Weighty Matters: Lining Up Shannon With Today's Stars

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday October 1, 2004

MAX PRESNELL

Modern top-liners just aren't set the same demanding tasks as their old-time counterparts, and Shannon makes most modern-day "champions" seem like home-town cream puffs.

Had Shannon, responsible for the greatest Epsom performance, been going into the mile at his second attempt at the race at Randwick on Saturday, the freak sprinter would carry 61kilograms and, with normal luck, win.

Asked to weight Shannon, which captured the Epsom in 1945, on his credentials leading up to his epic Epsom of 1946, Mark Webbey, Racing NSW's chief handicapper, said: "He's a difficult horse to assess [to today's standards] because [owner-trainer] Peter Riddle only gave him limited starts.

"The only way you can get an accurate assessment is [from] his clashes with Flight, who had 3.5kilograms over weight-for-age [57kg], an impossible task when second in the [1944] Doncaster. Flight won two Cox Plates and he donkey-licked her [when they raced each other].

"That being the case you would have to look at a figure about 61kg for Shannon in the Epsom now. His overall record doesn't suggest that because he only had won two group1s leading into his [1946] Epsom. On form you couldn't give him 61kg but on the quality of horse he opposed, in a great period of Australian racing, you have to."

That, of course, is on a 50kg limit nowadays, thus Shannon would have 11kg over the minimum, whereas in 1946 the stallion carried 9st 9lb (61kg) but on a 43kg limit - or 18kg above - and showed a horse can be as great in defeat as in success, going down by a half-head after giving an impossible start due to no fault of his own.

Shannon surpassed his Australian earnings - from 25 starts for 14 wins and seven seconds - in the US, where he was known as Shannon 11. In a series called "Forgotten Champions" in The Blood-Horse magazine in the US last year, Shannon 11 was remembered as good enough to share the horse-of-the-year award in 1948 with the mighty Citation. Yet he was lucky to be allowed to race there.

"Shannon 11's pedigree was never in question in Australia but it took an untimely turn when he was en route to the US in the fall of 1947," The Blood-Horse reported. "Upon close examination [ruling body] The Jockey Club discovered a flaw. Not content to go back four generations or five or nine or 10, the venerable organisation went back further before spotting a heathen.

"The discrepancy lay in the pedigree of a mare named Spaewife in the 11th generation. Seems there was a question over her origin. Instead of 4094 horses in Shannon's first 11 generations being pure, only 4093 measured up."

Seemingly Shannon 11 could not be registered in the US Stud Book but could race. The ruling didn't sit well with the Australian owner W.J.Smith, who had paid 26,000 guineas ($US88,000) in Sydney in August 1947 for the then six-year-old.

"By November, Smith had worked out a deal to sell Shannon11 to Californian Harry Curland for $US100,000 but Curland nixed the deal because of the pedigree confusion," The Blood-Horse explained. "Once on US shores, Shannon 11 could not be returned home because [Australia] did not allow horses to be imported from the US. Shortly after, Los Angeles attorney NeilS.McCarthy, who had acted as agent for Curland, purchased the stallion and The Jockey Club had a change of heart. Without much explanation Shannon 11 was now a 'pure bred'."

Due to acclimatisation problems Shannon11 failed to live up to his billing as "the second coming of Phar Lap", being beaten in his first six US starts. However, he finally started to roll in May, contesting the San Francisco Country Handicap at Bay Meadows. Under John Longden he won by a dozen lengths, breaking Seabiscuit's track record, followed by the Argonaut Handicap at the end of May before the $100,000 Hollywood Gold Cup on July 17.

Critics felt he wasn't humping weights big enough to warrant a position with the best. Sent to San Francisco after a summer break, Shannon11 won three stakes races. In his third start he set a track record and equalled a US best in taking the Forty Niners Handicap in one minute 47.6 seconds for 1800 metres.

Shannon 11 was even better a week later in a 2000m race, the Golden Gate Handicap, in which he established a US record and equalled the world record of 1:59.8.

Following the Forty Niners there was a chance he would take on Citation in the Tanforan Handicap but he was given 127 pounds (57.5kg) against the three-year-old's 123 and McCarthy thought the weights were grossly unfair, and he was retired. For his six wins in 1948 he earned $US211,610. Shannon11 was retired to Spendthrift Farm at Lexington in Kentucky where he sired six stakes winners from 132 foals, including Clem, a top handicapper in 1958. Shannon11 suffered a broken leg in 1955 and was euthanised.

Certainly Shannon11 was never asked to hump the same burdens in the US as he did in Australia and his pinnacle was on his home turf. It was the time of the open barrier, not stalls, and with one horse being unruly before the 1946 Epsom, Darby Munro took Shannon back out of line, which was accepted procedure, not wanting him standing still for too long under his big weight. The clerk of the course took his bridle to walk with him behind the start. Alas, the starter, Jack Gaxieu, didn't notice them and let the field go.

"I was four or five lengths back when he said 'go'," Munro later related. "I had to move up to the barrier to get Shannon going and then muster pace. I thought of not chasing the field, realised I had to but was 12 to 15 lengths behind the second-last horse."

Few could believe what happened in the straight... "I rode desperately and almost made it," Munro said. "A stride past the post we were in front."

The judge signified Blue Legend, also the winner of two Doncasters, had survived by a half-head. Racegoers were not aware of the mishap at the start and an irate reception awaited Munro on his return to the enclosure.

Stewards were called on to "rub out Munro"; one irate spectator clashed so violently with police he was arrested and charged with using indecent language. Another was apprehended when he tried to break into the jockeys' room.

Gaxieu subsequently accepted responsibility and Munro was completely exonerated. The following Monday the crowd cheered and applauded Munro but he wasn't ready to forgive or forget.

In winning, Blue Legend had run 1:36.75. Conservative estimates put Shannon's time as 1:33.5. The course record at the time for the distance was 1:34.75.

Next start Shannon clocked 1:34.5 in the George Main Stakes over the Randwick mile, after being eased down to triumph by six lengths in Australian record time.

And Shannon wasn't as good as Bernborough...

Grand Armee, though, can emulate Shannon this year if he can complete the George Main-Epsom double. The George Main, in more recent decades, has been run before the Epsom, while in Shannon's day it was after. But no horse has taken the double since the change in 1981.

© 2004 Sydney Morning Herald

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