Tommy Woodcock and Reckless 1977 (printed 2010)

A$200 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Type C photograph on paper (sheet: 31.8 cm x 39.6 cm, image: 27.8 cm x 35.0 cm), small handling crease lower right, else fine. An iconic image of the great horse trainer, another example of which is in the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra. Aaron ‘Tommy’ Woodcock (1905–1985), horse strapper and trainer, was the son of a Cobb Co driver and was close to horses from childhood. Apprenticed as a jockey at fourteen, he moved from the north coast of NSW to Randwick, where he won three of his first four starts. Although at the age of sixteen he weighed just 32 kilos, in due course he physically outgrew the job. Horses loved him and in 1929, trainer Harry Telford asked him to care for Phar Lap full-time. The pair was inseparable; Woodcock often slept beside the beast and legend has it that Phar Lap (or Bobby, as Woodcock called him) would not accept food from anyone else. Phar Lap died at the age of six in California in 1932, Woodcock by his side; Woodcock had his own theory as to the cause of his death, but he never revealed it. In 1931 Woodcock had gained his trainer’s licence; after working on the land during the war, he ran racehorses out of stables at Mentone and then Mordialloc. Late in his career, Reckless, who won the Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane Cups, was prominent amongst his steeds. This photograph was taken before the 1977 Melbourne Cup, in which Reckless ran second to Bart Cumming’s Gold and Black. Bruce Postle (b. 1940) had heard that Tommy Woodcock slept alongside hi

• Binding: Hardcover

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