Melbourne Cup reads: Subzero; Jim Cassidy; Michelle Payne; Peter Moody

As the nation’s biggest week for horseracing arrives, these new books shed light on the sport of kings.

Graham Salisbury helps champion Subzero mark his 28th birthday. Picture Jay Town

It’s illegal for jockeys to offer racing tips, as former champion rider Jimmy Cassidy delicately discusses in his colourful autobiography Pumper, but what about horses? Do racing authorities have a law that bans thoroughbreds from predicting winners? It’s a question worth asking after reading Adam Crettenden’s wonderful biography of Subzero, the grey gelding who won the 1992 Melbourne Cup.

The nagging moment came at the 1999 Cup, when Subbie, as he’s known, was working at Flemington racetrack in his second career as a clerk of the course horse, leading race-day gallopers and jockeys to and from the starting barriers. He had a surprise VIP visitor, then prime minister John Howard, who was accompanied by then governor-general William Deane.

As Crettenden details, Howard sized up Subzero and said, “The governor-general claims this horse will talk to me. Is this true?” Subzero’s owner and rider, Flemington clerk of the course Graham Salisbury, said it was. But the proof of it came from, well, the horse’s mouth.

Not only did Subzero confirm he had won the Cup himself but he slyly tipped, with a nod of his head, the Bart Cummings-trained Rogan Josh to win the nation-stopping race that was about to unfold. How much the PM had on the winner is something Subzero, and his biographer, are keeping to themselves.

This whimsical story goes to the broad appeal of this book, the first by Crettenden, a race caller who “lives in regional Victoria ... and owns several horses, none of which has won the Melbourne Cup”. Like the best racing stories — that of last week’s dual Cox Plate winner Winx, for example — this is about much more than a horse and a race and gambling.

Subzero wins the Cup on page 71, when he is four. The rest of the book is devoted to his beautiful post-race career, which also includes visits to hospitals, schools, retirement homes, pubs and clubs, weddings and funerals. He celebrated his 28th birthday last month.

“Subbie’s popularity at race meetings was immeasurable,’’ Crettenden writes. “He was the horse everyone wanted to have a photo with.’’ He retired from racecourse work in 2008, but remained a celebrity. I think he is retrospectively everyone’s favourite Melbourne Cup winner, partly because he is grey (only six have won the race), but mainly for what he did afterwards. Crettenden sums this up well: “Not many horses have used a Melbourne Cup as stepping stone.’’

That’s typical of the many quirks of the Subzero story, which start with his birth. He “was a striking colour: jet black”. And while he grew into a tall and athletic — and grey — horse, he wasn’t particularly fast. He handled the arduous 3200m of the Cup, for trainer Lee Freedman and jockey Greg Hall, but he didn’t have the tactical pace to become an elite weight-for-age horse. He tried for back-to-back Cups in 1993 but failed. He was retired the next year.

Retired as a racehorse, that is. Retraining Subzero to be a clerk of the course horse was hard work. For starters, he was young for the job at six and when he saw horses race he wanted to join them. There’s a terrific story about him, a decade later at age 16, rounding up the gun sprinter Fastnet Rock. Salisbury explains the work ethic: “No matter how badly behaved the racehorse is that I am leading, my horse cannot retaliate. The other horse could be ... trying to kick or bite ... but the clerk’s horse has to cop it. It requires a faultless temperament.’’

And that was where Subzero’s main advantage came to the fore: he was highly intelligent. Now it may be true that his “talking” was more of a nod and a wink, but he had the smarts to learn a new job, as Crettenden shows in fascinating and humorous fashion. There’s a startling scene where Subbie “creates” a sunroof in his trailer and another where, speaking of fashion, he eats Lillian Frank’s hat. He got the job done, one way or another, and was loved for it.

Jimmy Cassidy after riding Might And Power to win the 1997 Melbourne Cup.

Subzero has had his giddy moments — he drinks a beer at one point — but looks a choir boy next to Cassidy, the successful, controversial New Zealand-born jockey who retired last year. Both are in the Racing Hall of Fame. Cassidy also did something that eluded Subzero: he won two Melbourne Cups. He did so from both ends, coming from dead last on compatriot Kiwi in 1983 and leading from barrier to post on the champion Might and Power in 1997. For my money, two of the best Cup rides I’ve seen, illustrating Cassidy’s superb inner clock.

In between winning the Cups, and 100 other Group 1 races, Cassidy experienced lots of trials and tribulations in his 40-year career. He was embroiled in the notorious “jockey tapes” scandal of the mid-90s, in which riders were accused of fixing races and offering tips for cash, he was linked to underworld figure Tony Mokbel, he had heated disagreements with jockeys, trainers and owners, including Gai Waterhouse and John Singleton, and he copped suspensions for riding misdemeanours. Pumper is the nickname he earned for his vigorous style in the saddle.

The beauty of this autobiography, co-written with sports journalist Andrew Webster, is that the jockey’s voice rings out loud and clear. He’s a competitive, egotistic, cheeky, defiant bantam and he tells it how he sees it. “I have been put on this earth to kick arse, not lick arse.’’

