Peter Pan The Forgotten Story of Phar Lap's Successor

by Owers, Jessica

• ISBN13: 9781742750217
• ISBN10: 1742750214
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-01-01
• Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia

Summary

In 1932, they said there would never be another Phar Lap. Yet that same year there came a racehorse so wildly brilliant that he was instantly compared to the dead champion. He was Peter Pan.

Author Biography

It was easy to fall in love with Phar Lap, but Jessica Owers was more interested in the horse that came after him - an athletic blonde thoroughbred called Peter Pan. It led to her first book. "Initially it was Peter's beauty that got me. His blonde hair made him a very unusual thoroughbred. But the more I looked into him the more I couldn't believe it. Australia had forgotten this horse, and he'd been a giant of the turf." Writing the life of a 1930s racehorse wasn't something Jessica planned on. After a combined degree in environmental science and journalism at the University of Stirling, Scotland, she returned to Sydney where she worked as a riding instructor, then a writer for Breeding&Racing and Outback magazines. Since freelancing, her words and photographs have appeared in Turf Monthly, Racing Life, In Breeding and The Thoroughbred, and various books and publications across the racing industry. She has met Vintage Crop, Choisir, and enjoyed a private audience with Exceed And Excel. But the horses she would most like to meet are dead. "If you could drop me back in Sydney in 1932, I'd walk straight to Randwick." Jessica was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1980, and was an Australian by 1984. Her infatuation with horses began before she can remember and, at the age of seven, she told her mother she wanted to be a "book writer". At that stage, she never dreamed her two passions were related. Speaking about Peter Pan, she says it was a privilege to write about him. "The turf history of Australia is a magical genre. I've lived in a permanent state of 1930s during the writing of After Phar Lap. There was such beauty and colour attached to the story, and I fell head over heels for Peter Pan." Peter Pan's life is the latest to hit Jessica's bookshelf. The biographies of Secretariat, Citation, Ruffian, Seasbiscuit, Man O'War, Sham, Northern Dancer, Cigar, Mill Reef, Eclipse, Red Rum, Phar Lap, Carbine and Takeover Target are already there, to name a few. "American authors have the thoroughbred bio down to an art," she says. "I've been reading their work for years. Who can forget the impact that Laura Hillenbrand left with Seabiscuit? She proved that a horse book really could capture entire nations."

Table of Contents

Conversions	p. xi
Weight	p. xi
Racetrack Distances	p. xii
Pedigree	p. xiii
Prologue	p. 1
Alwina	p. 5
Pantheon	p. 16
Good fortune is as necessary as a good racehorse	p. 22
The first start	p. 29
The first win	p. 38
Rising to fame	p. 47
'A regular bobby dazzler'	p. 56
'Not even the celestial horses could have won from there'	p. 68
The longest two days in horse racing	p. 90
The 1932 Melbourne Cup	p. 96
Horse racing changes overnight	p. 115
The glorious uncertainty of the turf	p. 117
'A horse can't do much more than win'	p. 132
'He's only a four-year-old, and a young one at that'	p. 152
The rest of 1933	p. 168
'Peter Pan is only one horse, note two or three'	p. 172
A week in 1934	p. 193
'Why is this horse so good?'	p. 196
'Gentlemen like you'	p. 212
Brilliant things	p. 215
The Sir Herbert Maitland Stakes	p. 227
'Not one horse sweeping the stakes races, but two or three'	p. 234
The men who saw Archer	p. 250
The battle for Darby Munro	p. 253
Whose turn is it this time?	p. 265
'A horse will not win the Cup a second time'	p. 272
The 1934 Melbourne Cup	p. 280
'This is becoming a habit'	p. 296
The wildish fancy of L.K.S. Mackinnon	p. 311
'The crumbs for others'	p. 314
The gravel in his guts	p. 325
America wants Peter Pan	p. 337
The declaration of weights	p. 348
'Is he so much class?'	p. 351
'That's the sort of horse to back...He never lets you down'	p. 361
The fate of all champions	p. 372
The 1935 Melbourne Cup	p. 389
Something had happened	p. 394
'A great heart cannot carry a doubtful leg'	p. 399
The last start	p. 416
'Au revoir, Peter Pan'	p. 422
Epilogue	p. 431
Peter Pan's Racing Record	p. 441
Bibliography	p. 446
Acknowledgements	p. 452
Index	p. 456
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