Phar Lap: A Century On

Few athletes have captured the public imagination quite like Phar Lap. More than a champion racehorse, he became a symbol of hope during the bleakest years of the Great Depression. His victories filled grandstands while millions more followed every race through newspapers and radio broadcasts.

Born in New Zealand in 1926 and purchased for just 160 guineas, Phar Lap rose from unfashionable yearling to international champion in one of sport's great stories. After winning only one of his first ten starts, he went on to record 37 wins from 51 races, including the Melbourne Cup, two Cox Plates, the AJC Derby and Victoria Derby. One of the most astonishing feats in racing’s history came at the 1930 Melbourne Cup Carnival, where he won on all four race days.

In 1932, Phar Lap took on the world, winning Mexico's Agua Caliente Handicap – then the richest horse race on earth. Sixteen days later, his sudden death in California shocked the nation and sparked a mystery that continues to fascinate to this day.

He remains woven into Australia's cultural identity, and every great racehorse that follows is measured against him.

This exhibition celebrates the life, legend and enduring legacy of a horse who became far more than a racehorse.

There have been many champions. There has only ever been one Phar Lap.

The Rider and the Strapper

Jim Pike was one of Australia's finest jockeys and the man most associated with Phar Lap in the saddle. Their partnership, a combination of raw power and Pike’s rare ability to let a great horse run its own race, produced 26 victories, including the 1930 Melbourne Cup.

But no relationship defined Phar Lap's life like the one he shared with his strapper, Tommy Woodcock.

Affectionately known as "Bobby" to those closest to him, Phar Lap shared an inseparable bond with Woodcock. They travelled together, trained together, and Woodcock slept close by on race eve. He knew the horse's moods, movements and habits better than anyone alive.

Woodcock was there the morning Phar Lap was shot at just days before the 1930 Melbourne Cup. He accompanied him to Mexico for the Agua Caliente Handicap. And he was present in California on 5 April 1932 when the champion took his last breath.

What Tommy Woodcock and Phar Lap shared was not easily named. It was simply one of the closest bonds in Australian sporting history.

Could this be Phar Lap’s Cup?

Phar Lap won the 1930 Melbourne Cup in the most dominant fashion imaginable. Then his trophy vanished.

For decades, nobody knew where it went. Then, in 2008, Victoria Racing Club's historian Dr Andrew Lemon believed he found it, hiding in plain sight.

Lemon's research traces every Melbourne Cup back to 1916. There is no record of a 1953 cup ever being made. His theory: Phar Lap's trainer Harry Telford sold the 1930 trophy back to the original supplier, Melbourne jewellers WM Drummond and Co, probably in the 1940s. The engraving was polished away, and the cup was reborn as the 1953 prize for Wodalla.

Twenty-seven years later, that same cup was handed to Beldale Ball. The VRC knew they were presenting a reused trophy. Rodney Johnson, then Assistant Secretary, later confirmed it had been purchased from the deceased estate of Wodalla’s owner. This was a closely-guarded secret at the time. But nobody appears to have known where the 1953 cup came from.

That is the question Lemon's research now raises. There is no record of a 1953 cup being made by goldsmiths James Steeth. The cup on display here is larger and contains more gold than any Melbourne Cup produced after 1930 until 2010. It may be Phar Lap's original trophy, reused once and then reused again.

The theory is not yet proven. But the evidence is hard to dismiss. Certainly, it has been a Melbourne Cup trophy three times over.

When its owner, the late Lady Susan Renouf, was told in 2008 what she might actually be holding, she said she had to sit down and pour herself a large brandy.

The Night They Moved Phar Lap

This timber horse float, built on a REO Speedwagon chassis with a Dodge motor, was used by Chapman & Sons, one of Victoria's leading horse transport companies during the 1920s and 30s. Capable of carrying three horses in individual stalls, with feed bins and a separate compartment for strappers and equipment. It is strongly associated with Phar Lap and likely carried him to race meetings and trackwork throughout his career.

Three days before the 1930 Melbourne Cup, a car drove past Phar Lap as he returned from trackwork at Caulfield, and a shot was fired at him. Woodcock moved his pony between Phar Lap and the road, saving the champion from injury. Phar Lap raced that afternoon and won the Melbourne Stakes. That night, however, his connections feared for his safety and decided to move him in secret to St Albans Stud near Geelong, where he stayed until Cup day.

The journey back to Flemington on Cup day nearly ended in disaster. The float wouldn’t start. As time ran out and rumours swept Melbourne that Phar Lap was missing, his connections worked frantically to get the engine going. It eventually fired, and Phar Lap arrived at Flemington less than an hour before the race.

Carrying 62.6 kilograms, he won one of the greatest Melbourne Cups ever run.

Now part of the Australian Racing Museum collection, the float was restored in 1983 to feature in the Australian film Phar Lap.