After 58 years of providing harness racing tips and odds to the Mercury, Peter Cooley looks back on his stellar career
Peter Cooley has been tipping winners, writing books, winning awards and championing the Tasmanian harness racing industry for most of his 88 years. Here’s how he became an institution in the sport.
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There isn’t much Peter Cooley doesn’t know about harness racing in Tasmania – if Peter doesn’t know it, it probably isn’t worth knowing.
The 88-year-old from Hobart is the state’s foremost authority on the sport and one of Australia’s most knowledgeable harness aficionados.
He has won awards, been an administrator, was inducted into the Tasmanian Harness Hall of Fame in 2014, awarded the Order of Australia in 2016 for services to the industry, written books, and when others write books, they come to Peter.
From the 1960s, Peter Cooley was either the Mercury’s harness racing columnist, or tips and odds expert.
He hand-delivered his contribution to the Mercury each week, and where ever he was in the world, or what was happening in his family life, he always delivered.
“I did it because I wanted to give the sport a push along,” he said.
Along with pubs, horse racing is in the bloodline of the Cooley clan, so Peter didn’t stand a chance on either.
“I’ve always loved the pacer and trotter,” he said.
“They are a lovely horse and not as skittish as the thoroughbreds, they are more even tempered.
“I’ve just been brought up with it.
“When you’ve got my father, grandfather, my great grandfather and his father before him, they’ve all had horses, and pubs as well.
“On my mother’s side, my grandfather raced horses, so I’ve copped it on both sides.
“I’ve got a grandson now who’s one of the best drivers here, Charlie Castles.
“He drove three winners in Launceston the other week, three winners and a second, he just missed the fourth win.”
Peter’s pedigree harks back to the 1830s when his great, great grandfather Charles Cooley helped found horse racing in the British penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land.
Thomas Cooley established the well-known local watering hole, Cooley’s Hotel, in 1841 and a few years later bought a galloper, Swordsman, from Sir Richard Dry, Tasmania’s first native-born Premier.
“Swordsman won about 20 races for Dry. Thomas bought him and he won a race at New Norfolk called the Champions Cup in 1850,” Peter said.
“Everyone always assumed it was the forerunner to the Hobart Cup but it wasn’t.
“It was called the Champions Cup because it was a bloke named John Champion, who ran the Hatters Inn in Melville St, who donated the trophy and it was named after him.”
The Champions Cup stayed in the Cooley family but Peter was not sure where.
“I chased that trophy for years and finally ran it down to a distant relative in Canberra,” he said.
“I talked him into donating it to the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery.
“It was valued at $85,000 – it was one of the first cups made in Australia – and it’s on exhibition now at the museum.”
Peter’s grandfather Charles Frederick Cooley played a key hand in establishing harness racing in the 1890s.
“Charles liked steeple chasers and hurdlers” Peter said.
“In 1902 he won the Easter Steeplechase in Deloraine, which the following year became known as the Grand National, with a horse called Monogram, which he trained,” Peter said.
“Six months later he had a trotter named Bruno that won the Champion Mile at Risdon, and he owned, trained and rode that.
“There wouldn’t be too many people to have won the two major races in the two sports in the one year.”
Harness racing has had more than 100 venues over the years, including tracks at Jerusalem (now Colebrook), New Norfolk, Richmond, Risdon and one at Moonah called Northall Park, over the back fence from Cooley’s Hotel.
“I can remember going to Northall Park with dad when they were training horses,” Peter said.
“Dad raced a really good mare, Miss Wingate, she raced in the Interdominion final in Melbourne in 1950. That was the first 10,000 pound trotting race in Australasia – the stakes were almost as high as the Melbourne Cup.”
Peter has also tasted life in the driver’s seat at track work.
“They are quite thrilling,” he said.
“You’ve got about a ton of horse in front of you and all you can see is a big backside and a pair of ears.
“You’ve really not got complete control.
“You’re sitting in this little seat and the ground is rushing by underneath you and you’re travelling along at about 50kp/h and you’re just hanging on.
“Of course, after you do it for a while you get used to it.”
Trotting went off the boil for a while in the early 1960s.
“That’s when Halwes, Golden Alley and Chamfer Star arrived on the scene within a few years of one another,” Peter said.
“It just boomed then because they could go anywhere in Australia and win races, and people love to see good horses.”
Chamfer Star won the Interdominion in 1966 in a rain-sodden final, grabbing the lead on the opening lap, sticking to the rail and holding on in a thriller.
“Chamfer Star was always looked on as not being as good as the other two,” Cooley said.
“When betting started for the 1966 Interdominion they were betting 150-1 about him.
“A few Tasmanians got on and he went through the series undefeated and started favourite in the final and won.
“We’ve always been able to produce good horses through the years.”
Peter was accounts manager for Tasmania Police and later helped his mum Vera run the family pub, the Theatre Royal Hotel.
In a bold move, he tried his hand at journalism.
“In the 1960s I walked into the Mercury and asked if I provided some articles on trotting from around the world, would they publish them, and they did,” he said.
Some years later he got talking to a well-known Mercury racing writer Noel Moore across the bar of the Theatre Royal.
“Noel used to come around drinking at the pub and I said to him one day if I do you markets and tips would you put them in the Mercury, because in those days they only had the fields,” Cooley said.
“After I got out of the pub [1988] the Mercury started paying me for this, because I’d been doing it all for nothing.
“It’s been over 50 years since I started doing it for the Mercury.”
Peter Cooley submitted his final contribution to the Mercury last month. We wish him well and congratulate him on his incredible impact on the Tasmanian harness community.
Originally published as After 58 years of providing harness racing tips and odds to the Mercury, Peter Cooley looks back on his stellar career
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