Phar Lap
The Big Red Legend
He was bought sight unseen for 160 guineas. His owner took one look and refused to spend another penny. He finished last in his first race. And then, in the darkest years of the Great Depression, he became the most famous racehorse the world had ever seen — and gave a broken nation something to believe in.
From 51 starts, Phar Lap won 37 races, including 14 in a row. His heart weighed 6.35kg — nearly twice the size of a normal thoroughbred’s.
Lot 41
In 1928, a battling Sydney trainer named Harry Telford was flipping through a sales catalogue from New Zealand when a pedigree caught his eye. Lot 41 was a yearling colt descended from Carbine, winner of the 1890 Melbourne Cup. Telford couldn’t afford the horse himself, so he convinced an American businessman, David J. Davis, to buy the colt sight unseen for 160 guineas.
When the lanky, warty chestnut arrived in Sydney, Davis was horrified. The colt looked like a giraffe — too big, too awkward, with warts covering his face. Davis refused to spend another penny. Instead, he gave Telford a three-year lease: the trainer would pay all expenses out of his own pocket and keep two-thirds of any winnings.
Davis expected to never see a return. The colt was registered under the name Phar Lap — from a Thai and Zhuang word meaning “lightning” or “sky flash,” suggested by a Chinese-Australian medical student named Aubrey Ping who used to watch trackwork at Randwick.
Phar Lap finished last in his first race. He didn’t place in his next three either. Other trainers laughed.
Yearling Sales
Bobby and Tommy
Everything changed because of a young strapper named Tommy Woodcock.
Tommy was hired to care for Phar Lap, and he formed a bond with the horse that became one of the most famous partnerships in Australian sport. He called the horse “Bobby.” He rose at 4am every day. Before big races, he slept outside Phar Lap’s stall. The horse refused food from anyone else.
It was Tommy who worked out that Phar Lap liked to come from behind. He changed the training approach, holding the horse back and letting him finish with a surge of speed. When trainer Telford pushed Phar Lap too hard, Tommy complained. Telford sacked him. Phar Lap stopped eating. Telford had to bring Tommy back.
With jockey Jim Pike — known as “The Master” — in the saddle and Tommy’s care behind the scenes, Phar Lap transformed. From his win in the VRC St Leger Stakes through to his final race, he won 32 of his last 35 starts. In 1930 alone, he won 19 of 21 races. He was so dominant that other trainers routinely withdrew their horses when they heard Phar Lap was entered.
The Woodcock Trophy
The People’s Horse
Phar Lap’s rise coincided exactly with the Great Depression. Over 30 per cent of Australians were unemployed. Families couldn’t pay rent. Industries collapsed.
Into this darkness galloped a big chestnut horse who’d been written off as worthless. His story — the ugly duckling who beat the establishment — spoke directly to ordinary people who were doing it tough. Along with cricketer Don Bradman, Phar Lap gave a broken nation something to cheer about.
His fame spread through the new technologies of the era: commercial radio broadcasts and cinema newsreels meant millions could follow his races for the first time. His image appeared on postcards, cigarette cards, cake tins, tobacco tins, and advertising posters. He was as recognisable as any human celebrity.
The expression “a heart as big as Phar Lap’s” entered the Australian language and remains there to this day — a way of describing anyone who gives everything they have.
The Cup That Stopped a Nation
The lead-up to the 1930 Melbourne Cup reads like a thriller.
Three days before the race, on a Saturday morning near Caulfield, a gunman fired a shotgun at Phar Lap from a passing car. Tommy Woodcock shielded the horse. The shot missed. Phar Lap was spirited away into hiding at a stud outside Geelong, where he trained in secret.
On Cup Day, the horse float broke down on the way to Flemington. Phar Lap arrived late — the race was delayed while officials waited. He was rushed to the blacksmith for racing shoes and barely made the start.
None of it mattered.
Carrying a massive 62.6kg — the shortest-priced favourite in Cup history at 8/11 — Phar Lap settled fourth under Jim Pike. At the 400-metre mark, Pike let him go. He won by three lengths on a rain-soaked track. Nearly 30,000 people who couldn’t afford the entry fee watched from Scotchman’s Hill on the banks of the Maribyrnong River.
1930 Flemington Spring Carnival
- Melbourne Stakes — Won
- Melbourne Cup — Won (62.6kg)
- Linlithgow Stakes — Won
- C.B. Fisher Plate — Won
Four wins in eight days. No horse has dominated a single carnival like it before or since.
Weight Carrying Context
The Last Race
Having conquered Australia, owner Davis sent Phar Lap to North America, where the prize money was far greater. Trainer Telford refused to go. Tommy Woodcock went instead, now serving as both strapper and trainer.
On 20 March 1932, Phar Lap won the Agua Caliente Handicap in Tijuana, Mexico — the richest race in the world at that time — by two lengths, with jockey Billy Elliott. He won despite a cracked front hoof and the unfamiliar conditions. It was hailed as his greatest triumph.
Sixteen days later, on 5 April 1932, Phar Lap fell ill at a stable in Menlo Park, California. High temperature. Severe pain. Within hours, the seemingly indestructible horse haemorrhaged and died. He was five years old. He died in Tommy Woodcock’s arms.
Australia went into mourning. Suspicion of deliberate poisoning raged for decades. In 2008, scientific testing confirmed arsenic was present — but likely from legitimate horse tonics common in that era, not foul play. Tommy Woodcock carried guilt about the death for the rest of his life, but always insisted it was not deliberate.
Three Museums, One Legend
Today, Phar Lap is literally shared across three nations. His mounted hide stands in the Melbourne Museum. His skeleton rests at Te Papa in Wellington, New Zealand — the country of his birth. And his heart — that extraordinary 6.35kg heart, nearly twice the size of a normal thoroughbred’s — sits in the National Museum of Australia in Canberra.
He was an inaugural inductee into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame in 2001. A 1983 feature film, Phar Lap: Heart of a Nation, with Tom Burlinson as Tommy Woodcock, became one of Australia’s most beloved movies.
More than ninety years after his death, Phar Lap remains Australia’s most famous racehorse. Not because of his speed alone, but because of what he represented — that something extraordinary can come from the most unpromising beginnings, and that in the darkest times, hope can gallop in on four legs.
First Furlong Insider