Rosehill Rain and Racing Reads: When Good Books Beat the Weather

Great racing books take precedence over Rosehill Gardens on Saturday, even without the weather situation flagging behind Flemington with the benefit of the Group three Aurie’s Star, once a launching pad for the Melbourne Cup hopes.

Hyperno, for one, commenced his successful Melbourne Cup campaign in 1980 in the 1200 metres straight six dash which now caters for more lesser speedsters chasing black type status.

Alas Sydney ended with a dead-end to the season, but despite the big wet this week hardly promised a flying start for the new term.

Yes the intended Rosehill highlights are races named after the 2024-25 premiership winners: champions James McDonald and Chris Waller while Braith Nock was the leading apprentice.

Also Jockeys Celebration Day is featured. Old-timers, hopefully including Kevin Langby, would have been at the track to remind us of great memories and how good they were.

But events sub-standard with the main, the National Jockey’s Trust Handicap wilted with under eight starters. Early favourite It’s A Knockout, a five-year-old mare, accepted at Coff’s Harbour on Friday.

Fillies and mares, a far more dominating factor than in Hyperno’s era, last season took the black type honours with Waller’s Via Sistina, obviously the Horse Of The Season, with seven successes followed by Treasurethe Moment (six) and Lady Shenandoah (five).

Splash Back, from the Grahame Begg stable, promises to continue the trend in the Aurie’s Star even with the opposition of Peter Snowden’s King Of Roseau, nominated for Rosehill but scratched.

Winner of six out of 112 starts, Flash Back triumphed at Flemington last start, responsible for the Best Bets comment: “Extraordinary” entailing “shuffled back to rear off very slow pace, held up to 250 metres yet won from a hopeless spot”.

Alas due to downsizing, my racing library must go, a major heart-felt amputation. The Australian Turf Club will take the books, but thousands of words in magazines from Turf Monthly, Racetrack and Pacemaker, look set for scrap heap along with CDs, including the best of Graham McNeice.

Thus I am listing my best 10 books, including those from aboard. I could make it 20 at least but am dropping those by mates Bert Lillye, Ken Callander, Bill Casey, and Helen Thomas. I made an exception with Gary Lester, once a colleague at “The Sun”. Lester was more behind the scenes with highly regarded “The Essential Club” and “What are the Odds? There is no number one and allowance must be made for my taste favouring character.

• Winx: Andrew Rule has done the champion proud, unlike the Australian Turf Club that did not give the film, “Winx” the local support it deserved.
  

• Horse Trader: By Patrick Robinson and Nick Robinson about Robert Sangster, one of the great influencers of my time, worldwide, including Australia. It carries the sub title of “The Rise And Fall of the Sport Of Kings”.
  

• What Are The Odds?: The tell-all tale of Bill Waterhouse, if not the greatest bookmaker, and he is a contender, certainly the most controversial.
  

• True Grit: The series of racing columns by the superb wordsmith Les Carlyon. Be it “Gallipoli” or a Maiden at Sale anything by Carlyon is worth reading. Fortunately, he had passion for racing.
  

• Sydney’s Pony Racecourses: By Wayne Peake renowned for his wonderful “Sydney Racing in the 1970’s”.  But the “Ponies” is special, regarding a forgotten period on the Australian turf, highlighting the dodgy. Grafter Kingsley is one of my favourites.
  

• The Essential Club: Should be required reading for the current Australian Turf Club directors to get the feel of how to make a race meeting worthwhile. The STC would not have dished up the drab racing Sydney has recently experienced.
  

• Racing’s All Time Greats: By Warwick Hobson. The title says it all. If you want to know about the greats and those that made them, this is a must.
  

• Phar Lap: Much has been written about him but none better than the Geoff Armstrong and Peter Thompson version. So how or what killed Phar Lap? It’s all here.
  

• Gentlemen Of The Australia Turf: David Hickie has produced the colour and characters that made Australian racing great.
  

Regrettably titles that missed the cut are “Shannon” by Jessica Owens, and “The Gambling Man”, the most talked about saga of its day, regarding Bill Waterhouse, by Kevin Perkins. It carried the inscription to me of “my esteemed old friend and colleague”. Very readable but subject of legal action galore which Perkins handled personally.

Perkins also produced “T.J.Smith – The Midas Man” in which I kept a copy of poem hand written by Smith’s wife Valerie about him. I’ll pass that onto Gai.

And in Ride To Win, by Greg Hall and Rod Nicholson, the jockey scribbled “Max I haven’t told anyone this but in big races jet pilots don’t have rear vision mirrors”.

Glen Boss is there and so, too, Don Scott and George Freeman. Lester Piggot and Phil Bull are a few representing Great Britain and The Yanks have Secretariat and Monte Roberts amongst many others, including Pittsburgh Phil.

One of my earliest racing reads was “A Mug’s Game” by John O’Hara. It sounds like a modern television warning about the downside of punting. Maybe so and I qualify. I welcome your best racing read.