Phar lap History

THE PHAR LAP STORY

Phar Lap, a New Zealand-bred horse, remains an enduring institution of the Australasian turf.
He also achieved world fame after winning the Agua Caliente Handicap near Tijuana in Mexico to take his race record to an amazing 37 wins, two seconds and three thirds in 51 starts.Bought for only 160 guineas (approx US $130) Phar Lap was unbeaten at 1 1¼ miles (seven wins); 1½¸ miles (eight wins); 1¾ miles (three wins) and 2¼ miles (one win). He also won four races from six starts at two miles, including the 1930 Melbourne Cup with 15 lb. (6.8 kg.) more than weight-for-age.
Phar Lap started favorite in three successive Melbourne Cups, the only horse in the long history of Australia's most famous race accorded that distinction.Now, amazing photographs of each of his wins have been published for the first time in The Phar Lap Collection. This magnificent publication, printed on art-quality paper, comes with its own presentation case.Phar Lap became the most public horse of all time, not entirely because he was so sublime. Drama, controversy, wickedness and savage cruelty rode with the big, gentle chestnut from barrier to box.

Criminals in Melbourne tried to shoot him on the Saturday morning before his 1930 Melbourne Cup win and finally, tragically, he suffered an agonising death in mysterious circumstances in California, USA, on April 5, 1932, when he was only a five-year-old.

Although all manner of theories abound about it, the cause of Phar
Lap's death has never been clearly defined.

Known variously as "Big Red" or the "Red Terror", Phar Lap was a big, plain looking, cheap-priced underdog, trained by Harry Telford, an impecunious victim of the Depression. Telford leased the horse from American owner Mr David Davis, or more appropriately, considering it was an era when few people owned much and the term "rent" was the operative word, Telford "rented" Phar Lap.

Telford and his horse were seen as battlers, like the majority, at a time when tens of thousands regularly stood in dole queues, no doubt discussing the triumphs of Phar Lap as a relief from their despair.

The clearest illustration of Phar Lap's greatness was his victory at Agua Caliente on March 20, 1932. It wasn't so much the win, but the way he achieved it. Phar Lap travelled by ship across the Pacific arriving in cold conditions in San Francisco; he then had an 800 km. road trip to Tijuana where conditions were boiling hot, none of which was conducive to having a horse at his peak.

Even though he had not raced since carrying 10st 10lb. (68 kg.) when unplaced in the Melbourne Cup the previous November, Phar Lap had to carry 9 st. 3 lb. (58.5 kg.) against some of the best horses in America and he was racing on dirt for the first time. On arrival he was starting to grow his winter coat; his body clock preparing for an Australian Winter - not a Mexican Summer.

A further complication occurred when he suffered a painful injury to his heel, which usually spells the end of any training program. Yet another negative factor was his rider, Billy Elliot. Capable Melbourne lightweight that he was, Elliot had no experience in the "big time" of America or on dirt tracks. Because of the hoof injury, Phar Lap's task looked even tougher when he was forced to wear heavy bar shoes for the first time.
History was also foreboding. Eight years earlier, the 1923 English Derby winner, Papyrus, who defeated Pharos (who sired turf immortals Nearco and Pharis) went to New York for a special match race against America's best horse, Zev, at Belmont Park. Papyrus, unable to cope with the dirt track and climatic changes, was annihilated by five lengths. Many American racing aficionados, remembering Papyrus, expected Phar Lap to suffer the same fate in 1932.

How wrong they were! Papyrus was a topliner, but Phar Lap was something different again. He circled the field from last place to win easily by two lengths in track record time of 2:2.8, clipping .2 seconds from the previous best time.

His trainer, Tommy Woodcock, said after Agua Caliente "Americans called him the "Wonder Horse", the "Red Terror" and other names that lifted him high above the level of other champions, but those closely connected with Phar Lap did not employ anything but names of endearment. To Jim Pike (regular jockey) he was "Old Boy"; to part-owner Mr D. J. Davis, he was the "Big Fellow", but to Harry Telford and me he was just plain 'Bobby'."

The racing fraternity at large knew him simply as Phar Lap, champion of the world.

HISTORY AT A GLANCE

Race Record: 51 starts, 37 wins, three seconds and two 3rds.

Stakemoney: £56,425 in Australia. Won a further $US50,000 for his Agua Caliente win.

Breeding: Night Raid - Entreaty (by Winkie).

