Chapter 13

Joker Takes All

To the racing public, Jack Dow had a perpetually jovial face, always full of smiles. But to the Morans he was more like a friendly, cunning old uncle of whom it was wise to be just a little wary. Such characters did not readily just happen to enlist the services and loyalty of hard men such as the Kane brothers. When the stewards did ban Jack from the tracks, the well-connected entrepreneur simply set about expanding his SP operations. Using the Kanes and their docker associates as muscle, he created what was probably the biggest network of illegal SPs in Australia. Jack had control over all of the SP operations in the Riverina, New South Wales, all along the Murray River, all country Victoria and all of Melbourne. His influence spread far more afield, almost anywhere you could find a racetrack in Australia. The man was a phenomenon.

Jack’s been dead for a few years now, since late 2006, so it’s safe to tell a little more about him. As most people saw him in his later years, Jack was simply a hard working and well loved racing family patriarch with a colourful and enterprising past. He was all that. As he re-emerged on the race tracks from the mid-1980s, no doubt buoyed by the fact he had been named as God yet escaped the tiresome shackles of a crusade, Jack had that cherub-faced air of content that no man would find a threat and no woman could help but adore. He was also celebrated as the creative old rascal who turned a good bit of coin from a brilliant scheme where he and two mates, an engineer and a wood carver, developed penny-in-the-slot horse rides for children. Now, these novelty rides were an instant sensation. The very first ride, placed in the front of a Brunswick supermarket in 1950, had pulled a queue of parents with children waiting their turn about 50 metres long when Jack returned a week later. Jack then knew that he was on such a winner he placed the slot horses in all parts of Victoria and the New South Wales border district. He named them after famous cup winners such as Phar Lap, Carbine, Tulloch and Gunsynd. But as I’ve already stated, Jack’s activities were far more extensive and enterprising than anyone in the general public would have known.

To give Jack his full due, the slot horses were a true stroke of genius. He had provided the right product at the right time, and not just for the kids. During the 1950s the rides were seen by some as iconic symbols of Australian post-war optimism, often pictured with deliriously happy children in magazines such as The Australian Women’s Weekly. By the time he was in his mid-30s, Jack had an estimated 600 of these wooden horses all over the place, providing countless hours of imaginary glory to the nation’s young and innocent. At the same time of course, he was expanding his SP operations and would be collecting more than pennies as he visited the towns of the wooden champions, which more often than not were in easy striking range of a local racetrack. And as Jack became busier he could not be everywhere at once, but a few of his wooden horses would be, at times also providing him with useful codes for locations and incidents. So, for instance, if Jack happened to hear that his stead Gunsynd had gum in the slot and a chipped hoof, then that could well mean someone out Corowa way had failed to pay what they owed and would soon lose a few teeth.

When the Kane brothers were on the wane as SPs, Lewis and Tuppence Moran were well placed to fill much of the vacuum in their operations. All of them over the years were reasonably good mates with Jack Dow, of course, as he had been a generous benefactor. A regular patron of the arts, let’s say, in human movement as well as the sport of kings. Jack and Tripp would regularly lay off bets with Lewis, as he aged and diversified from crunching bones to crunching numbers. Alan Tripp would of course lay off with many other prolific SPs such as Harry Price and John Rogan. Networks were the lifeline of the larger SPs as they had to spread their risks. We were all part of the same rogue’s circle. Which is why the following yarn is also a bit hard to believe, but it does demonstrate a little more about the characters involved.

Around the middle of 1984, when Jack was about 60 but still possessed of a hawk’s vision and all other faculties, a pair of very pissed gunmen had the audacity to raid his perfectly respectable but illegal SP operation. Word had obviously got out that Lewis Moran was due to make a large deposit earlier that day, some $14,000 in cash, and these two were there to collect. Armed with two pistols, a .45 Colt automatic and a .357 Magnum, these two clowns burst into Jack’s SP exchange and settling rooms, a flat underneath his home in Princes St, Flemington. They wore balaclavas, which of course did not hide their eyes as much as help to envelope a heavy bouquet of beer about them.

Despite a thunderous entry, the door smashed open with the butts of their guns, threats to kill and many unseemly profanities to boot, the two beer-gutted bandits simply failed to impress. While they certainly sounded fearsome, they could not command the situation with any real authority. The lead gunman had already stumbled twice before he bellowed: ‘Give us the fucken money!’

