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AUSTRALIAN HISTORY
FLEMINGTON
Flemington is the best-known racecourse in Australia.
It is the oldest continuing metropolitan racecourse – there have been races
here every year since 1840. It is the most significant racing heritage site
in the country. The first race meeting held here was
on the rough river flats beside the Maribyrnong
River in March 1840
when Melbourne as a town was
barely five years old. This was two years after Melbourne
's first race meeting , near present-day Spencer
Street railway station (March
1838). Flemington has also been a great centre for horse training. Many
of Australia 's
most famous trainers have maintained stables at or near the course.
The Melbourne
Cup and the spring carnival (origins)
The first Melbourne races were
run annually in the autumn. In 1854 the Victoria Turf Club
(VTC) decided to run a spring meeting as well, when the
countryside was at its best and the weather the most dramatic. It
was the VTC which thought up the idea of a Melbourne Cup, a handicap
race over two miles with a rich prize. This was first run in
November 1861 and attracted top inter-colonial horses – including
the winner, Archer, from New South Wales.
The newly-formed Victoria Racing Club (VRC) took
over the race in time for its fourth running, in 1864, and has run it at
Flemington every spring without fail since that time, as its feature race for
the year.
CARBINE
Carbine was not only Phar Lap's great-great-grandfather but shares with him
the honour of being considered the greatest horse in Australian
racing history. He was foaled in New
Zealand but most of his racing
career was in Australia.
He carried a record 10 stone 5 pounds (65.5 kg) to win the 1890
Melbourne Cup in a huge field of thirty-nine runners . He became a
very important stallion and late in his career was exported to England,
where he sired winners of the English Derby and other great
races. In 1990 the VRC arranged for the preservation of the wooden stalls
where Carbine used to be housed when stabled at Flemington. This small
building has been relocated to near the birdcage area.
GAINSBOROUGH
Gainsborough was an impressive Thoroughbred who achieved a number of
outstanding wins. Throughout his career as a racehorse, he recorded five wins
and two placings from nine starts. As a sire of racehorses his achievements
were higher. In 1931, he was the leading sire of Juveniles and Broodmares, in
1931 and 1933, leading sire of racehorses.
Being a good type
and standing 15.3 hands high, Gainsborough was a suitable foundation sire for
Australian Stock Horses. His influence can be traced through his sons
Hyperion, Solario, Emborough and Bobsleigh.
KINGSTON TOWN
Rated
as one of the undisputed legends of the Australian turf, Kingston Town is
widely recognised as the best horse to have raced in Australia since the
mighty Tulloch. He was owned and raced by Mr David Hains.
Affectionately known as "TheKing”.
A turf idol in the 1980s, Kingston Town has just been inducted into the
Australian Racing Hall of Fame, alongside turf immortals Phar Lap, Tulloch,
Bernborough and Carbine, as one of the 5 inaugural horse inductees, a great
honour indeed..
Kingston Town remains the only horse
to have ever won 3 WS Cox Plates, which he won in 1980, 1981 and 1982.
It is quite possible that we will never see the likes of him again, not for a
long time anyway. His other major wins included the AJC Derby, Rosehill
Guineas, Tancred Stakes (now Mercedes Classic, as a 3yo), Sydney Cup (as a
3yo), Spring Champion Stakes, Queensland Derby, George Main Stakes (twice),
Caulfield Stakes (twice), Western Mail Classic, Warwick Stakes (3 times), Chelmsford
Stakes (3 times).
His greatest performance was probably in defeat, when he ran the
closest of seconds in the 1982 to Gurner's Lane, who also won the Caulfield
Cup that year. Kingston Town lost by a neck, conceding the winner 3kgs,
and was only pegged back in the shadows of the post, and was lifting
again. He was ridden in that race by his regular rider, Malcolm
Johnston, in what Johnston also acknowledges was not his best performance on
the horse, and the ride probably cost him the race.
Cox Plate Breeding
Australian Stockhorse
Melbourne Cup
First Race Meetings
TWENTIETH CENTURY
CHAMPIONS
Equipoise
Nicknamed "The Chocolate Soldier" for his rich coat color and
extraordinary handsomeness, Equipoise raced through the age of seven in the
1930s, winning 29 of 51 races, often carrying top weights in handicap races.
Count
Fleet
The Triple Crown winner of 1943, Count Fleet won the Belmont Stakes by 25
lengths in the final race of his career.
