like to call the tune!

  And you don’t tell them either, because you are a little sad, and a wee bit puzzled. Can’t they see your lovely filly, or is it your eyes that cannot see her imperfections? ‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.’ Well maybe so—maybe so.

  Then
among the curious ones who wander past, a young ‘man about town’ stops long enough to remark, ‘A fine colt,’ and then, turning to where your little horse is standing in her scarlet silken sheet, and her spotless bandages, with the brass and leather of her head collar gleaming because proud hands have worked for hours so that her ‘ensemble’ may be perfect, the gentleman remarks, ‘Don’t think much of her,’ and your foreman, fed to the teeth, and because he is a little sad too, snarls savagely, ‘Mister, which end of her do you think kicks?’

  Well, you take them home, and then, presently, lo and behold, the Great Day dawns. That day you dreamed about six long months ago. A dream that, before evening falls again, will have shattered into the oblivion of painful memories, or triumphed into the miracle of a fait accompli. That’s a day, my race-going friends, that is ‘just another day’ to you. But for me! Oh, well, I’ll try to tell you.

  Coffee that morning was hot and strong, and newspapers, race papers, and tipsters’ sheets made the bed covering. All that ocean of type that sums up the discoveries of that colossal espionage system that delves with the eye of an eagle, the sagacity of a fox, and the tenacity of a weasel, into the chances of the thoroughbred horse, and out of that multitude of forecasts not one gives your horse a chance! No—not even a place chance, and you think suddenly of that song you sang when you marched to war—‘They’re all out of step but Jim!’ And then you remember that it was Jim who was out of step, and your name is Jim.

  A hurried toilet, a red-and-white tie, your racing colours. She’ll carry them, so you’ll carry them too. Then to the stable in a car that must wonder if you think you’re Malcolm Campbell. Your foreman’s grunted greeting (he’s ‘strung up’ too, though woe betide you if you say so!), the rhythmic swing of his brush massaging muscles like fluid steel beneath a satin coat, that changes in places into little pools of light as a shaft of early morning sun finds her. A velvet muzzle that spares a moment to caress your cheek, before it buries itself in sweet-smelling food. Lips that move with that curious rotary motion, jaws that grind with the even steadiness of a metronome—sweet music to the trainer’s ears on race day—I’ll say it is.

  Dark eyes are clear, untroubled. Under those enormous hot poultice bandages, you know her legs are clean and cool and, best of all, under your inquiring fingertips, her heart beats strong and true, thirty-eight, thirty-nine, maybe forty to the minute. That marvellous muscle from which come all those things you know she’s got. Well, little filly, I’ve done my best, and those who have helped me have done their best, and now—well, now, it’s up to you!

  The rhythmic swing of that brush goes on and on and on. How many thousand hours has he swung a brush like that? How many years has he hissed sibilantly like a disturbed snake, as is the way of all horsemen with a brush? How much of it was worthwhile? Ask him! He wouldn’t know what you were talking about. It was all worthwhile from his point of view. Were they not all thoroughbred? They’re born and bred that way in racing.

  Hours go by, and eventually you stand with your small horse, in a big stall, with a hundred other horses in a long line of stalls on either side of you. The clamour of the racecourse envelops you, and you wish time wouldn’t drag so. A famous horse is stabled next your own, and hundreds come to look him over. You step aside so that they can see your filly too. But they don’t gesticulate, and they don’t admire. They just walk away, and never look in your direction. After all, who are you, and who is your filly? Just one of twenty-one babies entered in an early Classic, some of whom can run half a mile in forty-eight, which is worthy of note. But what can that little one run? Well, nobody knows. Not even you know, though you think you do. Hardly anyone ever heard her name. Well, in a little while now, they’ll fling her name in banner type across the sporting pages of a nation—well, maybe they will!

  Gradually your world grows smaller until the whole of it is concentrated in just one small baby horse. The gamble of the barrier draw has given you nine marbles. Not so bad. From the nearby ring an enormous bellow calls your horse at twenty to one. A week ago, that would have seemed philanthropy—almost lese-majesty. Now, on the brink of the Great Ordeal, you’re not so sure. But you know the ladies will back her—with a name like that—oh, sure they will! And you’ll back her—with what you’ve got. She won’t be friendless! Twenty to one. It’s a bonny price, and they say Shylock sired the bookmaker breed. My goodness gracious! Twenty to one!

  The parade is on. Twenty-one babies in their flaunting colours. Your jockey comes—smart, capable, cool. You wonder at his coolness. Thank heaven you don’t have to ride her. Now you know what courage is! Look at her—calm, unflurried—and she knows just as well as you know that she’s on the threshold of a hard, tough battle. How does she know? Bred in her, of course, and in most of those like her, over hundreds of years. How about your own courage? Well, maybe the less said about that, just now, the better. You don’t need any; you just have to sit and watch!

