As Aussie As Pork And Puha

The Daily Telegraph’s racing editor Ray Thomas is someone I’ve admired since I became involved in Sydney racing a decade ago. He’s a writing machine with prodigious output, and the nicest of blokes.

But I can’t forgive him for including (or allowing to be included if someone else is responsible) Balmerino (NZ) in the list of notable ‘Australian Horses Overseas’ in Friday morning’s Tele centre spread which focuses on the big races at Royal Ascot tomorrow night.

Fair dinkum you Aussies, you take some liberties. Don’t have such an inferiority complex! Balmerino was as Aussie as pork and puha.

He wasn’t Australian-bred or Australian-owned or Australian-trained other than as a sometime visiting racehorse, just like, for example, Rough Habit was. I've been here 10 years and no one regards me as (or wants me to be!) an Aussie.

Stud groom-turned trainer Brian Smith who I think hailed from Ngaruawahia (see footnote) handled Balmerino until he was finally turned over to John Dunlop in England as a five-year-old. I stand corrected but I think he still has the highest Timeform rating given to any southern hemisphere performer in Europe, 133.

He had the most amazing career between March 1975 and August 1978. In those three-and-a-half years he raced in six countries. Despite the traveling, he only ever had four breaks from racing. Two of those breaks could only be described as ‘fresheners’. Balmerino won 22 races including the Gr 1 Gran Premio del Jockey Club in Italy which he lost on protest. When pretty much written off as a serious horse by the Poms he ran second in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, the Eclipse Stakes and Coronation Cup.

We think it’s a real big deal for Australian and New Zealand horses to be competing on the international scene and the reason for that is two-fold: (1) television - we can watch them every step of the way, and (2) modern-day globe-trotting and truncated quarantine procedures makes it feasible for some of these horses to be campaigned by their ANZ trainers.

But they were commonplace campaigners in earlier decades when that luxury wasn’t available, when only Movietone News was king. You were lucky if the news even came off the wire services.

The Tele listed a few of those earlier stars and I definitely don’t propose to compile a definitive list here. Apart from those in the Tele, others to succeed at a high level come to mind readily, such as the NZers Cadiz and Caterman, Good Lord (My Good Man), Panzer Chief, Braganza, Pride Of Rosewood, Tangent and the gelding gifted to the late Queen Mother by the late Sir Ernest Davis, Bali Ha’i, who won a Listed race at the very same Royal Ascot in 1960, and at Sandown (UK).

Then there were the jumpers. While Crisp (Aus) will go down in history for what he didn’t win owing to the spectacular manner of his loss and the champion who beat him, the Daddy of them all was probably Grand Canyon, an Oakville gelding who couldn’t win a race in NZ in 13 attempts but ended up winning 19 races internationally. He twice won the Camden Colonial Cup Steeplechase in the USA – an invitational of Gr 1 calibre – as well as major races in England, France and Italy. Royal Mail and Chumson won important races in England and then there were the two NZ-bred latter-day winners of the Aintree Grand National, Lord Gyllene and Seagram. And what about Owhata Chief? I think this Kiwi ran 54 times in his homeland before he won a race. Then he took a liking to jumping, won six at that discipline before his export to the USA where he won a further 10, five of which were black-type rated including the important Bolla Hard Scuffle Steeplechase.

What do they say on Anzac Day? Lest we forget? And keep up the good work, Ray!

Footnote: For Aussies, Ngaruawahia is a township a few miles north of Hamilton in the Waikato area of the North Island. Laurie Laxon started his training career there, the Vela brothers were locals as was George Simon the racecaller and I have a suspicion Syd Brown might have hailed from there - I seem to recall his brother Ian, who worked with me on Best Bets in the 1970s, did. If I'm wrong on any of these I'm sure someone will jump down my throat! As a youngster coming to grips with Maori pronounciation and spelling, Ngaruawahia always presented a bit of a challenge until a Kiwi wisehead told me: 'Remember this sentence: the first letter of each word joined together spell out Ngaruawahia - "Nude girls are running under a waterfall and here I am" !