JUNE HERO - BETTER BOY

Rags to Riches

There’s nothing quite like the atmosphere of Cox Plate day. Perhaps it’s the amphitheatre effect of Moonee Valley. Probably a lot to do with the winner’s coronation as Australasia’s champion weight for age performer.

Whatever the mix, the victors remain etched in our collective conscious. Such was the case in 2006 when Fields of Omagh fought a ding dong with El Segundo and Pompeii Ruler to capture his second Cox Plate after a three year gap. The amazement of an admiring army ... the looks of disbelief from owners. Priceless.

Even more astonishing is that rapturous applause was focused on a horse that, just minutes before, was virtually friendless in the betting ring. We sent him out a $19 hope - the eighth line of betting in a 12 horse field - and we brought him home a hero. Only in a Cox Plate!

But what ended with cheers had started with jeers some 51 years previously when Fields of Omagh’s great grandsire - the Irish import Better Boy - took out the 1955 Hotham Handicap (now Saab Quality) at Flemington in rather controversial circumstances.

While sometimes disparagingly referred to as the ‘try out stakes’ - a warm up for the following Tuesday’s Melbourne Cup - the Hotham was then considered one of the pre-eminent staying races on the turf calendar. Victory was a feather in any horse’s mane.

But there was no talk of manes - only moans - following Better Boy’s Hotham. The horse sent them hoarse.

Old records reveal that Better Boy had started in the Werribee Cup at his previous outing and sent out a hot favourite, he turned out to be a bad boy, running stone motherless.

Some things are timeless and form reversals are guaranteed to generate ire regardless of era.
Newspapers reported the next day how the crowd booed the horse, the jockey, the strapper, the trainer and the owner, often calling into question their respective pedigrees.

In Better Boy’s case it was in black and white. Born in Ireland on 2 February 1951, he was by the French sire My Babu out of a British bred mare Better So.

My Babu had won the 2000 Guineas, while Better So was by the French Derby winner Mieuxce.
Better So was also the dam of Our Betters who won stakes races on both sides of the Atlantic, while another of her sons My Own stood for a while in NSW without success.

Testimony to his influence, My Babu appears in the pedigrees of no less than 63 sires featured in the 2007 Stallions book and in due deference to his impact on the turf landscape, we won’t attempt to encapsulate his career in this particular feature.

Better Boy’s breeder, Edward Bee, would sell his yearling to Lady Ralli who then placed him in the hands of English trainer Jack Waugh (our thanks to the late, great Warwick Hobson for that historical tidbit).

It turns out he didn’t quite set the world on fire failing to show in two races at two and only winning a couple of minor races at three.

The decision was made to put him on the market. Enter Dave Whiteside.
Born in the Gippsland town of Korumburra in 1906, Dave Whiteside spent his early years on a dairy farm before the family moved to Melbourne. With an inherent love of horses, Dave was racing a pony around Gippsland tracks at the age of 13 and, following a shift to the big smoke, he entered a pony called Miss Cue at the old Richmond track which, until 1931, was located between Bridge Road and Swan Street at the east end of Burnley Street (can you imagine what that piece of real estate would be worth these days).

Anyway, as the story goes, young Dave was slipped a pill by an Indian hawker and proceeded to administer same to Miss Cue. It turned out he only slightly miss cued when Miss Cue won with a leg in the air and ran out of the course onto Swan Street before they could pull her up.

Working as a drover in the 1920s and 30s, Dave became a wholesale butcher and, during World War II, won the contract to supply Tom Piper foods with meat for canning.

The largesse which flowed as a consequence allowed Dave to indulge in his greatest passion and he would descend on Wright Stephenson sales (then Melbourne’s version of William Inglis & Son Ltd) and buy a host of yearlings.

It appeared Mrs. Whiteside wasn’t all that pleased, but Dave was happy and there are no reports that any of his purchases ended up at Tom Piper.

Deciding to try his luck in England, Dave grabbed his cheque book and the ever suffering Ivy and, at a tried stock sale, forked out 1500 guineas to buy Better Boy.

No-one could ever quite work out why. Intuition maybe, but he was largely there to buy the Nearco horse Sir Edward, a highly credentialed stallion prospect who would turn out to be as successful as a Peters ice cream reseller on the top of Mount Kosciuszko.

