‘Absolute, utter, complete freak’: How Bernborough immortalised the Villiers Stakes
It may have a different name and is worth a few more dollars than it once was, but the race formerly known as the Villiers Stakes will forever be a part of racing folklore, if only for just one of its past winners.
It may have a different name and is worth a few more dollars than it once was, but the race formerly known as the Villiers Stakes will forever be a part of racing folklore, if only for just one of its past winners.
The year was 1945, two days out from the first Christmas after the end of World War II, and the streets of Sydney were buzzing with anticipation given the presence of a horse from Queensland called Bernborough.
Foaled in 1939 on the Darling Downs, Bernborough had raced solely at Toowoomba having been barred from Brisbane metropolitan tracks due to doubts about his ownership.
Sold to Sydney restaurant owner Azzalin Romano for 2,600 guineas, aged six, Bernborough took his place in the Villiers Stakes with soon to be inseparable jockey Athol Mulley aboard.
Bernborough won by five, thus beginning his incredible 15-race sequence of wins that would catapult him into the Hall of Fame.
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Immortal to us now, Bernborough was glorified in his time, industry icon Max Pressnel told Racenet.
“I spoke to a couple of good judges who saw Bernborough and Phar Lap, Phar Lap obviously before Bernborough, and I didn’t come across one that said that Phar Lap was better than Bernborough.
“Most thought that Bernborough was superior.
“Now what you’ve got to factor into that is, Bernborough had just raced more recently.
“Sometimes you say ‘oh, well ability and reputations grow as people as get older and they reflect back and give an edge to the previous champion,’ but people around Bernborough’s time and I’m talking about old jockeys, they said Bernborough was better than Phar Lap.
“They’re different sorts of horses too. Bernborough was a dynamic bloody champion. I don’t know how Phar Lap would have gone over six furlongs but I don’t think two miles would have stopped Bernborough.
“And when you look at his run in the Caulfield Cup, he was just an absolute, utter, complete freak.”
To this day, when a horse comes from last to win, more often than not, the race-caller says ‘he finished like Bernborough’.
True, he was a barnstormer but more by decree than design.
“It was a part of the folklore,’’ Pressnel said.
“But don’t forget, Mulley rode ‘quiet’ unless the circumstances dictated otherwise.
“Most of the great riders then were ‘hands riders’.
“He’d be back and of course when you’ve got the big weights, it just added to how dynamic he was.”
Bernborough, somewhat contrary to his longevity, was a stallion, not a gelding as was customary at the time.
A grandson of the English Triple Crown winner Gainsborough out of a mare by Lord Derby’s Phalaris (the sire of the Fairway, Pharos and Sickle), Bernborough had a physique to match his pedigree.
That’s according to Presnell’s former Sydney Morning Herald colleague and friend Bill Whittaker who knew Bernborough up-close from back in his days terrorising the opposition at Toowoomba.
“Bill said Bernborough was not a ‘bush Queensland horse’ and he would know,’’ Pressnel recalled his Atherton Tablelands born contemporary telling him.
“He said when you go around to these meetings they (the horses) all had a look about them and then you’d see this European thoroughbred that wouldn’t have looked out of place in an English Derby.
“Bill said he did stand out.”
Sadly, Bernborough tore ligaments around his sesamoid bone in the 1946 LKS Mackinnon Stakes (won by Flight) and was forced into retirement.
He was subsequently sold to movie mogul Louis B Mayer for a then-record sum of £93,000 and exported to the US.
While there, Bernborough stood at the famous Spendthrift Farm in Kentucky.
Judged as a moderate success, Bernborough is credited with three Grade 1-winning offspring as well as the Champion American Sprinter, Berseem, and a horse named Bernwood who at one point established a new world record time of 1 minute 33.8 seconds for a mile.
Originally published as ‘Absolute, utter, complete freak’: How Bernborough immortalised the Villiers Stakes
