The Mystique of Phar Lap

The Mystique of Phar Lap

By Alan Kennedy
The Daily Twilight
October 24, 2023

Phar Lap (4 October 1926 – 5 April 1932) was a champion Thoroughbred racehorse whose achievements captured the public's imagination during the early years of the Great Depression. Foaled in New Zealand, he was trained and raced in Australia by Harry Telford. Phar Lap dominated Australian racing during a distinguished career, winning a Melbourne Cup, two Cox Plates, an AJC Derby, and 19 other weight for age races. He then won the Agua Caliente Handicap in Tijuana, Mexico in track-record time in his final race. After a sudden and mysterious illness, Phar Lap died in 1932. At the time, he was the third highest stakes-winner in the world.

His mounted hide is displayed at the Melbourne Museum, his skeleton at Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and his heart is currently stored at the National Museum of Australia storage annexe in Mitchell, Canberra.           

Following his death, Phar Lap's heart was donated to the Institute of Anatomy in Canberra and his skeleton to the New Zealand's National Museum in Wellington. After preparations of the hide by a New York City taxidermist, his stuffed body was placed in the Australia Gallery at Melbourne Museum. The hide and the skeleton were put on exhibition together when Wellington's Te Papa Museum lent the skeleton to the Melbourne Museum in September 2010 as part of celebrations for the 150th running of the 2010 Melbourne Cup.

Phar Lap's heart was remarkable for its size, weighing 6.2 kg (13.6 lbs), compared with a normal horse's heart at 3.2 kg. Now held at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, it is the object visitors most often request to see. However, the author and film maker Peter Luck is convinced the heart is a fake. In Luck's 1979 television series This Fabulous Century, the daughter of Dr Walker Neilson, the government veterinarian who performed the first post-mortem on Phar Lap, says her father told her the heart was necessarily cut to pieces during the autopsy, and the heart on display is that of a draughthorse.

Several books and films have featured Phar Lap, including the 1983 film Phar Lap, and the song "Phar Lap—Farewell To You".

Phar Lap was one of five inaugural inductees into both the Australian Racing Hall of Fame and New Zealand Racing Hall of Fame. In the Blood-Horse magazine ranking of the Top 100 U.S. Thoroughbred champions of the 20th century, Phar Lap was ranked No. 22.

The horse is considered to be a national icon in both Australia and New Zealand. In 1978 he was honoured on a postage stamp issued by Australia Post and features in the Australian citizenship test. A $500,000 life-sized bronze memorial to Phar Lap was unveiled on 25 November 2009 near his birthplace at Timaru.

Phar Lap has been honoured with a life-sized bronze statue at Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne. Phar Lap has a residential street named after him in Bossley Park, Sydney, NSW, Australia, However his name was merged as one word "Pharlap" for the naming of the suburban street.