I hadn’t been to Caulfield since Redoubte’s Choice came again to beat Testa Rossa in the
Guineas. On this Orr Stakes day in February the course had never looked better, but it was now under the control of the Melbourne Racing Club, the new (or recycled) name for the Victoria Amateur Turf Club. Whatever the name, the club was blessed with a couple of standout events. Even so, only 8300
punters turned up.
My friend Graeme and I walked into Caulfield to encounter Bart Cummings even before we saw a horse. The trainer had only one runner for the day, Frightening. It’s not home yet. That week racegoers in Melbourne were overwhelmed with choice. There were meetings at each of the four metropolitan tracks in the space of five days. Wednesday was the Lakeside track at Sandown. There is also a Hillside track. Punters are working on the difference. Thursday was a night meeting at Moonee Valley, delayed because someone forgot to order the ambulances. That was no joke with the spate of jockey deaths and serious injuries in the last months.
At the weekend there were Group One races at Caulfield on Saturday (the Orr) and at Flemington on Sunday (the Lightning Stakes). But the first horse we wanted to see at the Heath (Caulfield) was the
ill-named and unfashionably bred Murphy’s Blu Boy, seven-lengths winner at his last start and long odds-on today for the colts’ Blue Diamond Prelude. At one stage the betting on the race was 20/1 bar one.
The colt was down from the Queensland border town of Goondiwindi. Owned by battlers, it was
bidding fair to be a ‘people’s horse’ and to follow in the hoofprints of the champion Gunsynd, from the same town (hence The Goondiwindi Grey). I’d seen Gunsynd win the Futurity Stakes in 1972 while I was on the way to a wedding. Essentially a miler, he ran third in the 1972 Melbourne Cup at 3200 metres,
giving the winner, the Tasmanian Piping Lane, 12.5kg in weight. Today Murphy’s Blu Boy had to run 1100 metres.
He did, but weakened into second. Think of the new part-owners, who had paid $700,000 for 49 per cent of him during the week. One wag calculated that this race cost them $10,000 a second as Murphy’s Blu Boy led till near the post, but was run down by the flashing Hammerbeam, which had been two lengths off the