Innehållsförteckning för January 2024 från Turf Monthly

A New Year already. With January it brings the Magic Millions carnival and perhaps the most important yearling sale of the year. We did a brief story a little while ago where we mentioned the dosages of Magic Millions winners and we see that there is a seemingly never ending focus on speed. Breeders seem to think that more speed is all that matters, and we are seeing that reflected in the types that are winning the race. I also suspect that this is causing issues with the breed. Clearly the fields over the last few years looks to be lacking depth. A city win is likely to earn enough prizemoney to make the field in one of the richest 2yo races in the world. No doubt trainers are acutely…

Grand Cidium is one of the truly tragic stories of Australian racing. He was purchased by Bruce Hedley for $18,000 as a yearling and trained by Tommy Hughes. The colt had his first start as a 2yo in February 1973 winning over 1200m at Caulfield. His next start was over the same distance at Flemington and the 7/4 on favourite duly saluted. Such was the opinion of the horse that his third start was in the AJC Sires Produce where he ran third behind the star colt Imagele. Returning as a 3yo, Grand Cidium won first up over 1400m at Sandown again at odds-on. Two weeks later he stepped up to 2000m to win at Flemington. He returned to Sydney to win the Hill Stakes beating Longfella again as an…

Without A Fight won the 2023 Melbourne Cup in a dominant performance. As we will see shortly, his performances this year represent a marked improvement to those when he arrived in Australia last year. It raises a very important question as to how imported horses adapt to local conditions, including climate and training methods over time. Clearly, the task of winning the Cup on a fly in one-off mission is a much different prospect to that of a horse who has had a year to acclimatise. None of this detracts from the performance of Without A Fight who has rightly joined an elite group of gallopers to have won not only a Melbourne Cup, but also the elusive Caulfield Cup/Melbourne Cup double. The gelding did not make his debut until…

Faux Tirage was the most expensive horse ever imported to New Zealand at the time. He was purchased by Tom Lowry for his Okawa Stud for a reported price of £A31,250 in 1949. The stallion was a son of Big Game out of the stakes winning mare, Commotion, a daughter of Riot who in turn was out of Lady Juror. Faux Tirage had won his first two starts as a 2yo, and won his first three starts as a 3yo, with the last of these being in the £3926 St. James Palace Stakes at Ascot. Thomas Henry Lowry was renowned as the owner of the great NZ mare, Desert Gold. He inherited the 20,000 acre property of Okawa in the Hawkes Bay region of NZ’s North Island. He married Helen…

Ezra Norton (1897–1967) by Valerie Lawson This article was published: in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 15, 2000 online in 2006 Ezra Norton (1897-1967), newspaper proprietor, was born on 8 April 1897 at Watsons Bay, Sydney, elder child of John Norton, the English-born proprietor of Truth, and Ada McGrath who was native-born. John married Ada a few weeks later and may have chosen the infant’s name in honour of the scribe in the Old Testament book of Nehemiah. Ezra never recovered from his parents' tempestuous relationship. His birth was legitimized in 1907. By the time he was 15, he had learned how to defend his mother from his father’s assaults and to stand up for his own rights in the face of continuing mental and physical abuse. He was…

Noel Leonard McGrowdie (1920–1961) by W. Boyan This article was published: in the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 15, 2000 online in 2006 Noel Leonard McGrowdie (1920-1961), jockey, was born on Christmas Day 1920 at Breakfast Creek, Brisbane, fifth child of native-born parents Charles Christopher McGrowdie, a jockey who had become a racehorse-trainer, and his wife Alice Josephine, née Brown. After his father moved his business to Toowoomba, Noel helped around the stables. At the age of 7 he started to win show events and from 11 drove cattle during his holidays. He completed his schooling at St Mary’s Christian Brothers' College and was apprenticed as a 14-year-old to Les Roberts, a horse-trainer at Toowoomba. His indentures were later transferred to the leading Brisbane trainer George Anderson. McGrowdie was so…