Citation
Winner of 19 races in 20 starts as a
three-year-old in 1948, Citation followed Whirlaway as the second Triple
Crown winner for the famed Calumet Farm. At six, he became the first
Thoroughbred to reach $1 million in career race earnings.
Native
Dancer
Early in the television era, the flashy "Gray Ghost" became a public
idol. He won 21 of 22 starts, losing only to Dark Star in the 1953 Kentucky
Derby.
Kelso
The only horse in history to be voted Horse of the Year five times, Kelso,
reigned from 1960 through 1964. He was a great weight carrier and won five
runnings of The Jockey Club Gold Cup, then raced at two miles.
Secretariat
In 1973, Secretariat became the first horse in a quarter-century to win the
Triple Crown. His climactic moment was his 31-length victory in world record
time in the Belmont Stakes. "Big Red's" image graced the covers of
Time and Newsweek, as well as Sports Illustrated.
Forego
Over his brilliant six year career, Forego was awarded a record eight Eclipse
Awards including Horse of the Year in 1974, 1975 and 1976, Champion Handicap
Horse in 1974, 1975, 1976 and 1977 and Champion Sprinter in 1974. In his 54
career starts he only finished out of the money seven times. Forego is buried
at the Kentucky Horse Park, near the Hall of Champions where he spent sixteen
years delighting race fans.
Seattle Slew
In 1977,
Seattle Slew became the first undefeated winner of the Triple Crown and was
named Horse of the Year. The following year, Slew would firmly establish
himself as one of the greatest champions of the 20th century by winning
against 1978 Triple Crown winner Affirmed and England's top horse, Excellor.
Affirmed
In racing's greatest ongoing rivalry, Affirmed and Alydar waged war through
1977 and 1978. Affirmed won seven of their 10 meetings, including all three
Triple Crown races, but most were extraordinarily close finishes.
Cigar
During one phase of his career, over three seasons, 1994-96, Allen Paulson's
Cigar won 16 consecutive races, matching the modern record of Citation. He
traveled to Dubai to win the first running of the Dubai Cup, and his career
earnings were within $100 of $10 million. Cigar is now a resident of the
Kentucky Horse Park's Hall of Champions.
Breed
Characteristics
The Thoroughbred
stands a little over 16 hands on average and its appearance reveals its Arabian
ancestry. A refined head with widely-spaced, intelligent eyes sits on a neck
which is somewhat longer and lighter than in other breeds. The withers are
high and well defined, leading to an evenly curved back. The shoulder is
deep, well-muscled and extremely sloped while the heart girth is deep and
relatively narrow. The legs are clean and long with pronounced tendons and
move smoothly in unison through one plane. The bone structure of the upper
hind leg makes room for long, strong muscling. The thighbone is long and the
angle it makes with the hipbone is wide. The powerful muscling of the hip and
thigh continues to the gaskin that is set low. Coat colors in Thoroughbreds
may be bay, dark bay, chestnut, black or gray; roans are seen only rarely.
White markings are frequently seen on both the face and legs.
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WORLD HISTORY
The term Thoroughbred describes a breed
of horse whose ancestry traces back to three foundation sires -- the Darley
Arabian, the Godolphin Arabian and the Byerly Turk. Named after their
respective owners -- Thomas Darley, Lord Godolphin and Captain Robert Byerly --
these three stallions were brought to England from the Mediterranean Middle
East around the turn of the 17th century and bred to the stronger, but less
precocious, native horse. The result was an animal that could carry weight
with sustained speed over extended distances, qualities which brought a new
dimension to the burgeoning, aristocratically supported, sport of horse
racing So began a selective breeding process which has been going
on for more than 300 years, breeding
the best stallions to the best mares, with the proof of superiority and
excellence being established on the racetrack.
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Key to this selective breeding process
is the integrity of the breed's records. In early days, Thoroughbred
breeding records were sparse and frequently incomplete, it being the
custom, among other things, not to name a horse until it had proved
outstanding ability. It was left to James Weatherby, through his own
research and by consolidation of a number of privately kept pedigree
records, to publish the first volume of the General Stud Book.
He did this in 1791, listing the
pedigrees of 387 mares, each of which could be traced back to Eclipse, a
direct descendent of the Darley Arabian; Matchem, a grandson of the
Godolphin Arabian; and Herod, whose great-great grandsire was the Byerly
Turk. The General Stud Book is still published in England by Weatherby and
Sons, Secretaries to the English Jockey Club.
