Phar Lap – one of the turf’s most incredible tales
As part of the Racing Post’s ‘Great Racing Mysteries’ Series, Lee Mottershead traces the story of Phar Lap’s death, one of the turf’s most incredible tales.
Magnificent in life, mysterious in death, immortal forever. Phar Lap (Night Raid) may very well be the finest horse who ever graced an Australian racecourse. What is beyond doubt is his story is the most incredible.
At a time when a hero was needed, one emerged in the guise of the powerful galloper who became revered by the people of a country ravaged by the depression.
He was an athlete who inspired adoration and affection from men and women whose lives contained little other reason to feel hope or joy. He was the winner of 37 races, a rags-to-riches treasured public figure who made Australia proud, never more so than when shipped to Tijuana, Mexico, to defeat America’s finest thoroughbreds. Sixteen days later he was dead.
It is a mark of Phar Lap’s enduring fame that his mounted hide has been the most popular attraction in Melbourne Museum since it was first exhibited in January 1933. Everyone in Australia and New Zealand – the land of his birth – knows of the horse whose 6.35kg heart was one and a half times bigger than average. In droves they still come to see him. They marvel at what they witness and leave with the same question people have asked for 88 years – what killed Phar Lap?
First one must understand the reason they care in the first place – Phar Lap kept finishing in first place.
As a yearling he cost just 160 yearlings in 1928, bought by small-time trainer Harry Telford on behalf of businessman David Davis, an American living in Australia. On first seeing the large and ungainly son of Night Raid, Davis took an instant dislike. He no longer wanted the Kiwi import. Telford very much did and secured a three-year leasing arrangement.
It took a while for Telford’s high opinion of Phar Lap to prove justified. He lost nine of his first ten races but then, helped by groom Tommy Woodcock, who loved the horse as much as the horse loved him, something clicked. In the spring of 1929 Phar Lap won Australia’s two main Classics, the AJC Derby and Victoria Derby. Sent off even money favourite for the 1929 Melbourne Cup he could finish only third, proving more than jockey Bobbie Lewis could manage. His headstrong tendencies undid him that day. Thereafter he became nigh on unbeatable.
Phar Lap filled out his magnificent frame, growing in size and rising in stature. Seven days after placing against his name the 1930 Cox Plate he sauntered home on the opening day of the Melbourne Cup carnival in the Melbourne (now Mackinnon) Stakes. Three days later his legend was assured.
Carrying the welter burden of 9st 12lb and partnered by now regular jockey Jim Pike, Phar Lap produced what remains to this day the finest Melbourne Cup-winning performance of all time. At odds of 8-11 he was and is the only horse to claim Australia’s most celebrated sporting contest at odds-on. He did it in a canter, prompting Pike to say: “He’s a great horse. In fact he is the best horse Australia has ever seen and I doubt they will ever see his equal. There’s only one chance they’ve got of beating him – if they can breed them with wings on.”
Phar Lap wins the 1930 Melbourne Cup
He carried on winning, following up his Tuesday triumph with further Flemington romps on the Thursday and Saturday of the carnival. Having dazzled over two miles he thrashed Australia’s top sprinters in Caulfield’s 1931 Futurity Stakes before returning to Moonee Valley for a second Cox Plate later that year. His failure to win the Melbourne Cup that followed was no failure. It was at the hands not of a horse with wings but a handicapper with weights. Phar Lap was allocated the impossible load of 10st 10lb. Even for him that was too much.
He would not race in Australia again. In no time at all he would not see Australia again.
With Telford staying at home, Phar Lap was sent by Davis to North America for the Agua Caliente Handicap on March 20, 1932, at Agua Caliente racetrack in Tijuana, Mexico, just across the border from San Diego. In front of a record crowd Phar Lap won in a record time, this time under Billy Elliot. The horse billed as ‘the Red Terror from the Antipodes’ was now a star in the United States as well as Australia and New Zealand. He was taken to California and he died there.