Jack was there, along with several of his operators including Alan Tripp, Rick Cummins and a local hotel publican who doubled as an SP and had survived the Great Bookie Robbery eight years before. Naturally, they were all stunned by this escapade, which would have to be called the Great Bookie Fuck Up. The gunmen had made a mess of things from the start. It was nothing short of a total embarrassment.

As the lead blundering oaf brandished his Magnum .357 about, things got even worse. Another mutual associate to all concerned, Gary Ball, the trainer of the greyhound China Trip, walked into the rooms. China Trip, coincidentally, was the only greyhound ever to win two Australia Cups, the equivalent of the Melbourne Cup. Ball was instantly wise to the identity of one of gunmen – it was his occasional drinking mate, Desmond ‘Tuppence’ Moran. Tuppence and his mate, a good friend of his for many years, were not destined for any of the success and infamy of the Chuck Bennett gang. It seemed while Tuppence and his mate had done a fine job of rehearsing their theatrics, they totally failed to account for possible cash movement, the need for surveillance, timing and the fact they would be easily recognised.

So as soon as he stepped into the room, Gary took one look at this pair in balaclavas and instantly swiped the back of Tuppence’s head to remove his disguise.

‘What are you two fucken idiots doing here?’ he shouted. Then it was like someone had hit the pause button on the whole room, for they were all part of the same wider circle. The momentum of the gunmen had slowed to a standstill and was about to hit reverse.

Once they were exposed, Tuppence and his mate backed away from going any further with their threats to use weapons. The idiots were doomed to failure in any case, because when they stuck Jack up all the money had already been taken to the bank. There was just the change in the gents’ pockets, chump change. Jack had stated this as he firmly asked the two twits to kindly fuck off. They did, and not much more was said on that. There were no police called, that’s for sure. They scuttled away like rats in the night.

Coburg Football Club’s 1985 captain-coach, Phil Cleary, who was also an independent federal MP after taking Hawke’s seat in 1992, does mention the above incident in an article on his website, philcleary.com.au. Ironically though, under a headline that names Tuppence, and an article that rosily recalls the blunderer’s one good deed as an impromptu bouncer for the gritty northern suburbs team, Cleary adds a postscript which that incorrectly credits Lewis Moran as the would-be armed robber in the caper I’ve described. The Cleary article also nominates only Alan Tripp as a victim of the robbery, although there was no actual robbery in the end, but give him his due as he did foretell that the full story would surface one day. So there you go, that’s the full story. Much as I despise Lewis even more than Tuppence, I felt compelled to get the correct version of events recorded here. There is another more recent version of what I call the Great Bookie Fuck Up, as recorded by the biographer of Alan Tripp. The account has considerable violence, no Jack Dow present, and no exposure of the gunmen, although there is of course a suspicion of the Morans.

Whatever was the case, I am not going to enter a debate with Alan Tripp over the matter, especially as he was there. But having suffered the relative ignominy of grilling my source – at the kind insistence of Brett Quine – over the correct version of events between bouts of bronchial infection, I will also stand by my version as stated. Though plainly ill-conceived on any account, the attempted robbery was like a watershed event for Lewis and Tuppence. It showed the Morans had grown tired of Jack and Tripp taking most of the cream and were willing to risk their lives for a bigger share. It was a desperate move, for, make no mistake, if you robbed a bank and got caught you faced a few years’ jail, but rob an SP like Jack and what you faced was a fatal round of bullets.

Fortunately for the Morans though, Jack’s main enforcer Brian Kane would always be more loyal to another painter and docker than a strictly racing man.

It also struck me that for a former member of federal parliament, the naivety of Captain Cleary’s story about Tuppence and friends is almost beyond belief. The introduction of this bearded ninny, though I mean him no real disrespect, refers to an era at the club in the mid 1980s. ‘In the days when Allan [sic] Tripp was president at Coburg and I was the coach, Tuppence Moran was a regular at our games,’ Cleary wrote. ‘It was a time VFA football was very popular on Sundays with people from the racing fraternity and Allan was a very prominent bookmaker; an SP bookmaker, they said!’

Give me a break. Absolutely everyone who knew Tripp knew that he was an SP and a very well-connected one at that. He was Jack’s son-in-law. So, in this rollicking account, Cleary recalls Tuppence and Lewis, Alphonse Gangitano, and associated criminals and SPs who had mixed at the Coburg club. Another story by Cleary describes one of Jason Moran’s many psychotic outbursts where he had bitten the ear off a Coburg club official at the Prince of Wales. But the former captain-coach reckons he had little idea of what sort of business the Morans were into. He wrote: ‘Occasionally I wondered what Lewis Moran did for a living…he was a racing man. It was something he shared with our president Alan Tripp.’