Several years later, as racing
proliferated in the fast-expanding continent of North America, the need for
a pedigree registry of American-bred Thoroughbreds, similar to the General
Stud Book, became apparent. Col. Sanders D. Bruce, a Kentuckian who had
spent almost a lifetime researching the pedigrees of American
Thoroughbreds, published the first volume of The American StudBook in 1873.
Bruce closely followed the pattern of the first General Stud Book,
producing six volumes of the register until 1896, when the project was
taken over by The Jockey Club.
Integrity of The
American Stud Book is the foundation on which all Thoroughbred racing in
North America depends. Without assurance, beyond all reasonable doubt, of
the identity of every Thoroughbred which competes, or which is bred with a
view to continuing the breed, the sport of racing as it is known today,
could not exist. Nor would there be any possibility of measuring results of
the centuries-old quest to improve the Thoroughbred.
When The Jockey Club
published its first volume of the studbook the foal crop was about 3,000.
By 1986 it exceeded 51,000. The Jockey Club embraced new computer
technology to meet the registration challenges posed by such large numbers.
Today, The Jockey Club manages one of the most sophisticated computer
operations in the country. Its database holds the names of more than 3
million horses on a master pedigree file, names that trace back to the late
1800's. The system also handles daily results of every Thoroughbred race in
North America, as well as processing electronically transmitted pedigree
and racing data from England, Ireland, France, Australia, Japan and other
leading Thoroughbred racing countries around the world.
Further giant
strides in improvement of the integrity of the Stud Book came in 1977, when
The Jockey Club, taking advantage of medical science advances, took the
first steps of an extensive blood-typing program. From the late 1970s
through 2000, every Thoroughbred foal registered in The American Stud Book,
and its sire and dame, was blood-typed to insure parentage verification.
Beginning with the foal crop of the year 2001, The Jockey Club replaced
conventional blood-typing with DNA typing using mane hair for parentage
verification. In addition to the non-invasive sample collection procedure,
DNA-based parentage verification provides an efficacy of 99.9 percent, as
compared to 97 percent for blood-typing.
Although there
are records of horse racing on Long Island as far back as 1665, the
introduction of organized Thoroughbred racing to North America is
traditionally credited to Governor Samuel Ogle of Maryland, who first
staged a Thoroughbred race "in the English style" at Annapolis in
1745.
As America
developed so did Thoroughbred racing, spreading across the nation from
coast to coast until today the volume of racing in America far outweighs
that of any other country in the world. American bloodlines, too, have come
to be respected in the four corners of the earth.
What began as a
pastime and sporting amusement for the wealthy has now become a worldwide
multi-million dollar industry whose economic impact is widely felt at
regional and national levels. From license fees and direct taxes on
pari-mutuel handle Thoroughbred racing generates nearly $500 million in
government revenue each year. But this is relatively minor in comparison to
the overall urban and rural economic contribution made by the wide and
varied infrastructure of the racing and breeding industry as a whole. A
recent estimate, for example, put the industry's contribution to the
economy of New York State alone at more than $1.8 billion each year.
Responding to
the aberration of mid-1980's astronomic yearling prices which were fueled
by European and Middle East racing interests, the annual North American
Thoroughbred foal crop peaked at 51,293 in 1986. The decade was to show an
overall production increase of 65% on the aggregate crops of the 1970's.
But adjustments were inevitable and the foal crop has decreased each year
through 1995. This necessary adjustment has more than served its purpose
and a rational and more stable breeding industry has enjoyed controlled
growth since.
The Thoroughbred
is one of the most brilliant and versatile horses bred in the world today.
Noted for its ability to carry speed over extended distances, the
Thoroughbred is also a popular choice among horsemen in many disciplines
beyond the race track, including hunting, jumping, eventing and polo. The
Thoroughbred has been used to create new breeds of horses and to upgrade
others. The key to the Thoroughbred's greatness is its speed and endurance,
for which it has been bred for over 300 years.
Red Rum
Horse
Racing
Grand
National
Horse
in Sport
Family history
Kentucky Derby
The Thoroughbred
Foundation Stallions
The Thoroughbred
originated in Great Britain and its genetic origin is Arabian. The
"foundation" stallions of the breed were: the Beyerly Turk, the
Darley Arabian and the Godolphin Arabian. They were bred to native
sprinting mares -- very probably Scottish Galloways -- and the resultant
foals were the first Thoroughbreds per se.