He is scathing about some rivals — fellow Kiwi Shane Dye, for example — and critical of trainers, including Winx’s Chris Waller (“I was riding horses when Chris Waller was in nappies”), and stewards. You feel like you are in the room with Cassidy, and it’s a rollicking ride.

He speaks with insight about great horses he has ridden, such as Might and Power, Rough Habit and Filante, and most times he delivers them due credit. It makes me laugh, though, when he mentions his first ride on future NZ champion Bonecrusher. “I started him on his winning way.’’ His discussions about the relationship between jockey and horse — “The two of you are one” — and race tactics are simple yet informative. “It’s a horse race. You make your own luck. You don’t need a map.’’ He’s also interesting — and provocative — about ongoing issues such as the use of the whip.

Cassidy swears he never rigged a race but admits “I want to make it very clear that I was not squeaky clean, under the strict rules of racing ... if jockeys say they don’t tip to others they are kidding themselves.’’ That’s the sort of comment that will be noticed by Cassidy’s self-declared nemesis, Victoria’s chief steward Terry Bailey. For him the conventional explanation — “That’s racing” — will not be satisfactory.

Michelle Payne with Prince of Penzance after winning the 2015 Melbourne Cup. Picture: David Caird.

If a year is a long time in politics, it’s an eon in racing. A year ago the jockey in the headlines was Michelle Payne, after she became the first female rider to win the Melbourne Cup, on the 100-1 shot Prince of Penzance. Come this Tuesday it’s unlikely she will have a ride in the Cup. Prince of Penzance definitely will not be there, having been retired after an injury this month.

Payne’s memoir Life as I Know It, written with sports writer John Harms, came out earlier this year. It’s a personal, uplifting account by a young woman from a racing family who first sat on a horse at four and started dreaming about the day she would beat the odds.

It’s a story of tragedy and renewal, and of the inspirational impact of family. The youngest of 11 children, Payne was six months old when her mother, Mary, died in a car crash. Her trainer father, Paddy, raised the kids alone. Eight of them would become jockeys at some stage.

“I was already a jockey. It was in me. It was me,’’ Payne writes of her youth. “I wanted to ride the winner of the Melbourne Cup. That was my aim ... Dad knew how determined I was.’’

That day would come, and Payne’s recall of the race is thrilling. “Forget about them. Forget about them all,’’ she thinks of her rivals. “Run your own race. Prince and me.’’ About 300m from the winning post, she revs up the horse. “Yah! Yah! Prince! Yah!” He may not have Subzero’s language skills but he gets the message. “Prince sprints ... I’ve hit the front in the Cup. I’ve hit the front in the Melbourne Cup.’’

We all know what happened next. Payne’s name flashed around the world. She had defied the male domination in the sport of kings. Everyone wanted to talk to her, and so it was all a bit of a blur until the next day. “It felt pretty good,’’ she writes with great charm, “to wake up on the Wednesday morning knowing there was a little Melbourne Cup next to the salt and pepper shakers on the kitchen table.’’

A year has also been a long time in racing for Peter Moody, the Victorian trainer who pushed, cajoled and nursed the world-class sprinter Black Caviar through her undefeated 25-start career. Moody closed his stables earlier this year after being suspended because one of his horses, Lidari, tested positive to an illegal level of cobalt.

In one of those racing coincidences, that “dickhead of a horse”, to quote his former trainer on the temperamental Lidari, ran second in a big race on Cox Plate day last weekend. Moody may not have cheered him, but he had a winner of his own on the same day, as an owner.

Former trainer Peter Moody with Black Caviar at Eagle Farm in Brisbane.

Helen Thomas is an engaging racing writer. Her 2004 book on retired racehorses, Past the Post, with photographs by Lorie Graham, is a treasure. Subzero smiles from its pages. In Moods: The Peter Moody saga, she focuses on the cobalt inquiries in forensic yet human detail. It’s the best account of this contentious case I have read, explaining why cobalt is a problem and how Moody went wrong. He was not found guilty of administering cobalt himself, or ordering it to be administered, but he was held to account for what happened in his stables.

Thomas also explores Moody’s career, from his time as a strapper to legendary Sydney trainer TJ Smith, to the horses that put him on the map such as Typhoon Tracy, to the enormous pressure of training Black Caviar.

All of this will be enjoyable for any racing fan. “She looks like she’s actually going slow, which she probably is,’’ he says of Black Caviar. “But she’s got this mammoth stride and the other bastards are going, you know, hell for leather to try and keep up with her.’’

But it is the cobalt drama that dominates this book, just as it did the life of the trainer. He erred, he walked away, and it’s a loss to racing.

Subzero: More than a Melbourne Cup Hero

By Adam Crittenden

Ebury, 304pp, $34.99

The Pumper

By Jim Cassidy, with Andrew Webster

Macmillan, 456pp, $39.99 (HB)

Life As I Know It

By Michelle Payne, with John Harms

MUP, 236pp, $32.99

Moods: The Peter Moody Saga

By Helen Thomas

Nero, 313pp, $34.99