It happened on April 5, 1932. Woodcock always slept just a few yards from Phar Lap’s box. As soon as he woke he would greet his friend with a sugar lump. When the sugar lump was refused Woodcock became concerned. He summoned vet Bill Neilsen, who had travelled from Australia as part of the horse’s entourage. Neilsen suspected colic and initially felt Phar Lap was beginning to show signs of progress. Those signs were false. He succumbed to whatever was ailing him at 2.30pm.
In a book chronicling the Melbourne Cup from 1861 to 2000, author Maurice Cavanough writes: “Woodcock, who had been Phar Lap’s devoted attendant since he first raced . . . was completely distraught. He lay down by the dead horse and clung to its neck, weeping bitterly, before friends dragged him away.” The 1983 film Phar Lap features that very same heartbreaking scene in its early moments.
Phar Lap was dead but they did not know why. In Australia, where he had been a symbol of patriotism through the dark days of the depression, there was shock, horror and an immediate move to blame America. It was alleged the horse had been deliberately poisoned, perhaps by underworld figures who feared him going on a winning streak across the US.
Nobody knew for sure then what had happened. Nobody knows for sure now. Writer Geoff Armstrong has been fascinated by Phar Lap since he was a child and has written a number of books and articles about the icon’s life and death. His opinion carries plenty of weight.
“When the horse died they carried out the post-mortem and expected to find a blockage in the intestine – but it wasn’t there,” says Armstrong.
“As a result, they just didn’t know what caused his death. The problem was nothing fitted. There was no explanation for why such a fit racehorse should suddenly just die like that. That created a situation whereby all sorts of theories were able to take off and those theories carried some weight. The ones that carried the most weight were the sexiest ones, linked to the idea of arsenic poisoning and gangsters wanting to kill the horse.
“The truth is there was no reason for gangsters to kill Phar Lap. It’s also true they checked for arsenic poisoning and in the post-mortem they specifically say there wasn’t enough arsenic in the horse to kill him.”
The arsenic theory has clung to Phar Lap like his victory roll of honour. In 2006 vet Graeme Pearce said that in a conversation 40 years earlier Neilsen claimed local authorities had sprayed pasture for noxious weeds and that Phar Lap died as a result of eating some of the grass.
Also in 2006 a study of the horse’s hair concluded he had perished after ingesting arsenic. Another report stated Woodcock had inadvertently killed his charge by feeding him a tonic that mistakenly contained excessive levels of arsenic, which for much of the 20th century was given to horses by some trainers, including Telford.
“I get really dirty when people suggest it was an arsenic poisoning caused by a mistake made by Woodcock,” says Armstrong. “A colossal amount would have been needed to kill the horse. It would have required the most terrible error, one a horseman like Woodcock simply would not have made.
“We once interviewed Bill Stutt, who was the Moonee Valley chairman and a really good friend of Woodcock. We asked him did Tommy ever say he knew what happened. Bill said Tommy never knew. At different stages of his life he repeated whatever the theory of the day was, so in the mid-1930s he said gangsters poisoned the horse.”
The gangster theory does not wash with Armstrong, who instead believes Phar Lap died of nothing more sinister than a gastrointestinal disorder.
He explains: “When we did our book in 2000 my original intention was to put all the different theories out there and let the reader decide. However, my co-author Peter Thompson had the idea of showing the post-mortem to a vet. We therefore presented it to Dr John van Veenendaal, who was probably Melbourne’s leading racing vet at the time. He immediately said it was duodenitis-proximal jejunitis, a bacterial infection that shuts down the intestine.
“The key point is that infection was not discovered until 1982, so in 1932 the vets and Tommy Woodcock were looking for something that at the time they did not know existed. That’s why the mystery took off. Unfortunately, saying Phar Lap died of a mere bacterial infection was not very exciting, so even though we published the evidence, and that evidence is clear, it has not been accepted.”
Armstrong adds: “In 2005 I did a book on the 1930 Melbourne Cup and redid it in 2010, by which stage the ‘arsenic killed Phar Lap’ theory had again taken off. I contacted Dr Tam Garland, the leading veterinary toxicologist in America, and put all the evidence towards her. Again, she immediately said it was duodenitis-proximal jejunitis.
