October
JuneThe making of Gurners Lane
I have worked for a lot of good horse trainers in my life and been involved with some very good horses.
The best trainer I worked for was Geoffrey Thomas Murphy at Caulfield during the late ’70s and early ’80s.
G.T. Murphy was a genius who learnt much of his trade from the great Basil Conaghan.
One of the horses I had the privilege of strapping was Gurners Lane, whose only claim to fame at that time was being Sovereign Red’s little brother.
Sovereign Red was a big, solid, imposing type. Gurners Lane had exactly the same markings as his big brother (chestnut with a white blaze and white socks) but he was much smaller, leaner and incredably thin-skinned.
He was so thin-skinned in fact that he used to suffer from a sore back from wearing a saddle, and this nearly brought the little horse undone.
When I looked after him he only won one race and his sore back was an ongoing problem.
One summer morning in 1981 the boss told me to have Gurners Lane ready for a float trip at 11am.
At 11 am the Garrett & Griffith float arrived. We loaded the horse up and drove to Oakleigh meatworks. When we got there I held the horse while the boss went in and came out with a sheepskin, still warm and steaming from a freshly skinned sheep.
He put it on Gurners Lane’s back, meat side down, and held it in place with two surcingles. The sheepskin stayed in place for two weeks and the horse stayed in his box for two weeks.
When the boss took the sheepskin off, the horse’s back was a mess — a smelly, blistering mess, putrid, crawling with maggots.
The horse was then sent to the paddock for a spell.
When he returned three months later his back was toughened up with scar tissue and the hair was starting to grow back. The rest was history.
By the time he was winning cups I had moved on. But I know if it hadn’t been for that desperate measure Gurners Lane would never have risen to such lofty heights.
Some of the old-time trainers had some remedies that would be considered cruel by modern standards, but the world was far less sensitive and more practical then.
This was one of many cures that would probably get me into trouble if I tried them now.
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