  A pat on a glossy neck, a last word to the jockey and your voice is hard. ‘No whip, Bill, no spurs. Let her do it herself. She’ll fight it out—bred that way.’ And his merry, smiling answer, ‘Don’t worry, boss. She’s home and hosed. Go put the mortgage on her.’

  You don’t. You couldn’t, even if you had a mortgage. Curiously money doesn’t seem to matter now. Only one thing matters. You flee to a spot high in a towering grandstand, as far from folk as possible, and through your glasses in the far distance you pick up a huddle of horses who wheel and dive and change in a kaleidoscope of brilliant colour.

  And then your entire world narrows down to just one thing. Gone are the crowds, gone the tumult and the shouting, gone any vestige of consciousness of anything or anyone except that distant mass wheeling and diving like a flock of gulls at a five-strand barrier. If you breathe, you don’t know it, and you pray for just one thing. That she’ll get away when the starter calls, and that she won’t be asked to break her heart chasing a field that stole a march on her. That your dream won’t go west in a split second of faulty judgement.

  You can’t see her colours in that shifting huddle. The day is dull, the visibility poor, but you know suddenly that they’re off, and then I’ll swear you do not breathe at all. Your glasses range forward, then backward over that flying field. You can’t find her, but two horses on the rails obscure one on the outside of them. Perhaps she’s running there outside of those you see so plainly.

  Then a quarter of a mile away, they swing for home. Desperately your glasses range from the head of that flying field to the tail of it, and back again. A misty rain has blurred your vision so that the blazing colours the jockeys carry are vague and almost indistinguishable. You are conscious of a sense of unbearable urgency. You’ve got to find her! You’ve got to. Then suddenly you freeze into complete immobility. That must be her. There just outside of the chestnut on the rails, is a blood-red bay, with a great white blaze. Going like the wind. That’s her! Then you’re dreaming again.

  Horses bunched at the turn for their battle down that long home stretch—the thunder of the multitude—a name on the lips of thousands in one long roar of sound. Your filly’s name, as she battles with the favourite at that vital furlong pole for mastery, and gains it, goes on, spread-eagles the cream of her age—flashes past that little white line against its little black board, and that judge from whose decision there is no appeal—lengths to the good!

  Then suddenly you realise it’s a dream come true, and that that little filly trotting back on dainty feet, black-tipped ears pricked on lovely little head—belongs to you!

  And her name, folks—oh, yes, I forgot to tell you: Gay Romance.

  Owned and trained by Jim Bendrodt, Gay Romance won the Gimcrack Stakes at Randwick in 1937. She was also the dam of Gay Lover, winner of the 1956 Rosehill Guineas.

  ROYAL RANDWICK

  TIP KELAHER

  Andrew James (‘Tip’) Kelaher was born in Sydney in 1914 and attended Sydney Boys’ High. He enlisted in a machine gun battalion in 1940.
He was killed in action at Tel El Eisa in Egypt on 14 July 1942. His commanding officer wrote, ‘In the face of heavy machine gun fire, artillery and mortars he stayed by his gun and kept it in action to the last.’ He wrote this poem just before his death.

  ***

  Are the two-year-olds still racing down the Randwick mile,

  Do thudding hoofs still shake the Randwick turf,

  Do flower-beds and gardens still produce their springtime smile,

  Does the ring-roar match the booming of the surf?

  Are there still some lovely ladies to beautify the scene,

  Is the band still playing marches ’neath the stand,

  Is the sunshine just as brilliant and the couch grass just as green

  As when we sailed to fight on foreign strand?

  Is the stale cigar smell drifting, and do gripping hands denote

  Glad meetings and a move towards the bar,

  Is there movement, life and laughter from the ‘birdcage’ to the tote

  As the old friends congregate from near and far?

  Have you any colts like Gold Rod or Avenger or High Caste,

  Or a miler like proud Ajax at his best,

  Could the new lot hope to foot it with the champions of the past,

  With Eurythmic, Gloaming, Poitrel and the rest?

  Oh, the bay, the black, the chestnut—rippling muscles in the sun!

  Close finishes! The crowd’s loud, vibrant roar!

  A day of keen, hard-racing, stirring contests every one,

  Brings a tingle to a horseman’s blood once more.

  Now Randwick stands a symbol of the life we left behind,

  And ’twill compensate for loss and parting pain,

  When the war is safely over if I have the luck to find

  I can spend a day at Randwick once again.