Champion Tulloch rates high in the annals of Melbourne Cup scandals, triggered because winning prizemoney was a pittance compared with the pelf in bookmakers' bags. Did bookmakers, or those doing their bidding, get at Neville Sellwood, rider of Tulloch in the controversial 1960 chapter?
Certainly it will go down as one of the most questionable performances at a time when jockeys were cut more slack by stewards without the same assistance from technology as they do in the modern era.
Tulloch was trained by Tommy Smith, who didn't have much luck with his champion and the Melbourne Cup. In 1957, with the Big One seemingly at his mercy, Smith scratched Tulloch because of pressure bought regarding it being too hard for a three-year-old. Smith did not publicly criticise jockeys. At times he would give you an opinion but "off the record". Generally, with Tulloch and Sellwood, he would just nod his head and smile.
However, a colleague, on the then Sydney Sun, Glenn Robbins, got him in the right mood in 1985. "I expected Tulloch to win pulling up," Smith said. "He was winning his lead-ups so easily – nothing else could get near him. "I thought he would be running sixth or seventh at the winning post the first time but he was absolute last [in a 32-horse field]. I've never seen anything like it in my life. Tulloch was never at his top at any stage of the race. Sellwood reckoned Tulloch wouldn't go. I went mad on him when he came in."
But did Smith accuse Sellwood, who died following a race fall in France in 1962, of holding Tulloch? "I don't know whether he did or he didn't but he didn't ride it very well," Smith said. "I don't make statements about fellows doing those sorts of things but I had my own ideas. It was the most stupid ride I have seen."
In fairness to the jockey, one of the best, huge imposts can force horseback navigators to take precarious measures. Tulloch had 10 stone, one pound (64 kilograms) and Sellwood later pleaded: "Tulloch couldn't accelerate under the big weight. He ran on well at the finish but he couldn't make any ground between the six furlongs [1200 metres] and the turn. He was a great horse but the weight was the killer."
After conceding the leaders 50 lengths at the 800m Tulloch went down by only four. The huge crowd, 101,000, – the champ was credited with drawing an extra 20,000 – was dumbfounded. It was the only race in 54 starts that Tulloch missed a place yet ranks with his greatest performances.
Examine the evidence.
At his previous start in the Cox Plate, Tulloch trailed the pace to the home turn before winning in Australasian record time.
The pace that day was made by Sky High which led for the first 800m in 46 seconds. Obviously the tempo in the two-mile Melbourne Cup was more of an amble yet Tulloch couldn't keep up. The race was won by Hi Jinx (7st.10lb or 49kg) in what was a comparative slow time – three minutes, 23.75 seconds.
Thus expecting to give a long start and pick up the leaders, particularly lightweights, was going to be difficult indeed.
"I held him up for as long as I could hoping the others would come back to him," Sellwood is quoted in A Century Of Winners by Bill Ahern.
Because of Tulloch, Ray Selkrig, on Macdougal, had a hard-luck story. "I followed Tulloch," he said. "It was a bad decision. Tulloch kept going back in the early stages and he took me with him though I was going well."
Hoofnote: When Hi Jinx was a two-year-old she damaged a knee so badly it was feared she would never race again. For six months Trevor Knowles, trainer and part-owner, looked after the filly as she was suspended in a sling, the injured knee encased in plaster. "We thought it may help to save her for the stud," he related after the triumph.