Now, of course, Alan Tripp had stepped in as president at Coburg in 1985 but years before he had stepped up as the heir apparent to Jack Dow’s huge SP operation. Tripp was well involved from the late 1970s in the SP empire that the Kanes and the Morans had given a fearsome level of respect among punters. Sorry if it should offend any racing fraternity sensibilities, but you don’t get to build illegal betting empires without considerable bone crunching along the way. On the odd occasion, I was called upon by the Morans to enter into situations said by Lewis to have been on behalf of Alan Tripp. Now I cannot say this was true, as Lewis was a major bullshit artist at times. What I can say is that if there was something in it for Lewis then it was between Alan and Lewis. The two were on very familiar terms but would often give one another little more than a polite nod in passing at the Laurel Hotel, for Lewis was already well known as an outright criminal thug and Tripp held sway in some high places. Yet despite being able to get publicly matey with Prime Minister Hawke in the mid 1980s, Tripp was still Australia’s most convicted and notorious SP, courtesy of the crusader Costigan. Still active and to police a much sought scalp into the late 1980s, Tripp was faced with the real prospect of jail at his next court appearance.

And so it came about that Jack Dow and Alan Tripp ran a recon trip to tropical Vanuatu in 1991 to see if operations could be moved there. Except for the communications infrastructure and the small matter of official approval, the setting was ideal. Jack himself had given the idea the nod. By early 1993 Tripp had managed to gain favourable access to the tiny island nation’s finance minister, Willy Jimmy, and along with it a licence to run what would become an internet gambling goldmine. Tripp started the Number One Betting Shop and, unheard of for any SP, began to openly market his services. Number One was open seven days a week and could offer a punt on any major sports event, which soon saw it grow to a major success. Infuriated by the rogue racing outlaw’s very legal and popular shop in Vanuatu, some stiff from either the police or TAB had written to the Vanuatu Government to inform them of Tripp’s full criminal record, including possession of marijuana. This led to Tripp’s visa cancellation, and a meeting with Hawke.

This was 1994 and with a little help from Hawke as a referee, and a policeman willing to write that the amount of marijuana involved had been minor, the visa was reinstated. Tripp was back in business. But as his fortunes and turnover grew, envious tax hunters in various state government authorities continued to persecute the man who was in the right place at the right time for the online punting explosion.

Lewis and I were in fits of laughter on one particular Monday, sometime late in the year 2000, as we listened to Alan Tripp tear into the NSW Government’s moves against his free trade operation on the national radio broadcaster, the ABC. It was a ripper, so I have since looked up a transcript as a reminder of his exact words at the time, Monday, 21 August 2000.

‘This Act or this law that they have passed, it sets – really, it sets New South Wales thinking back 20, 30, 40 years,’ a fired up Alan Tripp told reporter John Stewart, of The World Today. ‘It goes back into the communism days, and we’re taking away all your free rights, your democratic rights. If you’ve got good competition out there, it makes everyone improve, all the bookmakers, the TAB and that. If you haven’t, they’ll sit back and rest on their laurels.’ Now, we were at the Laurel Hotel as we listened, and as Alan said the words ‘rest on their laurels’ it was the only time I had ever seen Lewis spit any beer back into the glass. We laughed for a week. We naturally assumed it was a tribute from his old friend and business partner.

So, especially with his national broadcast, it was obvious to all that the legendary Jack Dow had not given one of his daughters away to any slouch in Alan Tripp. Jack himself had never sought to bring any attention to his real betting operations since the 1950s, whereas Alan was right in the faces of the authorities, saying: Yes I am a convicted SP and now my business is totally legal. In another part of the ABC Radio interview, Alan denies any suggestion he is doing anything illegal, much in a manner reminiscent of the late Kerry Packer when he put a Senate inquisitor in his place. Most people I know who saw that classic broadcast thought Packer had the balls to be forgiven almost anything.

Alan’s voice was indignant, wounded by the injustice of his persecution, as he capably put the case for the enterprising bookmaker as a legitimate business operator. ‘If there was something devious about it, I don’t want to know about it, ’cause I’m the one that would suffer. See, it’s in my interest or in offshore betting shops’ interest, to have racing as clean as possible, because if it’s not, who suffers, the bookmaker that takes the bet. That is just absolutely a ludicrous statement really.’ Beautiful stuff, Alan, plenty of ticker there. Alan had become a regular international ambassador for rogue Melbourne SPs. And while Jack shunned the limelight in his later years, you can rest assured he was nonetheless still up to his prankster ways around the same time Alan hit the airwaves.