Foaled: Timaru, New Zealand.

Died: Menlo Park, California, April 5, 1932

Owners: Messrs D. J. Davis & H. R. Telford.

Trainer: H. R. Telford

Color: Chestnut (Near red, hence his nickname "Big Red".)

Height: 17.1 hands

Racing Colors: 1929-30 - Red jacket, black and white hooped sleeves, red cap. 1931-32 - Red jacket, green hooped sleeves, black cap.

Biggest Wins: Agua Caliente Hcp, Melbourne Cup, Victoria Derby, AJC Derby, W. S. Cox Plate (twice)

HOW PHAR LAP WAS NAMED

The following item about how Phar Lap was named, is by ABC Lateline presenter Michael Rennie, being published in September 2003.

As a small boy, I can remember asking my father about the name Phar Lap and he replying that it was "something in Sinhalese". Twenty-five years later, I was a passenger in a car with my wife and her family heading north from Bangkok to their home town of Udon Thani in the north-east of Thailand. We were driving through a fierce thunderstorm and everyone but me was engaged in animated conversation in Thai. As I dozed after our flight from Perth, the rain, the thunder and the windscreen wipers almost drowned out the sounds of their voices, but two words repeatedly struck my tired Aussie ears from among the other meaningless ones; phar lap. It then dawned on me that Dad had been wrong. It wasn't Sinhalese but Siamese and they were talking about the lightning!

Today, another sixteen years later, my wife and I run a Thai Restaurant in Perth and I am pleased to say that my knowledge of the Thai language has improved. We employ Thai students at the restaurant and I am invariably asked by them about the name Phar Lap when they hear about the horse. Why does it have a Thai name? Who named him?

I decided to find out but soon discovered that nobody knew, not the Victoria Museum with the Phar Lap exhibit, not the Victoria Racing Club nor the Australian Jockey club. All the books about Phar Lap mention a visitor form the Far East or an oriental gentleman. Some of these books erroneously state the language as Sinhalese or Sri Lankan while others merely say that is an Asian language.

The horse was named in 1928 and assuming that none of the connections spoke Siamese, I sought the "oriental gentleman" responsible. A check of the census for that period all but ruled out anyone of Siamese origin living in Sydney and I didn't think tourists from Siam would have been likely in those days. I decided that the person involved might have been a student and then I recalled a scene from the 1984 film Phar Lap in which a young of Asian appearance is present attrack work in Centennial Park and is asked jokingly what is the word for lightning in his language. He replies Phar Lap and so the name is born. In the film, this gentleman is called Mr. Ping so I wondered if this account was factual. I contacted John Sexton who produced the film, and he said that Tommy Woodcock, Phar Lap's strapper and later trainer, was present during the making of the film and the scene in question was based on Tommy's recollections. Although the name Ping did not sound Thai, I thought perhaps it could have been a nickname particularly if he had a typical long and unpronounceable Thai name.

If he were a student, perhaps there would still be records. The University of Sydney of very close to Centennial Park so I obtained the student lists for 1928. Naturally, Anglo-Saxon names dominated the lists, and no multi-syllabic Siamese names were evident but one name stood out, Aubrey Moore Ping, a medical student.

Further research revealed that he was born in 1899 and completed his Bachelor of Science at Queensland University. Many phone calls to Medical Boards and the Australian Medical Association revealed little more and weeks passed. Finally, from the most arcane source imaginable, directory assistance, I was given a current phone listing for a Dr. A Ping in Randwick who, I thought, could well be a descendent.

The lady who answered my call regretfully informed me that Dr. Ping no longer lived there, in fact, he had passed away some sixteen years ago but she was his wife. I asked her, "you are Aubrey Ping's widow?" "that's right". I was astounded.
He would have been 101 but she was much younger. Her name is Dawn. I asked if her husband was of Asian origin and she told me that his father was Chinese and his mother was Scottish. When I asked her if her late husband was likely to have taken time off from his medical studies to watch track work at Centennial Park, she told me that her would definitely have been there and that they used to know Tommy Woodcock and Harry Telford and George Moore and Neville Selwood.
Having satisfied myself that he was the Mr. Ping remembered by Tommy Woodcock, I then asked if her late husband had ever mentioned to her about him naming Phar Lap. She said that he hadn't but that he could well have done." "But wouldn't he have told someone if had?" "No, he was a very quiet man and kept things to himself". She told me that she only found out later that one of her husband's horses (he became an owner) had won a Canberra Cup when she came upon the cup when cleaning the attic.

