Swashbucklers like D’Arcy are now extinct as are actors to play them. Russell Crowe’s Gladiator didn’t have the necessary footwork but Flynn – with a boldness of Robin Hood, Captain Blood and the saddle skill applied in Charge Of The Light Brigade, albeit on a rocking horse – would have been perfect.
Maybe I’m influenced more by character than intelligence but of all the great sporting and racing events I’ve missed, Hyde Park and D’Arcy rates best.
Also a medical practitioner, assistant surgeon officially, D’Arcy should have been hanged in England for highway robbery, being anything but a first offender.
Family connections more than justice enabled him to escape the rope three times with the final decision influenced due to him leaving on the next boat for Botany Bay.
Apart from turf activities, establishing one of the first thoroughbred studs at Homebush and being a major influence on early New South Wales politics, D’Arcy sired William Wentworth, begot on route here with a “sea wife”. William Wentworth became a member of the winning trifecta of Gregory Blaxland, Wentworth and William Lawson who triumphed over the Blue Mountains course and distance.
D’Arcy had a starter at the Hyde Park inauguration that carried a warning of any dogs on course would be shot. Alas Darcy’s “Gig” foundered due to a wayward canine.
Yes, it will be argued that Randwick racing is now back to booze and frivolity, producing the hangover of 1810, rather than the horse players paradise in glory days when on course bookmakers followed the doctrine of D’Arcy in the Old Dart – “Stand And Deliver”.