“It obviously can’t be 100 per cent clear-cut because we can’t do a post-mortem today. However, the evidence fits like the proverbial glove. I don’t think Phar Lap’s death is a mystery at all. I think it’s quite clear what killed the horse. In my opinion, the mystery of Phar Lap is what happened in the shooting before the 1930 Melbourne Cup.”
The shooting took place three days prior to the Cup. Phar Lap had been given a light workout at Caulfield as part of his build-up to running at Flemington later in the day. Woodcock, riding a pony, was leading the champion when he spotted a parked car, inside which were two men, one of whom was suspiciously holding papers close to his face. The car’s number plate also appeared to have been doctored.
The Argus, a daily morning newspaper in Melbourne, reported: “When near Etna Street, Woodcock heard the car come up fast behind him. He pushed Phar Lap up on to the footpath close to a hedge, placing himself and his pony between the horse and the car. He then saw a man in the car with a double-barrel shotgun. Woodcock dug his heels into the pony and it shot forward. Feeling the pony move sharply, Phar Lap did the same. A shot was fired and it may have been this sudden move forward that saved the horse’s life.”
Phar Lap’s connections had already been advised to be on guard. They had unexpectedly scratched Phar Lap from the Caulfield Cup after previously staking doubles on Amounis to win that race – which he did – and Phar Lap to take out the Melbourne Cup. Bookmakers faced a chunky payout.
Offering his analysis, Armstrong says: “These gangsters seemingly completely missed the horse from point-blank range. When the police went back to the scene of the crime on the Saturday afternoon there were no signs a shooting had taken place. There were no shotgun pellets in a fence. There was nothing.
“I can obviously only guess, but the most likely explanation I’ve got is it was a media stunt. I think there were blanks in the gun. If it was a genuine shooting they were pretty terrible at it.”
In A Century Galloped By, a history of the Victoria Racing Club published in 1988, John Pacini writes: “Who ‘owned’ Phar Lap according to the racebook was unimportant. His unofficial owners were the people of Victoria. Thus, when there was an attempt made on the horse’s life on the Saturday prior to the Cup, news of it swept through Melbourne faster than a declaration of war.”
Phar Lap’s team did not want the horse to be a victim of that war. Following his Saturday saunter around Flemington they secretly transported him to a stud nearly 50 miles away in Geelong. He was due to leave there at midday on Tuesday. In yet another scare, the motor of the float that was set to take Phar Lap to Flemington refused to fire up. Only after 30 minutes was it encouraged back to life. As the clock ticked down to the off-time of the Melbourne Cup radio stations repeatedly told listeners that Phar Lap had not arrived at the track and his whereabouts were unknown.
To enormous cheers, Phar Lap arrived at the racecourse 40 minutes before the race was due to start. The rest is history.
What a history. What a story. What a horse.
Phar Lap: ‘the greatest of all time’
Eight days, four races, four wins. Phar Lap was the thread that held the whole of the 1930 Melbourne Cup Carnival together.
After winning the mile-and-a-quarter Melbourne Stakes on the opening Saturday and then the two-mile Melbourne Cup on the Tuesday, he was back at Flemington on the Thursday to win the Linlithgow Stakes, then a weight-for-age contest over a mile. To round things off he returned on the meeting’s final Saturday to lift the Fisher Plate over a mile and a half.
“I can understand why Telford ran him on all four days – the horse was really tough and in top form,” says Phar Lap expert Geoff Armstrong.
Summing up why he believes Phar Lap stands out above all others, Armstrong says: “Whenever we get a great horse here, whether it’s Tulloch, Kingston Town, Makybe Diva, Black Caviar or Winx, we always say he or she is the greatest horse since Phar Lap. It’s amazing that Phar Lap is the one horse who has entered our culture like no other.
“I think part of that comes back to the fact he ran during the depression. Part of it comes back to the fact his first great season was 1929 when the media was becoming a big deal thanks to the wireless and newsreels, so people could hear and see him win.
“However, I think the thing that really sets him apart is he is just the greatest racehorse of all time. I don’t think it’s any more complicated than that.”