Whereas Sir Edward had plenty going for him, few could fathom Dave’s thinking where Better Boy was concerned. Sure, he hailed from the family of Delville Wood who was Champion Australian Sire at the time and Better Boy did offer an outcross to the Hyperion / Nearco blood so prevalent in Australia at the time, but in the performance stakes, he was no Phar Lap.

Still, the ever confident Whiteside considered he could turn the boy into a man by racing his Pom purchase in Australia and building his profile that way. But if he was hoping for miracles, he pulled up short.

Placed with Valdis Charles ‘Barney’ Warke at Mordialloc, Better Boy won five of 11 starts in his first season in Australia - Kilmore, Mornington, the Seymour Cup, Moonee Valley and the infamous Hotham at Flemington.

And if you think the trainer wasn’t up to the ‘spray’ at Flemington, think again - anyone christened Valdis Charles is probably immune to the odd s-canning.

The most affected was clearly Whiteside who’d had a decent plonk on his neddy at Werribee and only bet on Better Boy at Flemington following the jockey’s assessment that the previous outing was too bad to be true.

There was some talk that Better Boy was ‘got at’, but it could never be proven given that the entire wasn’t swabbed.

The damage was done though as far as Australia’s racing public and potential investors were concerned.

Racing on at six, Better Boy would only win once (Woodend Cup) from 15 starts. He did however, finish first past the post in the 1956 Caulfield Cup but had dumped his rider along the way. Having just the one start at seven, Better Boy won the Gardenvale Handicap before his owner decided to pull up stumps.
At least it was a winning end, but this acorn was showing no signs of the great oak he would become. Whereas his great grandson would be remembered for two of the greatest wins in turf history, Better Boy’s copy book was blotted with drama … and not the Oscar winning kind.
Whiteside retired Better Boy to his Range View Stud which he had established in 1955 to accommodate the all-soon-enough disappointing Sir Edward.

Originally based at Clayton, the stud was shifted to a 300 acre plot at Carrum Downs which was pretty flat and had more sand than grass. Now smack dab in the middle of suburbia, Carrum Downs hasn’t totally forgotten those sandy roots and deigned to name two of its streets Rangeview Drive and Better Boy Court.

Such acknowledgement though would have been merely a dream in the late 50s. Better Boy covered just 15 mares in the spring of ’57, most of them Range View owned. Ten got in foal.
The following season he covered 13 … 16 in 1959 ... 20 in 1960. That’s 64 mares in four seasons.

By comparison, Bel Esprit covered an Australian record 266 mares in 2007.
Not surprisingly, Better Boy didn’t break any world records with his first crop … all 10 of them.
He did get Bagot Handicap winner Better Sun from his second crop, but it was his third that really got the ball rolling.

Foaled in 1960 and commencing their careers in 1962/63, Better Lad won the 1964 VRC St Leger, Elect won a Standish, Pterylaw the Doomben 10,000 and Craftsman … well, Craftsman was a freak. Winning the 1963 Victoria Derby, Craftsman won the Liston, Turnbull, Fisher Plate, two Autumn Stakes, a pair of Queen Elizabeth’s and the Australian Cup in both 65 and 66.

Folks these days might not remember some of the race names, but such was the impact of Craftsman, many termed him the next Tulloch! He would retire the winner of 20 races.
Most importantly though, he launched the career of one of the most influential stallions in Australia’s breeding history.

The year that Craftsman won the Derby, Better Boy’s book jumped to 60 mares and by 1965 - with only his fifth crop racing - he was hovering around the top 10 on the sires’ premiership.
Courtesy of Craftsman and Pterylaw - plus 35 other winners - Better Boy would clinch his first championship in 1965/66 with progeny earnings of $176,220 (in 2006/07, Flying Spur headed the sires’ chart with 128 winners and $10.4 million in stakes).

(Enigmatically, Better Boy would continue to experience peaks and troughs - he covered a full book of mares - 60! - in his seventh season, but two years after winning the premiership in 1968 he only received a book of 50 mares).

Sadly, Dave Whiteside had died before the first of Better Boy’s progeny raced and the responsibility of the Range View property fell to widow, Ivy, and son-in-law, Max Wenn.

There are no monuments to David Samuel Whiteside, but the fortitude and vision he showed is his enduring legacy, perhaps only fully comprehended by those who have dipped a toe into the whirlpool of broodmare ownership.

Better Boy dropped to 17th in 66/67 but bounced back with a fifth in 67/68 and was runner up to Wilkes (68/69) and Alcimedes (69/70).