When I asked her if he knew Thai or Siamese she didn't think so, but stressed that he was a brilliant man with a photographic memory and that he knew many things.

Aubrey Ping was one of at least ten children born in Gayndah, Queensland. He financed all his studies by winning scholarships and, according to Dawn was the first oriental person to attend Sydney University. Dawn's father had been the starter at the races, so perhaps that is how they met. His studies in Brisbane included French and Latin so ti si reasonable to suppose that he had an interest in languages. Another possibility had occurred to me that languages similar to Thai are spoken in parts of China so maybe if he knew enough of his father's dialect and if his father had come form one of those areas then puzzle would be solved.

Dr Anthony Diller at the Australian National University in Canberra suggested to me that "Zhuang" language from southern China was one such language and advised me to contact a native speaker of this language Dr Luo yong Xian at Melbourne University. I asked Dr Luo the same question which was asked 72 years ago of Aubrey Ping. "What's the word for lightning in your language?" the reply was the same, phar lap or par lap depending on the regional dialect of the speaker. He further informed me that the Zhuang language has over 18 million speakers and the other related languages in Southern China had millions more. He also told me that Zhuang speakers had indeed come to Australia last century, many to work on railway construction. The name Ping was a possible surname. He had never heard of the horse Phar Lap so I suggested he visit the museum.

I spoke to Aubrey Moore Mellor, a theatre director and nephew named after Dr Ping who recalled the Uncle Aub often spoke of Tommy Woodcock as a friend. He said that Aubrey was the youngest and brightest of all the children and possibly the closest of all to their father and the most likely of all to have learned from him his language. He alter phoned me when he did, in fact, remember uncle Aubrey taking him to a Chinese restaurant in Sydney and ordering in Chinese. Mr Mellor agreed that his uncle was quite capable of being the person who gave Phar Lap his name and not telling a soul thereafter.I related to him the scene in the film based on Tommy Woodcock's account where "Mr Ping" quickly changed the name Far Lap to Phar Lap to give it seven letters. Harry Telford wanted the name to have seven letters because the past three Melbourne Cup winners all had seven letters in their name. Mr Mellor said that that was his Uncle Aubrey to a tee. He loved playing with words and puzzles and was very quick - witted. Aubrey Ping's father "John" (originally Yong) had arrived from China from the port of Amoy. If, as I now suspect, he was form a Zhuang speaking area, he may not have had to travel far at all. At around this time, according to Mr Mellor, three young Scottish women arrived together by ship and within a few weeks all three were married to Chinese men, one of whom was John Ping.

Finally, my main questions had been answered. Why did nobody know who had named Phar Lap? Because of Dr Ping's unassuming nature, he had never told anyone. How did he know Thai language? He didn't, he knew a similar, related language passed on to him by his father, John. Who named Phar Lap? A young medical student name Aubrey Moore Ping.

HOW PHAR LAP MEASURES UP

Champion that he was, Phar Lap narrowly failed to conform to the old Arab theory of ‘perfect balance’ - which is explained by his massive hindquarters.
According to the theory, the measurement from the top lip of a horse up its face, between its ears and along its neck to the middle of the wither should be the same as that taken from the same point of the wither, along the back, over the loins and rump and down to the last joint of the tail.The theory is that if both measurements agree, the horse has perfect balance. The greater the difference between the two measurements, the less valuable the horse, according to the theory.
In Phar Lap’s case the distance between the middle of his wither to the specified tail joint is two inches longer than the measurement over the face and the neck to the wither. The reason given for the difference was because of Phar Lap’s extraordinary development behind the saddle.
Regardless, it was not unusual for champions to fail to conform exactly to the Arab theory. Bert Wolfe, who wrote under the nom-de-plume Cardigan as Turf Editor of The Herald in Melbourne, said in an article in the late 1940’s that of the “many champions” he had measured over 25 years, only Beauford, Arachne, Ajax and Bernborough met the criteria.

