Phar Lap

[Calzone Lord]

With his suspicious death and all -- and looking at his form -- I wonder if this horse was heavily doped throughout his racing career.

He seemed too impossibly good to be true...and after a dismal 1-for-10 start to his career no less.



It appears almost comical how much better he was than everything else in his Aussie races. He made a complete mockery of that field under true handicap conditions on dirt and ran very fast despite a stupid ride.

[DEES3]

I was looking at his Wikipedia entry the other day, and it claims that his heart (which is on display at a museum) weighs in at 6 lbs, versus 3ish for the average thoroughbred. It also said that horses were often given arsenic solutions, and testing on his mane showed repeated dosing over his lifetime.

[Calzone Lord]

Yeah -- it's suspicious to me. I'm sure a lot of others weren't clean either though.

When Phar Lap failed in the 1931 Melbourne Cup -- he carried 150lbs versus 96lbs carried by the winner.

That's a 54lbs break in weights at a distance of 2-miles to a fellow older male.

On the Ragozin Sheets and Thoro-Graph sheets -- a 54lbs weight break at the distance of 2-miles is worth more than 35 lengths.

The 3rd place finisher carried 122lbs (4th highest weighted in a race with 14 horses) and broke down just after the wire.

He was basically so invincible that he had to be "handicapped into oblivion" in order to be tested.

[Calzone Lord]

A couple of neat images:

Here is Phar Lap getting off of a boat after a 10,000 mile ride to America prior to the Agua Caliente.




Here are win pictures of Phar Lap's "Flemington Assault" when he easily won four different Group 1 races in a span of 7 days -- including the Melbourne Cup as a major highweight. Three of these four races are still Group 1's to this day.

[Revidere]

He also raced with a bar shoe since Harry Telford "sored" him to lower his value when he purchased a share from Davis after the lease was up.

Also, Johnny Longden rode Bahamas against Phar Lap at Caliente. Just some trivial stuff that probably only matters to me.