Image courtesy Martin Parsons - Arthur Ward with Foresight at Botany Bay
Our Arthur Ward nostalgic journey took another turn this week, when I received two more photos. These pictures came from Arthur’s great nephew Martin Parsons, who happened to see our Redcraze flashback recently.
These old “rippers” were snapped almost fifty years ago at La Perouse, where dozens of Randwick trained horses were taken for a swim, in an endeavour to give them a break from the tedium of stable life.
Image courtesy Martin Parsons - Arthur Ward with Foresight at Botany Bay
These photos show Arthur Ward, then seven years into his training career, with the very talented Foresight - one of several horses in his stable owned by media magnate Sir Frank Packer.
Foresight was a chestnut gelding (Wilkes-Ptolemy) who raced into his ninth year winning 17 races from 58 starts. With the help of Margaret Helback of the ATC Heritage office, I can tell you that Foresight had 4 starts as a 2YO, and actually finished out of a place in Storm Queen’s Golden Slipper.
He won his Maiden at Hawkesbury in 1966 and followed up with an Intermediate Hcp win at Newcastle. Soon after he put together three straight wins at Randwick, ridden in two of them by Des Lake, and the other by Ron Quinton.
His next win, some months later was in the Burragorang Hcp at Warwick Farm with Kevin Langby on board. When Langby came out of his time, he became stable jockey for Arthur Ward, and was actually retained by Sir Frank Packer to ride all horses that he had in the Ward stable.
Kevin was to win another ten races on Foresight, including the 1967 Linlithgow Stakes at Flemington, the 1968 Newcastle Newmarket and the 1969 Rawson Stakes (then 7fls 110yds).
Langby and Foresight went close to Group 1 victory in the 1969 Doncaster, despite a horror barrier. “He had blazing gate speed, and crossed them easily”, recalled Langby this week. “He led until the last little bit when Bye Bye (N.Voigt) flashed up to beat us”.
Langby’s retainer with Sir Frank Packer, obviously worked only Sir Frank’s way. Two days after the Doncaster, Foresight backed up to win the All Aged Stakes with George Moore replacing the stunned Langby. “I spoke to Sir Frank at the races and he simply said he wanted to try Moore on Foresight”, recalled Langby. “He paid my retainer out in full and that was that”.
A month later Moore won the Rosehill Civic Hcp on Foresight and this was the race around which folklore was created. The story goes that Sir Frank had dinner guests on the Saturday night, who hadn’t seen the Channel 9 News clip of Foresight’s win. Legend has it that he rang the TCN switchboard, and got through to a terrified kid in the videotapes department.
Next thing, thousands of viewers were confused and very angry when the replay of Foresight’s win came unannounced, in the middle of the Saturday night movie. Fifty years later there seems to be some doubt about the authenticity of the story. I was around Channel 9 at the time, and I recall the occasion and the “buzz” it generated at the time.
It all revolved around the honest old gelding you can see in these photos taken half a century ago, on the shores of Botany Bay.