Phar Lap

T

Triptych

At the Start
Joined
Jun 2, 2003
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I've just received the DVD of the Phar Lap film which, incidentally, cost only around £9 delivered from Australia. I've only seen it once, when I was around 10, although I do remember it as being in black and white which it quite obviously isn't! I loved the film when I first saw it although I don't know if I'll appreciate it as much now but I plan to watch it at some point over the next week.
 
I saw it a number of years ago on TV. My memory might be playing tricks with me but I don't think his trainer was portrayed very kindly?
 
Actually the way Harry Telford was portrayed both in the film and written in the book, is quite accurate. There have been many various books written on Phar Lap of course, and a lot reflect the hardness of the New Zealand born Telford.

From the various memoirs, and accounts written about this man, what has been said about him is very true. I analysed him to be the old bush man type who had a skin thicker than a rhinoceros, with a personality as hard as a rock. Nothing could or would break him, only 3 could melt his heart away, his former wife, his son Cappy and Phar Lap "Bobby"
 
Heart, huh - didn't save Phar Lap from ending up in Japan, not a racing regime in those days you'd wish for any horse; then being raced into the ground, and finally being sold for nuppence, for dogmeat.

Shameful. One of the worst stories in racing imo.. Well, that's what I've read over the years, and I'd be thrilled if someone were to tell me none of it is true.
 
Ha, yes, I think you are right Gareth, Phar Lap was the one who may have been poisoned in America... see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phar_Lap#Death I knew there was some shady story!

The horse I'm thinking of won irrc the Kentucky Derby - or another of the great US 'classics' - but finished up in a Japanese knackers' yard.... Who was it??
 
Yes that's the story - thanks. I must have read those stories around the same time and somehow got them confused in my memory [I'm getting on a bit y'know!]. Great race, great horse - sad end.
 
Phar Lap in the paper today, the scientists working to discover what killed him (now definitely been confirmed as arsenic) almost ready to release their results to the public.

Two very good horses that ended up in the knackers yard were of course Ferdinand, and the late Exceller. I believe the latter died in Sweden.
 
Media Mogul I think it was in the US who was rescued from a slaughter house. Possibly one of the Juddmonte horses too - ex-British who went to the US but wasn't all that.
 
Wasn't there an unraced full brother or sister to Nebraska Tornado found in one in the States?
 
Lincoln winner John Fernely was on death row in the US too, was two days before the knacker man was to arrive and one of the stable girls in the livery yard where he had ended up as a hack for hire realised that he was a TB and wondered what his story had been. Got in touch with Rerun who scanned him, read his microchip, and saved him.
 
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