‘No Phar Lap — but he’s a stayer’

Press, 1 November 1977, Page 28

‘No Phar Lap — but he’s a stayer’

From J. J. BOYLE, racing editor

Melbourne

He’s no Phar Lap as his gentle-voiced veteran trainer would tell you but he’s a dead set stayer and he should have thousands of people roaring his name at Flemington today. The name of course is Reckless, the pride of the 73-year-old trainer, Tommy Woodcock, who saved Phar Lap from serious injury at the hands of a gangster with a shotgun three days before the big chestnut won the Melbourne Cup.

Txlay Woodcock will be the toast of Australia if he wins the Melbourne Cup with the horse that did not win in his first 34 starts. "No. He’s no Phar Lap or Tulloch but he’s a stayer and be will be diving at them at the finish,” Woodcock told me yesterday. “He's a stallion and he's a seven-year-old and old horses don’t win Melbourne Cups out of turn but Reckless will give it a great try. You might say we are two old fellows having our last bash together to win the cup” Woodcock said yesterday.

Woodcock is a 24-hour trainer. His day, which begins at 3.30 a.m. revolves around the members of his team and especially the placid brown which will be attempting to win his fourth big cup race this year today.

When it’s time for Reckless to have an afternoon nap Tommy Woodcock lies down in the box alongside his staying star and nods off too.

They can often be foundi of an afternoon with Woodcock sitting in the straw' with Reckless’s head cradled; in his lap. And in those moments memories come flooding back of that sad day in April, 1932, at Menlo Park, California, as Woodcock cradled the head of his dying idol. Phar Lap, in his arms and had to be dragged, away weeping from the body of the champion he had so devotely attended throughout a spectactular racing career.

When Reckless was tried for his early racing he was sluggish and fat and, it seemed totally lacking in speed. Nothing, it seemed, would make inroads into the mountain of fat, and Tommy Woodcock decided that the situation demanded a spell of five months with no pampering and a fairly austere life style. “I didn’t have the heart to

go and see him while he was getting that weight off” Woodcock said yesterday. "But when he came back to the stable an apprentice said Reckless looked more like a Queensland Brumby than a thoroughbred.” Reckless was then a three-year-old. He did not win until he was five and, interestingly he won that race at Flemington over 2500 m. But he gets better, it seems, wit! each passing week and he appears to be the strongest Australian-bred stayer to emerge in years as likely to break the stranglehold of New Zea-land-breds in the Melbourne Cup. New Zealand-breds have won 16 of the last 25 Melbourne Cups and Gold and Black, which cost no more than $4OOO as a yearling, is the hope of many thousands to extend that great record today. Gold and Black is one of three runners prepared for the race by “Bart” Cummings.

Cummings has already won five Melbourne Cups and another victory today would extend the formidable i list of records this quiet South Australian has assembled in the last 12 years. His Melbourne Cup winners have been Light Fingers (1965), Galilee (1966), [Red Handed (1967) and Think Big in 1974 and again in 1975. Even more remarkable was that in four of those years Cummings also saddled the runners-up, Ziema to run second to Light Fingers; Light Fingers to be second to Galilee; Leilani the second home in Think Big’s first Cup victory with Holiday Waggon doing so a year later. Cummings believes Gold and Black would have won last year, instead of running second to Van der Hum, if i the track had dodged the

drenching that made the conditions so much to the liking of the Waikato stayer. And he is confident Gold and Black is stronger and better in every way than he was a year ago. Gold and Black has not won since last spring, but his programme has been carefully pointed to today’s great race and victory for him would also spark off the greatest enthusiasm. Strangely, no Melbourne Cup has been won this century by a horse that had been runner-up in the race at a first attempt. The Grafter won under 9.2 in 1898 after having finished second to his brother, Gaulus, the year before. Then there was the more famous figure of Carbine, which w’on under 10.5 in 1890 but had been beaten into second by Gravo the year before. Phar Lap won his Melbourne Cup at his second attempt but at his first try he was third. “Bart” Cummings did not mull over such records for long yesterday “If it is that long since a horse followed

up a second with a win in the next year it’s high time for the full 1 turn of the circle,” he remarked.

Gold and Black will be ridden by the Sydney jockey, John Duggan; Roy Higgins, who won on Light Fingers and Red Handed, has Salamander as his mount from outside the Cummings stable this year. Higgins rates Salamander’s chances highly and says he is just as confident about this year’s Cup as he was about Red Handed’s 10 years ago.

Salamander is Australianbred but he will capture much attention in New'Zealand as his sire, Approval, now stands at Mr Bill Hazlett’s Chelandry Stud, in Southland. Salamander is trained at Flemington by Tom Hughes, who will also put Valadero into the race.

Valadero is a dour stayer, by Agricola, and the odds of 50-to-one being quoted about him at the week-end might prove very generous if Midge Didham finds a good run for him, and if the pace is a true one from the start. Valadero has won the Duke of Norfolk Stakes at this distance. He was also an unlucky second in the Perth Cup last season. And was also placed behind the New Zealand weight-for-age “star,” Balmerino, at Randwick last Easter.

Hermes, sire of Van der Hum, last year’s Melbourne Cup winner, will have two other interesting runners today.

No top-weight has won the race since Rising Fast’s year, 1954, and Van der Hum will not find it easy to improve the record now that a firm track seems certain. Other runners for Hermes will be the Waikato stayer, Shaitan, and the well-per-formed Sydney four-year-old. Sir Serene. Oncidium, another stallion whose death was a big loss to New Zealand, will be represented by the well-re-garded Tasmanian stayer, Brailos, and Sir Serene’s stablemate, Gold Pulse, a recent winner at Rosehill.