August 26, 2016
Winx successfully returned to the scene last Saturday. The event was the Warwick Stakes, a traditional pipe opener for Australia’s top echelon with designs on rich Spring pickings.
These days, of course, there is a domineering international flavour that has reshaped the upcoming Melbourne festivals.
Today’s racing fans would find the role Brisbane racing played in the majors in the south just after World War II inconceivable.
One example – the three day Exhibition meeting – is worth revisiting.
In 1946 Russia (the horse, not the country) invaded Brisbane and annexed the weight-for-age National Plate, the Metropolitan and the Exhibition Handicap.
The Ted Hush trained stayer collected a treble for the week and, with Darby Munro aboard, carried nine stone to a very easy victory in that year’s Melbourne Cup.
Flight, that year’s Cox Plate heroine, and Bernborough too were both around Brisbane in 1946.
Russia was the first of three Melbourne Cup winners to grace Eagle Farm in that period.
The following year Hiraji, after picking up placings in the Doomben 10,000 and Cup, ran second in the King’s Cup during Show Week. Them the grey capped off a fine spring by taking out the 1947 Melbourne Cup for Jack Purtell.
The 1948 Melbourne Cup was quinellaed by Rimfire and Dark Marne.
Both of them had wintertime experience in Brisbane.
Rimfire beat all bar Blue Boots and Russia in the 1947 Brisbane Cup while Dark Marne won the 1947 Doomben Cup and was runner-up in the 1948-49 Brisbane Cups.
Basha Felika won the J.H.S. Barnes Stakes at the Exhibition carnival in 1951, and followed up with Caulfield Cup glory two months later.
In 1953, Hydrogen took out the O’Shea Stakes, Brisbane Cup and the Barnes Stakes prior to saluting in the Cox Plate.
Rising Fast, the 1954 Barnes Stakes winner, went on to take out the 1954 and 1955 Caulfield Cups and the 1954 Cox Plate.
He won the 1954 Melbourne Cup and was runner-up in the great race the next year.
What a grand parade of thoroughbreds marched through Brisbane in the immediate post-war years!
The Wednesday Show Day program that used to be a mecca for those in Akubras and RM Williams outfits is now a mecca for a generation decked out in very different designer label gear.
Sadly, the racing is servings of bread and butter.