Early life

A chestnut gelding, Phar Lap was foaled on 4 October 1926 in Seadown near Timaru in the South Island of New Zealand.  He was sired by Night Raid fromEntreaty by Winkie. He was by the same sire as the Melbourne Cup winner Nightmarch. Phar Lap was a brother to seven other horses, Fortune's Wheel, Nea Lap (won 5 races), Nightguard, All Clear, Friday Night, Te Uira and Raphis, none of which won a principal (stakes) race. He was a half-brother to another four horses, only two of which were able to win any races at all.

Sydney trainer Harry Telford persuaded American businessman David J. Davis to buy the colt at auction, based on his pedigree. Telford's brother Hugh, who lived in New Zealand, was asked to bid up to 190 guineas at the 1928 Trentham Yearling Sales. When the horse was obtained for a mere 160 guineas, he thought it was a great bargain until the colt arrived in Australia. The horse was gangly, his face was covered with warts, and he had an awkward gait. Davis was furious when he saw the colt as well, and refused to pay to train the horse. Telford had not been particularly successful as a trainer, and Davis was one of his few remaining owners. To placate Davis, he agreed to train the horse for nothing, in exchange for a two-thirds share of any winnings. Telford leased the horse for three years and was eventually sold joint ownership by Davis.

Although standing a winning racehorse at stud could be quite lucrative, Telford gelded Phar Lap anyway, hoping the colt would concentrate on racing.

Racing career

Phar Lap finished last in the first race and did not place in his next three races. He won his first race on 27 April 1929, the Maiden Juvenile Handicap at Rosehill, ridden by Jack Baker of Armidale, a 17-year-oldapprentice. He didn't race for several months but was then entered in a series of races, in which he moved up in class. Phar Lap took second in the Chelmsford Stakes at Randwick on 14 September 1929 and the racing community started treating him with respect.

As his achievements grew, there were some who tried to halt his progress. Criminals tried to shoot Phar Lap on the morning of Saturday 1 November 1930 after he had finished track work. They missed, and later that day he won the Melbourne Stakes, and three days later the Melbourne Cup as odds-on favourite at 8 to 11.

Phar Lap winning the Melbourne Cup Race from Second Wind and Shadow King on 4 November 1930.

In the four years of his racing career, Phar Lap won 37 of 51 races he entered, including the Melbourne Cup, being ridden by Jim Pike, in 1930 with 9 st 12 lb (61.5 kg, or 138 lbs). In that year and 1931, he won 14 races in a row. From his win as a three-year-old in the VRC St. Leger Stakes until his final race in Mexico, Phar Lap won 32 of 35 races. In the three races that he did not win, he ran second on two occasions, beaten by a short head and a neck, and in the 1931 Melbourne Cup he finished eighth when carrying 10 st 10 lb (68 kg).

Phar Lap at the time was owned by American businessman David J. Davis and leased to Telford. After their three-year lease agreement ended, Telford had enough money to become joint owner of the horse. Davis then had Phar Lap shipped to North America to race. Telford did not agree with this decision and refused to go, so Davis, who along with his wife traveled to Mexico with him, brought Phar Lap's strapper Tommy Woodcock as his new trainer. Phar Lap was shipped by boat to Agua Caliente Racetrack near Tijuana, Mexico, to compete in the Agua Caliente Handicap, which was offering the largest prize money ever offered in North America racing. Phar Lap won in track-record time while carrying 129 pounds (58.5 kg). The horse was ridden by Australian jockey Billy Elliot for his seventh win from seven rides. From there, the horse was sent to a private ranch near Menlo Park, California, while his owner negotiated with racetrack officials for special race appearances.

Death

Early on 5 April 1932, the horse's strapper for the North American visit, Tommy Woodcock, found him in severe pain and with a high temperature. Within a few hours, Phar Lap haemorrhaged to death. An autopsy revealed that the horse's stomach and intestines were inflamed, leading many to believe the horse had been deliberately poisoned. There have been alternative theories, including accidental poisoning from lead insecticide and a stomach condition. It was not until the 1980s that the infection could be formally identified.

In 2000, equine specialists studying the two necropsies concluded that Phar Lap probably died of duodenitis-proximal jejunitis, an acute bacterial gastroenteritis.

Phar Lap's skin was preserved by Louis Paul Jonas and is now exhibited as a taxidermy mount by Melbourne Museum.

However, in 2006 Australian Synchrotron Research scientists said it was almost certain Phar Lap was poisoned with a large single dose of arsenic in the hours before he died, perhaps supporting the theory that Phar Lap was killed on the orders of U.S. gangsters, who feared the Melbourne Cup-winning champion would inflict big losses on their illegal bookmakers. No real evidence of involvement by a criminal element exists, however.

