We often reflect on the highlights the top horse trainers have when they train champions but I want to reflect on the sadness and setbacks never spoken about. I chatted with Syd Brown a few years back, who trained the great Redcraze and the phenomenal Daryl’s Joy.
Both those horses ended their careers as the top all-time money winners from New Zealand and Australia, and both were taken away from Brown when they were at the peak of their powers.
When Syd was inducted into the New Zealand Racing Hall of Fame, he was 88 and broke up when he said his lovely wife Sybil could not make the trip from Warwick Farm due to health reasons. He also said he was probably in his last year of life – but he lasted another 11 years and was only a few months short of reaching 100 in October when he died last Sunday.
In a conversation with Brown I learnt of two losses which personally struck me as profoundly sad for him in a professional sense, and the third was a low act by a person unknown.
The first blow was when the young 30 year old trainer had his wonderful stayer Redcraze, a chestnut son of the Hyperion stallion Red Mars, taken from him at a time when the door was open for Brown to excel in the big time in Australia. In 1955 the New Zealand trainer lost the five-year-old to Tommy Smith, and the gelding went on to win many top races including the Caulfield Cup in 1956 and the 1957 Cox Plate.
The owner of Redcraze, Ada Bradley, refused to sell the horse to Smith but the Sydney trainer persisted and took the horse from Brown after Bradley finally agreed.
“Much to Brown’s chagrin an undying enmity between the respective Randwick and Woodville trainers eventuated”. (enmity not mentioned by Brown but sourced from King of the Turf). Brown was never told by Mrs Bradley until he queried her as to why the horse was nominated for the 1956 Brisbane Cup which he won for Smith, a month after leaving New Zealand.
Now trainers losing horses to different stables is a common occurrence but early in his training career it was a huge setback, and it was not until 1972 that Brown moved permanently to Warwick Farm, where he stayed until his death.
Bart Cummings said he was devastated when So You Think was taken away from him in 2010 without prior knowledge from owner Dato Tan Chin Nam, and said it was a national tragedy. So I was not surprised when Brown told me of the shock and profound disappointment when he learned in much the same way that the champion colt Daryl’s Joy was heading to the United States after winning the Cox Plate and Victoria Derby in 1969 and also beating the sensational Victorian sprinter Vain earlier in his campaign.
Daryl’s Joy was the champion two-year-old in New Zealand, the champion staying three-year-old in Australia and won five group one races in America, three times beating Cougar 11, the Chilean entire later inducted into the Hall of Fame in America.
Daryl’s Joy raced only five times in Australia and is often missed from memory when recalling champions from the past.
Brown claimed Daryl’s Joy was the best horse he ever threw a saddle over – “he was a champion and a lovely natured horse as well” – and Bill Skelton also said he was far and away the best horse he ever rode.
Brown had big plans for the Stunning colt (like Redcraze, he was a descendant of the Hyperion bloodline) for the following season and intentionally withdrew his nomination as a 3-year-old from the Melbourne Cup which the duo felt he could win. Brown believed in hard training for horses so they would race hard, but the welfare of the horse was paramount in his mind.
Those two incidents are common in racing but in Brown’s case these were major blows. Nevertheless, he trained some other horses that made the early 1970s a top period for him: Triton who had to be raced sparingly due to a heart condition and the conqueror of Gunsynd in the 1972 Epsom Handicap, Classic Mission, Wood Court Inn, the unsound Crown Law, and Kista, plus a string of New Zealand winners.
My third recollection reflects on some of the low lifes who live in our society. I asked Syd how many framed photographs he had of special horses and he said he had two, of his champions Redcraze and Daryl’s Joy. One day he was approached by someone unknown to him who wanted to publish a feature about his achievements, and he asked if he could take both of the framed photographs and copy them and return them later. Brown took the chap at his word and never took his name or phone number but trusted him …. he never saw the “gentleman” or the photographs again, a personal loss. There are low-lifes in all walks of life.
When George Moore rode his last winner aboard Classic Mission in the Victoria Derby in 1971, he turned down a ride from Smith and then presented his saddle to Brown to keep. As the custodian, Brown is passing it on to the Hall of Fame in Sydney to perpetuate the memory of Moore and the history of racing.
It is typical of the man, it was not all about him. He struck me as a person of great honour, integrity and humility. Perhaps he is with his beloved Sybil now, watching his best jockey Billy Skelton booting home Daryl’s Joy to another victory on the racecourse above. He deserves nothing less.
