Te Akau Winter Tale Update

The second of David McCarthy's interesting tales from racing for winter ....

SILVERMINE - A JINXED HORSE?

Many horses are good luck charms for their owners, trainers and the betting public.  Silvermine was not one of them.

If there was something which could go wrong, where Silvermine was concerned it almost
always did.

In his first race, after not showing a lot in training he started against a smart stablemate, The Chanter, The stable organised a huge betting plunge on The Chanter. Silvermine won.
Everyone then decided Silvermine was a lot better than they had thought and they kept backing him to win every time he lined up. He won a few races but his talent for getting
beaten gradually sent an army of supporters broke.

He was third in an Oakleigh Plate, second in a Sydney Cup, both second and third in a Melbourne Cup and second in a Caulfield Cup. His list of minor placings seemed never ending. He never won a major race.

A former Kiwi Abe Snyder, a bookmaker on the Otago goldfields where he made a fortune and then set off for Australia, decided Silvermine would win the 1886 Caulfield Cup. He put everything he owned on him. After that defeat Snyder had to return to New Zealand a ruined man. He died a short time later both his bank balance and his spirit broken by Silvermine.

But Silvermine's ultimate “loser” reputation was only coming to a peak. In Sydney in 1888 he crashed to the ground in the race taking with him Alick Robertson one of the best known jockeys in Australia who died as a result of his injuries.

Robertson, who had ridden Silvermine in a Melbourne Cup, was a hugely popular man known to have regularly given broke punters the train fare back to the city out of his own pocket after horses like Silvermine had broken them. Robertson was only 27 and at the height of his career. The media reaction to poor old Silvermine was cruel. Worst was Sydney journalist bitter at the passing of a rider of the stature of Robertson who consigned Silvermine to history with little ceremony.

“He had broken more punters than any other horse in Australia. Now he has broken his own neck and taken one of our best riders with him.”