Market forces and a good deal of popular opinion backed Alan Tripp. Number One had a turnover of more than $800 million in 2001, which had grown to more than a billion dollars in 2002. Alan achieved global fame as he sold that year for the sensational price of $100 million to the UK-listed Sportingbet. A condition of the sale was that Alan step aside from being involved as the business became Sportingbet Australia and was moved to Darwin, in the Northern Territory. There were some legal issues that slowed the final payment, but again with a little help from Bob Hawke, this time as a negotiator, they were settled in 2004 and Alan was no doubt a happy man. Then as luck would have it, another opportunity came to the attention of Alan Tripp, that of a struggling Northern Territory online gambling business Sportsbet, available for $250,000. For a man with connections such as Alan, the licensed business could easily be turned around, but his string of SP convictions meant that he could not be involved. Not so for his son, Matty Tripp, the grandson of Jack Dow, who took the helm of a business that was valued at $300 million in 2009.

The old master who can take great credit for all their good fortunes, Jack, ascended to the heavens at the age of 83. And around the same time as Alan was giving the government phoneys some stick in 2000, Jack saw to it that he left behind a public memento of sorts just to say he could still pull a racing prank from beyond the grave. Perhaps he had felt a tap on the shoulder when he set things in motion and wanted to ensure his true immortality as an Australian racing identity. Hell knows, he was already the stuff of legends. Whatever his motives, Jack pulled off what I believe to be his last great scam with true artistry. All Jack needed was $1000 and he could buy himself what many would view as a permanent veneer of respectability. His image, essentially his upper torso and face, would be endorsed as a character of distinction by the Australian Racing Museum, run by the same authorities who had banned him from the tracks half a century earlier.

The museum had commissioned an oil painting by artist Judith Leman, primarily to honour the twenty inaugural inductees of the new Australian Racing Hall of Fame, to be opened in 2001. These were the twenty people and horses that Australian racing authorities considered our nation’s finest, forever captured on a massive canvas. The artist’s brief was to also include contemporary racing identities in the crowd behind the inductees, and to help cover costs the Australian Racing Museum also allowed people who paid $1000 to be a face in the crowd. When Jack Dow learnt of this opportunity to be associated with Australia’s greatest achievers for generations to come, perhaps forever, he could not resist the chance to get involved.

As observed by journalist Rhett Kirkwood in the Inside Racing magazine of September 2009, when Jack had his face included in the painting, he had ‘ensured he would have a small but permanent place in our racing history’. Kirkwood clearly delighted in Jack’s skulduggery as he wrote up his life story, and the time Jack stuck it up the authorities, though of course not in those words, for the official magazine of the Victorian Racing Industry. ‘So, former SP bookie Jack Dow sent off a cheque and now features prominently – complete with red tie – in a painting featuring Australia’s most famous turf heroes,’ Kirkwood wrote. ‘Considering he had been warned off racetracks for years, it caused much hilarity in the family.’ Of course, only Jack’s family and close friends, which in the racing fraternity numbered in the thousands, were aware of Jack’s last great scam until that Inside Racing story appeared. Racing Victoria kindly allowed a photograph of the painting, which features in the picture section at the end of this book. The painting has Jack positioned very, very close to Australia’s most celebrated horse, Phar Lap, with only the strapper at the reins between them.

There’s another interesting little story about Jack that very few know. He had a horse called Inter Musician in the late 1990s and it was trained by Flemington trainer Mick Cerchi, who is still around today, I think. Jack had his own private bloke who did the track work, went out and got the times on this and the times on that. He did private track work, as a timer, a track clocker I suppose. His name was Kevin Ryan and this bloke was no dill, because he had also worked in Melbourne for Bart Cummings.

At any rate, the day before this particular race day, on Monday, 16 June 1997, Jack’s rung Kevin up and said: ‘Kevin, let’s go mate. We’re going to take the Mildura Cup tomorrow and it’s going to be bloody wet, so rug up.’ Now, this Inter Musician has won eight races in town, it’s a city winner. It’s a good horse. Kevin naturally expressed his doubts the trip would be worth the effort. Undeterred, the old master Jack just gave a laugh and said: ‘Kev, we’re going up to bag it.’ As I’ve said, Kevin is no dill and starts to think maybe Jack has had a few too many beers, something not entirely unheard of before then.