Sydney veterinarian Percy Sykes believes poisoning did not cause the death. He said "In those days, arsenic was quite a common tonic, usually given in the form of a solution (Fowler's Solution)", and suggests this was the cause of the high levels. "It was so common that I'd reckon 90 per cent of the horses had arsenic in their system." In December 2007 Phar Lap's mane was tested to find if he was given repeated doses of arsenic which, if found, would point to accidental poisoning.

On 19 June 2008, the Melbourne Museum released the findings of the forensic investigation conducted by Dr. Ivan Kempson, University of South Australia, and Dermot Henry, Natural Science Collections at Museum Victoria. Dr. Kempson took six hairs from Phar Lap's mane and analyzed them at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago. These high resolution x-rays detect arsenic in hair samples, showing the specific difference "between arsenic, which had entered the hair cells via the blood and arsenic, which had infused the hair cells by the taxidermy process when he was stuffed and mounted at the museum".

Kempson and Henry discovered that in the 30 to 40 hours before Phar Lap's death, the horse ingested a massive dose of arsenic. "We can't speculate where the arsenic came from, but it was easily accessible at the time", Henry said.

However, in October 2011 the Sydney Morning Herald published an article in which a New Zealand physicist and information from Phar Lap's strapper state that the great horse was never given any tonic with arsenic and that he died of an infection. Said Dr. Putt, "Unless we are prepared to say that Tommy Woodcock was a downright liar, which even today, decades after the loveable and respected horseman's death, would ostracise us with the Australian racing public, we must accept him on his word. The ineluctable conclusion we are left with, whether we like it or not, is that Phar Lap's impeccable achievements here and overseas were utterly tonic, stimulant and drug-free." Contradictory to this though is the tonic book of Harry Telford, Phar Lap's owner and trainer, and is on display in Museum Victoria, Melbourne. One recipe for a "general tonic" has a main ingredient of arsenic and has written below it: "A great tonic for all horses". Several theories have been proposed as to how Phar Lap came to consume such a large amount of arsenic. The source is unlikely to ever be determined.

Cultural impact

Phar Lap's heart at the National Museum of Australia. It was formerly held by the Institute of Anatomy in Canberra.

Following his death, Phar Lap's heart was donated to the Institute of Anatomy in Canberra and his skeleton to the New Zealand's National Museum in Wellington. After preparations of the hide by a New York City taxidermist, his stuffed body was placed in the Australia Gallery at Melbourne Museum. The hide and the skeleton were put on exhibition together when Wellington's Te Papa Museum lent the skeleton to the Melbourne Museum in September 2010 as part of celebrations for the 150th running of the2010 Melbourne Cup.

Phar Lap's heart was remarkable for its size, weighing 6.2 kilograms (14 lb), compared with a normal horse's heart at 3.2 kilograms (7.1 lb). Now held at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, it is the object visitors most often request to see. However, the author and film maker Peter Luck is convinced the heart is a fake. In Luck's 1979 television series This Fabulous Century, the daughter of Dr Walker Neilson, the government veterinarian who performed the first post-mortem on Phar Lap, says her father told her the heart was necessarily cut to pieces during the autopsy, and the heart on display is that of a draughthorse.

Several books and films have featured Phar Lap, including the 1983 film Phar Lap, and the song "Phar Lap—Farewell To You".

Phar Lap was one of five inaugural inductees into both the Australian Racing Hall of Fame and New Zealand Racing Hall of Fame. In the Blood-Horse magazine ranking of the Top 100 U.S. Thoroughbred champions of the 20th century, Phar Lap was ranked No. 22.

The horse is considered to be a national icon in both Australia and New Zealand. In 1978 he was honoured on a postage stamp issued by Australia Post and features in the Australian citizenship test. A $500,000 life-sized bronze memorial to Phar Lap was unveiled on 25 November 2009 near his birthplace at Timaru.

Legacy

Phar Lap has been honoured with a life-sized bronze statue at Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne.

Phar Lap has a residential street named after him in Bossley Park, Sydney, Australia, and Cupertino, California, However for the Australia address his name was merged as one word "Pharlap" for the naming of the suburban street.

There is also a Phar Lap Grove in Trentham, Wellington, New Zealand, near the Trentham Racecourse.