The winners continued to flow: Better Talk won the Sandown Cup, Shorengro won three successive Feehans, Cedar King (Easter Cup), Flirtatious (Winter Cup) and Chosen Lady won the VRC Oaks and an Edward Manifold. Proud Toff captured the 1972 Chirnside and Prize Lad took it home the following year. Better Gleam grabbed the Flight and would subsequently add to Better Boy’s broodmare sire coffers as the dam of the brilliant filly Kapalaran, winner of the Thousand Guineas, Hobartville, Peter Pan and Gloaming.

Tolerance won the first Blue Diamond Stakes in 1971.

On the flip side, Vansittart became Better Boy’s first ‘two mile’ winner in taking out the Duke of Norfolk and went within a length of winning the Melbourne Cup when second to Baghdad Note in 1970.

But it was in the space of three years - 1969 to 71 - that Better Boy would produce what were arguably his most memorable performers and, in the case of Century, the one who would carry his name into the 21st century.

Foaled in 1969, Century became the first horse to win the three major sprint races down the straight at Flemington: the Lightning, Craven A (now Age Classic) and Newmarket - the last in track record time.

The subject of a future feature (stay tuned!), Century won 11 and recorded 12 placings from 29 starts before retiring to stud and going on to produce 43 stakes winners of 81 black type events.
Importantly, the buck hasn’t stopped there. No less than 16 of Century’s sons have gone on to produce stakeswinners while his Cox Plate winner Rubiton has sired 34 stakeswinners in his own right including our aforementioned hero, Fields of Omagh.

There was nothing unlucky about crop number 13 for Better Boy, which resulted in one of the popular horses to grace the Australian turf … Reckless.

Note we said, popular - not the best. Reckless won 8 of 57 starts and the majority of those at six and seven years, but was placed on numerous occasions at the highest level.

But for those of us who lived through the late 70s and saw Reckless almost sweep the Cup-board in each state capital, there was something magic about this gutsy galloper … something special about the way he won Adelaide Cup, Sydney Cup and Brisbane Cup before running second to Gold And Black in the Melbourne Cup and, eventually, breaking down when third in the Perth Cup on 2 January 1978.

Ironically, he had won the Hotham Handicap the previous year to a far better reception than his sire had received 21 years earlier.

Adding to the aura was Reckless’ trainer Tommy Woodcock. The trainer of Better Boy’s Oaks winner Chosen Lady a full decade previously, Tommy was 72 when Reckless commenced his Cup run. But it wasn’t merely age that earned respect: Tommy was also the remaining remnant of a golden era, the bloke who strapped for Australasia’s most famous horse, Phar Lap. God, how we prayed that Reckless would prevail in that Melbourne Cup. Reckless was owned by TBV Life Member Joan Walker, who still speaks with enormous admiration of both Reckless and his trainer.

And finally, there was Cap d’Antibes who would reign supreme in a Flight, a Lightning, Newmarket, an Invitation (now Sir Rupert Clarke) and a Kewney.

She wasn’t Better Boy’s last stakeswinner - Better Beyond (Newmarket), La Neige (Epsom) and Better Draw (Sandown Guineas) would follow - but Cap d’Antibes was final ‘great’ hurrah.

In the midst of Cap d’Antibes’ campaigns, Better Boy succumbed to the infirmity of old age. As Warwick Hobson observed, on 27 September 1975, “Better Boy was put down at 24 years of age when his forelegs could no longer support his weight and was reduced from a once majestic thoroughbred to a helpless cripple”.

Better Boy would secure his third national Sires’ premiership the following season - mortality making way for legend.

In the eight seasons from 1970 to 1977, Better Boy won three premierships, finished runner up twice, third twice and ended up fourth in the other.

Before the decade was out, he’d handed the banner to No. 1 son, Century, who was Champion Sire in his own right in 1979.

Remarkably, Better Boy would also take out four Broodmare Sires’ titles … remarkable when you consider paucity of representation. Still, quantity should never be a substitute for quality and his daughters would foal down champions Better Loosen Up and Rose of Kingston, Oaks winner Spirit of Kingston, Golden Slipper winner Full On Aces and Cox Plate winner So Called. Other Group One winners include Badinage, Kapalaran, Prunella, Binbinga, Rooney and Iko.

Naturally, the ages have wearied the representation and the Better Boy influence is waning.
Still, for an illustrious period in Victorian breeding’s marvellous history, a racetrack villain became a hero on the nation’s stage. For four seasons at least, he was the Better Boy.