‘You know we’ll never bag it up there,’ Kevin pleaded with Jack, ‘the horse will be two to one on, three to one on.’ Even though Inter Musician had run eighth in the Swan Hill Cup just the week before, with the same jockey, Steven Vella, it would still be heavily favoured owing to the city wins. Kevin felt obliged to remind Jack that he thought the trip was too much of a gamble. It was too much of a risk, even if there was also a $25,000 prize pool and a nice shiny cup to boot. Kevin was almost beside himself at this point, and blurted: ‘Don’t be fucken stupid, mate, it’s impossible.’

But again, old Jack would have none of this negativity, and curtly replied, ‘Mate, we will bag it. And we’ll get even money or similar.’ Jack was still sure of himself: ‘Yes, we will mate. So I’ll see you down the stables at six.’

And it did turn out to be a special day all around. As trumpeted in the Mildura-based Sunraysia Daily newspaper the next day, Tuesday, 17 June 1997, Mick Cerchi had become no less than the Riverina region’s latest royalty. The front page of the sport section proclaimed ‘Mick Cerchi our Cup King!’ And the new King Mick was well worthy of the title too, for as the story says, he ‘marked a personal triumph when he led in his third Mildura Gold Cup winner in three years’.

The report (see the picture section) noted Inter Musician carried the heaviest weight on the field, a handicap of 62 kilograms, which Cerci had apparently said was a ‘real concern’ before the race, with doubts among connections that he would start. Nonetheless, with a strong ride by Vella, the gelding ‘produced a devastating run down the Mildura straight’ to win the $25,000 first prize by a whopping margin of five-and-a-half lengths.

The Sunraysia Daily noted that Inter Musician had set such a blistering time it fell just 2.3 seconds short of the record set seven years earlier by Nimble Man. It was a fantastic performance and the news report celebrated the triumph. A bumper crowd had been entertained while one lucky Flemington trainer took out a personal trifecta.

There was one aspect of the report that did puzzle me, however, and that was where Inter Musician was said to be owned by a syndicate from Sydney and Brisbane. This could have been true in part, but for whatever reason it obviously fell a fraction short of the full truth as the owners can be verified on the website of Racing Victoria, where again a touch of that old Jack magic is recorded for posterity. They are listed as J A Sylvester, J Dow and T Mylonas.

As Jack’s special day at the races came near an end, there was great jocularity at the bar. Even the stewards enjoyed a few beers with a bloke whose reputation was as well deserved as Jack’s. Indeed, there were more than a few beers. One of the committee members had to remind the old master to collect the actual Mildura Gold Cup. He said, ‘Oh Jack, don’t forget to get your trophy.’ And Jack says, ‘Yeah no worries.’ Most people have left the track by this time as Jack goes up to collect the trophy from the committee rooms. Remember by this time also Jack was a fair age and had probably three daughters, and one of them was already married to Alan Tripp. Another one was probably married, and there were grandchildren about and everything; his clan was a fair size. At any rate, Jack and Kevin both went to collect the trophy. When they got to the committee room, Jack boomed, ‘So where are the Mildura Cup winnings?’ A steward motioned to a table off to his side, still adorned with several impressive trophies and said, ‘There they are, over there.’ Jack was taken aback by the unexpected booty as he asked, ‘What? All of those?’ And the steward just said, ‘Yeah, they are all yours.’

All the way home in Jack’s red Mercedes, Jack and Kevin were talking about all the trophies they had won for the one race. They couldn’t believe it. The steward had clearly given them the trophies for half the entire race meeting. With his judgement a little impaired at the time, Jack had decided to take the lot. And so when he got home, still not entirely sober, Jack went around to one of his daughters’ homes and handed them out to the grandkids, giving a silver plate to one of them, glasses to another, all that sort of thing. A couple of days later one of the committee men from Mildura rang Jack and said, ‘Jack, you’ve got the trophies for half the entire meeting.’ They were all probably pissed anyway, all of them, Jack, the stewards and so forth, everyone. So after they rang him up, poor old Jack had to go around to the grandkids and round up all the trophies because he had to take them back.

