Winning Post - Letter Of The Week Archive

Recently the Winning Post conducted a poll regarding Australia’s best ever racehorses, with Carbine, Phar Lap and Winx the candidates.
I am not decrying those wonderful horses, but I think Tulloch deserves a mention.
Tulloch came on the scene just after two great horses, Rising Fast and Redcraze, both of whom were beaten unluckily in Melbourne Cups carrying more than 10 stone (63kg). However, at the time nobody rated them as highly as Tulloch.
Tulloch in my opinion rates as the best three-year-old ever to have raced in Australia.
Before that, however, he was a very good two-year-old, winning three Sires’ Produce Stakes, including the Sydney version, in which he beat Todman — who’d just won the first running of the Golden Slipper — by eight lengths.
In all Tulloch raced 13 times as a two-year-old for seven wins. he had a busy time, starting with the first two-year-old race of the season, the Breeders’ Plate.
Tulloch was even busier as a three-year-old, starting on 16 occasions. He was unbeaten in the spring, with the highlight being his Caulfield Cup win — officially by two lengths, although viewing the film of this race it is obvious that he won by 3½ lengths easing up.
This win by Tulloch in the Caulfield Cup was in my opinion the most outstanding by any horse in my lifetime.
Two high-class horses, Sailors Guide and Mac’s Amber, were fighting out the finish, when Tulloch put the issue beyond doubt in a couple of strides, bolting away. And he had raced wide all the way. He only appeared to be at full gallop for about half a furlong of the race.
He started that campaign with a narrow win in the Warwick Stakes, then won five Classic races by huge margins (thrashing Prince Darius in three of them) plus the Caulfield Cup (Sailors Guide third) and C.B. Fisher Plate (Sailors Guide second).
As mentioned Sailors Guide was a high-class horse, a fact he went on to prove in North America, while Prince Darius was beaten a neck in the Melbourne Cup carrying weight-for-age.
In my opinion, the 1957 spring campaign of Tulloch was phenomenal and I think he would have beaten any opposition that I have seen since then.
He raced as an autumn three-year-old and raced very well without reaching the previous spring’s peak.
Tulloch then suffered a serious illness and nearly died.
He missed his entire four-year-old year and his five-year-old spring.
He returned as an autumn five-year-old and won another 15 races, though he was never quite like he was in the 1957 spring.
Even so, he carried 10.1 (64kg) in the 1960 Melbourne Cup for the only unplaced run of his career, and wasn’t beaten far.
He had won the Cox Plate in record time 10 days previously, after racing reasonably handy to the lead. But in the Melbourne Cup he was ridden in a rearward position before passing many horses in the straight.
It remains a mystery why that happened. It was strange.
Tulloch then raced in the autumn and early winter, finishing his career carrying 9.12 (62.5kg) to victory in the two-mile Brisbane Cup, which was then a higher rating race than it is now.
Tulloch won from five furlongs to two miles and was a marvellous horse.
I don’t think he would have beaten Winx as an older horse, but I don’t think she would have beaten him when he was a spring three-year-old.
That is my opinion.