The Byerly Turk
At the
siege of Buda, Captain Byerley captured a horse from the Turks which
would carry his name into history. The horse became known as the Byerley
Turk and was the first of the three foundation stallions to come to
Britain. Reputedly ridden at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 by Captain
Byerley, this horse distinguished himself as a sire although he was not
bred to many mares. In spite of his name, he was probably an Arab. The
Byerley Turk founded a line of Thoroughbreds, the most distinguished of
which was Herod, who was foaled in 1758, and proved to be a very successful
sire himself.
The Darley
Arabian
The second of the three foundation stallions to be imported to England was
the Darley Arabian. He was foaled in 1700 and bought by
Thomas Darley in Aleppo (Syria) in 1704. The horse was shipped to
Yorkshire, England where he was bred to numerous mares. The most successful
matings were with Betty Leeds, which resulted in two very important colts:
Flying Childers and Bartlet's Childers. Through the Childers line, the
Darley Arabian was the great-great-grandsire of Eclipse who gained the
description "Eclipse first, the rest nowhere." The Darley Arabian
is the most important of the three foundation stallions in terms on his
influence of the Thoroughbred breed.
The Godolphin
Arabian
The last of the foundation stallions to come to England was a horse foaled in
Yemen. After being shipped to Syria and then to Tunis, he was given to the
King of France as a gift. One story tells of the horse pulling a lowly
water cart in Paris. The carthorse was admired and bought by an Englishman
named Edward Coke, who brought him to England. The second Earl of Godolphin
acquired the horse and bred him to several distinguished mares. Mated to
Roxana, he sired Lath, the greatest racehorse in England after Flying
Childers: and another mating of these two produced Cade, the sire of the
great Matchem who carried on the line of the Godolphin Arabian. In 1850 it
was remarked that "the blood of the Godolphin Arabian is in every
stable in England."
Offspring of the
Foundation Stallions
Keeping in mind
the fact that the foundation stallions were Oriental horses, it should be
noted that the descendants of these sires were the first actual
Thoroughbreds. They were the progenitors of the breed, as we know it today.
The foundation sires stand at the beginning of the Thoroughbred bloodline,
but a number of generations were required to create horses which could
consistently pass on the distinguishing characteristics of the Thoroughbred
horse. Out of some 200 Oriental horses imported to England between 1660 and
1750, only the direct descendants of these three foundation stallions
contributed to the breed's greatness.
Herod
The offspring which fixed the influence of the Byerley Turk as a foundation
sire was named Herod who was foaled in 1758. He was owned by the Duke of
Cumberland, the third son of King George II, who was an important breeder
of horses at Newmarket and in Hanover. Although Herod was not an
outstanding racehorse, he did prove to be a superlative sire. His
descendants were extremely important in the development of the Thoroughbred
throughout Europe and America. Among the most notable descendants of Herod
were Diomed (winner of the first Epsom Derby in 1780), Sir Archie, the
Flying Dutchman, and Epinard.
Eclipse
1764 was the year of a great eclipse and this astronomical event became the
name of the horse that was a star in the history of the Thoroughbred. Eclipse,
as we know him, was by Marske, out of Spiletta and was bred for the Duke of
Cumberland. He began racing in 1769 at age five, when he ran away from his
competition in his first race at Epsom. It was at this race that the famous
Denis O'Kelly remarked, "Eclipse first, the rest nowhere."
Eclipse won 18 races in his career and he was never whipped or spurred. He
went on to a distinguished career at stud, siring Pot-8-O's who passed on
his influence to such descendants as American Eclipse, Hyperion, Kelso, and
Sea Bird. The list of Eclipse's distinguished descendants is virtually
endless, and he is the reason for the predominance of the Darley Arabian
line over the lines of the other two foundation stallions.
Matchem
Most racehorses are noted for their speed, but the speed often comes at the
price of an excitable temperament, and even viciousness. The horse Matchem
foaled in 1748 was the grandson of the Godolphin Arabian. Besides speed, he
supplied an excellent disposition to his descendants. The horse Snap was
compared to the gentle Matchem: "Snap for speed and Matchem for truth
and daylight." (Snap was a grandson of the Darley Arabian.) When we
consider Matchem's blood heirs, we find many even-tempered yet fast horses.
Matchem's influence was not as widespread as his famous peers, but his
offspring had a particular influence on American horses. The owner's son,
Edward Fenwick, who immigrated to South Carolina in 1755, brought ten of
Matchem's descendants to America. Brutus, one of Matchem's sons, dominated
racing in South Carolina for some time.
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