Bruce Clark’s weekly column .
By Bruce Clark
10:47am • 29 November 2022
Bloody “Pop-Up” races – they are everywhere these days.
Call them what you like, Everest’s, anything “Golden” in Sydney, Gong’s, Hunter’s, All-Star Miles in Melbourne, even a Quokka in the West or an Archer or King of the Mountain in Queensland. Shame the idea wasn’t patented.
But before all of them came Bill Gibbins and such a fanciful idea at the time that was, and now is The Jericho Cup at The Bool.
OK The Everest, the world’s richest race on turf was first run in 2017, the original official Jericho came a year later. But the Jericho has a little more history and grassroots passion. Money can’t buy such.
The first Jericho Cup was run in 1918, on a firm 2 on the Jordan River aiming to fool the Turks out of Palestine, Syria and Arabia (read “Bill The Bastard”, Roland Perry, for the full stewards report).
Jericho Cup Day took place at Warrnambool on Sunday. Picture: Jay Town-Racing Photos via Getty Images
But spoiler alert Bill The Bastard, the giant whaler won it (all 730kg of him and a war time legend in the lead-up), the aboriginal handler Jackie Mullagh rode him bareback and with no whip, because his long-time partner Major Michael Shanahan had lost a leg and was obviously stood down.
It’s an amazing story of Australian war time history, they wanted a cross of a Palestine and Melbourne Cup (Palbourne Cup), they got the Jericho instead and 10,000 spectators, 5000 British Infantry and industry soldiers and loads of betting on the race card. And The Turks had no answer.
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Gibbins found that book in 2015 and was determined by his own drive and passion to revive that race and celebrate its anniversary, which he did, personally funded to a tune of over $1m and so much more, before letting his baby go back to Racing Victoria this year for it’s fifth running as he was ensconced in the Epworth Hospital after a lifetime scare.
So, on Sunday at The Bool, appropriately a trainer called Sargent, John, a Kiwi Anzac won it. Appropriately the breeder part-owner of Bastida, has a link to “Bill”. Mick Ormond had his grandfather’s brother at Gallipoli, a horribly failed barrier trial for WWI but who rode for the Light Infantry in 1918 alongside Bill The Bastard.
Bastida (NZ) won the 2022 Jericho Cup at The Bool. Picture: Reg Ryan-Racing Photos via Getty Images
This is the race that spawns such stories and what Gibbins has always wanted and dreamt of. But it wouldn’t be without Bill Gibbins and his incessant door knocking at Racing Victoria, incessant hoop handling and fence jumping to now have this not just a calendar favourite but a carnival embracing more than a race and creating more than a niche but an aspiration.
Some quick Gibbins background, which is not something he embraces other than being a racing man who loves a punt, a decent punt at that.
So, he founded a trucking company called FCL, sold later to LinFox, that gave family man Gibbins the capital to make things real that were real him.
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Try The Rats of Tobruk, when Gibbins outbid a property developer to buy their valuable Albert Park headquarters, then gave it back to them.
Like when Gibbins bought Raelene’s Boyle then down on luck offer of her 1972 Olympic Silver Medal in 1997 and offered it to the Olympic Museum and the athlete herself.
Riding For The Disabled, Wheelchairs For Kids are also part of the Gibbins philanthropy, but he’d be a touch shy reading such here.
What he isn’t shy about, is racing and the engagement with community and the audience.
Bill Gibbins (right) and Bernie Dingle at the Lighthorse Museum in Nar Nar Goon. Picture: Jay Town
It’s how the Jericho Cup started.
“It was December 2015, I went to Warrnambool with the idea of such a race over three miles (4600m) through the paddocks,” Gibbins said.
“I even rang Roland Perry (“the author of “Bill The Bastard”) to tell him and he said ‘good luck with that’ when talking of horses through the paddock.”
“Come Australia Day, I heard from (committeeman) Des Roberts, we were at Safety Beach and it’s a family tradition, I heard there were a few cold feet,” Gibbins said.
So next stop Ballarat and then CEO Lachie Mackenzie. “They were keen, using both the inside and outer track, but it had to be The Bool for mine and they change their mind, so I had them on board,” Gibbins said.
But Racing Victoria and getting a race up is something different.
“It was almost insane, but I expected that, it was never going to easy but let’s leave it at that,” Gibbins said.
Putting up over $1m in prizemoney for the first three years plus associated costs and thoroughly unique trophies didn’t hurt but Gibbins handed over his “baby” ‘to RV this year though still keeping his hands on.
It is not one race but a calendar of qualifying races across Australasia borne out in the final fields for the Cup and the Consolation and exactly what Gibbins had hope for, and expected.
“They told me I was kidding, I wouldn’t get a field, but look at what happened, not just The Cup but across the day, who cares about the quality of the horses, it about the concept and the competition,” Gibbins said.
Gibbins is worth listening too. He has no agenda on the politics of racing yet has created a carnival of his own, valuable to the Warrnambool and broader community as well as racing but so much wider with the Light Infantry involvement who compete with tent-pegging events to be part of the race day.
“We have had engagement from clubs all over Australia and New Zealand from Albany to Canberra where the winner came from, to Riccarton where the runner-up came across. Just look at the horses, they came from everywhere.”
And while all this was happening, Gibbins was laid back in the Epworth Hospital on dialysis in a rude late health shock.
“From all the messages I received, FaceTime’s, all those things I felt like I was there more than ever before,” he said.
“If I wasn’t there, I couldn’t have been in a better place.”
The crowd watch on at the 2022 Jericho Cup day at The Bool. Picture: Jay Town-Racing Photos via Getty Images
Gibbins felt lethargic Oaks Eve. Ran out of petrol going for a walk, his wife Yolanda suggested a blood test. He did so but at 10pm that night got a call from the doctor to say basically get to hospital. The kidneys are working at seven per cent.
“Yolanda said call an ambulance, I said I won’t go where they take me, I’ll drive myself to Epworth emergency and I was in straight away and been here ever since, hopefully out Friday.”
“I’ve got to say, they have a brilliant menu, 15 options for dinner on the TV, that will be Yolanda’s job once I get out.”
But start talking to Gibbins re racing and the horses, not the punt or the politics and you get a sense of where racing should or could be heading.
“Let’s focus on the horse, why are we pandering to the negatives all the time,” Gibbins said.
“Mankind had has had connection to the horse since 5000BC, apparently the first time a man threw a leg over a horse,” Gibbins said.
“Why would an animal that big let a person like a human control them and thank goodness they do.
“They have let us plough the ground, pump out water, generate our electricity, our form of transport, our best worker, just an amazing animal, yet we pander to nonsense rather than educate the real story.
“Forget being down on all fours to the negatives, promote our positives.”
“And give the Melbourne Cup back to the people, I grew up on that, the nominations, the doubles markets, now we have left our fans out of the involvement. This is our race forever.”
As is his Jericho Cup.