At the end of the day, the events at the Mildura Cup of 1997 related to Jack were more of a misadventure than misdemeanour. No harm done. And I am certain this story will be but one of many yet to be told about old Jack Dow. Indeed, just when you may have thought my revelations on the old charmer exhausted, I can tell you now that Jack has continued to haunt racing authorities from beyond the grave with more than just his fine image. He has left behind a genuine mystery perhaps even worthy of stirring the dead, as the official records of his indiscretions in the 1950s have simply disappeared from Racing Victoria files. In fact, whether Jack as a young jockey existed at all has to now be officially in question, as his Jockey Licensing Card has gone walkabout. It is not there. You see, every trainer and jockey on the track, from early last century at least, has had to be registered and licensed with the proper racing authority. In the 1950s it was the Victorian Trotting and Racing Association (VTRA). The cards were mandatory and recorded the dates of all licences, suspensions and disqualifications. If stewards thought it warranted, the cards also had notes and references to further explain any disqualification. Yet sure enough, Jack’s records have gone missing from the current authority, Racing Victoria.

How do I know? Curious as to the exact nature of Jack’s early track indiscretions, I asked Quiney to rummage about the racing records. And while it is open to the public, the iron gateway to the Racing Victoria’s Records Library is far removed from the inviting fields of green at the State Library. On entry to the racing authority’s grey, video-monitored fortress between Epsom Rd and the north-eastern border of Flemington Racecourse, our media outlaw approached the service desk for directions. It was more like trying to gain entry to an elite men’s club or maximum security jail, where he was asked to state whether he had an appointment, to identify himself, purpose of the visit, sign the visitors’ book – and then wait for a personal escort to the library. Quiney did not have an appointment and seriously doubts he would have gained access if not for a previous telephone conversation with a staffer whom he believes he should not name here, lest that person’s name be sullied by association.

However, the Records Library is found down a series of corridors in the huge complex, which also houses the Australian Racing Museum. Accommodated in a modest fluoro-lit space about half the size of a school classroom, the library neatly stores all the pre-computer Jockey Licensing Cards and Trainer Licensing Cards, dated back to the very early 1900s, in box files. And sure enough, just as an industry insider had tipped, Jack’s official Jockey Licensing Card had vanished into thin air. Not even a Post-it note to say it was on loan. Holy horseshit! How could such a thing happen in a place with security to match a prison? Dare I suggest Jack himself arranged to have them buried at the same time as his corpse, perhaps to take a little tarnish off the family name? Appearances always were big on Jack’s agenda.

Of course, while it would be highly unlikely and irregular, the card may have simply been misplaced. On his visit to the library in February 2011, Quiney asked a researcher to assist with a re-check for the missing card. The researcher saw it was definitely not there. However, he did find a card that he at first thought to be Jack’s. It was another John Dow, John being the more formal version of Jack, a name popularised by American influences. This was John Dow senior, and he had had this same age-yellowed card, his Trainer Licensing Card, registered in his name on 29 July 1932. The researcher confirmed it had to be Jack’s father, with Jack Dow junior only eight or nine years old at the time. So if my theory is right and Jack did have his card pulled to clean up the family history, then he stuffed up good and proper. He should have had his father’s records pulled as well.

John Dow senior was a rascal and rogue of the highest order in his own right. He was disqualified from being a trainer on 15 August 1932, a little more than two weeks after being granted his licence, for drugging a horse on 3 August. While the drug is not mentioned, a dash of arsenic was popular at the time, and it was recorded on his card as a ‘violation of Rules of Racing 226(g) – administering a drug to Vaincre, which ran at Ascot meeting on 3rd August’. Senior was also recorded as ‘disqualified together with Mrs E Fleming – lessee’ for a period of 12 months. The incident must have had fair gravity though, because all of Dow senior’s subsequent attempts to regain his licence failed. His application for a trainer’s licence in late August 1933 was ‘not entertained’ by the Victorian Trotting and Racing Association, neither were his applications of 1934 and March and September in 1941. No doubt a persistent man, senior applied one more time in July 1953. This time he was perhaps entertained, but the result was the same, recorded as ‘not granted’.

The results of Vaincre’s drugging were not recorded on Dow senior’s card, but they were in The Australasian newspaper on 6 August 1932. Vaincre started at twelve to one and romped home to win by three-quarters of a length. There was no mention of the drugging, but Vaincre had won the Ascot Plate, part of the Pony Racing circuit run by Jack Wren. The older punters preferred the ponies, horses under 14.3 hands, because it was seen as the working man’s sport. And because it was beneath the mainstream, the ponies also allowed more enterprising trainers to try their luck at various opportunities.

Whatever the reason behind Jack’s missing jockey card, it is a mystery related to a character of such rich historical skulduggery that it should cause authorities no small measure of disbelief, grief and anguish. Just the right emotional mix that racing’s king of the rogues and benefactor of the billion-dollar bookie would have liked.