Mollison was a strongly built gelding by the Queensland based stallion Seremond from the former top mare, Molly’s Robe. Certainly, Mollison was the best horse ever of his big-spending Victorian owner, E. M. Pearce. The wealthy Melbourne wool magnate was a lavish spender on bloodstock prior to the Great Depression. Initially, Pearce raced under the assumed name of ‘Mr Melrose’, but his conspicuous outlays always made that fiction a difficult one to sustain. By the time Mollison burst onto the scene, Pearce had begun racing his horses in his own name. 

Pearce's acquisition of Mollison was achieved through a conventional and straightforward process. A Brisbane pressman, A. E. Austin had spotted the youngster galloping in the paddocks of the Lyndhurst Stud on the Darling Downs and advised Pearce that he might well be worth buying even before he came to a public auction. Mrs. Hillcoat, the breeder, and Pearce reached an agreement on a price of 600 guineas. His glossy, well dressed coat would be sufficient to attract the eye, quite apart from his massive quarters, powerful shoulders, unblemished legs, and intelligent head. Additionally, there was a contingency of 100 guineas in the event of a win. After all, the colt came from one of the best families in the Australian Stud Book.

Mr. Hillcoat visited Brisbane with the primary objective of purchasing a confirmation dress for his daughter, Molly. However, his attention was diverted by a friend who extended an invitation to attend the sales, causing him to deviate from his initial purpose. Instead of purchasing a dress that day, he bought a bay filly for 200 guineas. When he arrived home that night, his wife asked: ‘Did you buy it?’ He responded that he had indeed purchased ‘Molly’s Robe’. She proved a wonderful racehorse and one of the best in Queensland for years, winning a string of races there and later in Victoria, many with big weights including both the 1920 Oakleigh Plate and 1919 Newmarket Handicap. Shortly before Molly’s Robe’s retirement from racing, Mrs Hillcoat was asked to name a price for the mare. Mrs Hillcoat declined the offer advising that she had a sentimental attachment to the Molly’s Robe and did not intend to part with her. Molly’s Robe was retired in May 1922 after winning her final race at Epsom in Melbourne under the huge impost of 11st.3lb (71.0kg)

Mollison was her third foal and the best of her progeny. In the years to follow she would also produce the good horses, Buzzard King, Lyndhurst and Corsage. Mollison was the result of her first mating to Seremond, an imported stallion that had run third in the English St Leger and was standing at J. G. McDougall’s Lyndhurst Stud. Seremond was an impressive stallion, though some southern critics dismissed his accomplishments due to the majority of his victories occurring on Queensland tracks. Mollison was placed at the Caulfield stables of Fred Foulsham. As a trainer, Foulsham already knew something about that thoroughbred family having prepared Molly’s Robe to win the 1920 Oakleigh Plate.

Mollison was to prove that very rare juvenile – one that retained an unblemished record in his first season. In seven starts coming in the very best of company against his own age during the spring and autumn meetings in Melbourne and Sydney, the powerful gelding never looked like losing. He came to hand very quickly and was one of the first youngsters seen out when he won both the Maribyrnong Trial Stakes at Flemington and the Debutant Stakes at Caulfield in early October. Then, despite the full 10lb penalty, he darted past his rivals in the Maribyrnong Plate on the opening day of the V.R.C. Spring Meeting. In the autumn he resumed from a spell to lead all the way in the Sires’ Produce Stakes at Flemington, and the closest he came to defeat was at his next start in the Ascot Vale Stakes, with the 10lb penalty proving a little burdensome. Neither the clockwise way of going nor a heavy Randwick track stopped his progress in the Sires’ Produce Stakes which he won easily, and four days later on firmer ground and over the shorter course of the Champagne Stakes, the result was just the same. That completed his book of engagements for the season and Mollison’s winnings from his unbeaten seven appearances stood at £17,348

Despite not having appeared in public since the autumn, Mollison was sent to the post at Warwick Farm at the prohibitive odds of 3/1 on and won rather easily from Rampion’s younger brother, Ramulus, with NZ galloper Prince Humphrey a fast-finishing third. In the Guineas, Mollison extended his unbeaten sequence to nine when he was untroubled to again relegate Ramulus into second placing in a time that equalled the race record.

A crowd of 75,000 people packed into Randwick for Derby Day with the racecourse in excellent order. When the bagmen had first issued their Derby lists a few weeks before the race, the best price on offer about Mollison was 5/2, and by Derby Day he had firmed into 4/7. Throughout the race, Mollison had raced comfortably in second place, and he remained there until the field had negotiated the home bend. In the last fifty yards, the Queensland favourite was fairly outstayed by the New Zealand colt Prince Humphrey, to lose by three-quarters of a length. Mollison just managed to hold on to second placing with a neck to spare from the fast-finishing Oatendale. After nine successive victories, Mollison had tasted defeat in the race that E. M. Pearce coveted above all others. In the River Handicap. Gothic did manage to dead-heat with Mollison

There were some critics in the spring of 1928 that maintained that Mollison should never have been asked to extend his brilliance beyond ten furlongs, and attributed his subsequent loss of form afterwards to his exertions on Derby Day. The respected vet, J. W. Stewart McKay, was one such person. He believed the AJC Derby knocked him out, and he was beaten in the Caulfield Guineas. He rested, and in the autumn won the Futurity in brilliant fashion, beating Gothic, and a few days later dead-heated with that horse in the mile at WFA. Mollison then came to Sydney and beat Limerick over a mile, the mud being up to their fetlocks. 

Mollison came to Sydney in the spring, and he was asked to race at Warwick Farm in the mile weight-for-age race. Some days before the event he was taken to Warwick Farm and he did a mile trial in 1:38. His trainer believed it was the best trial he had ever seen on a course. Mollison led to the distance and then Limerick ran over him. He struggled into second place, but it was plain that his best days were over. Mollison didn’t race that autumn but was brought back as a five-year-old. Judging by the betting market, the Craven Plate should have provided a great race between the Derby winner Phar Lap, and that great galloper Mollison. Only when the pair joined issue at the furlong post was there the slightest Indication of a keen battle. Momentarily Mollison held the three-year-old, but then Phar Lap came right away, and won convincingly by four lengths. After repeatedly failing to win in a series of races in the spring, Pearce finally sold Mollison to Sydney identity, owner-trainer Bill Tindall for 1100 guineas in December 1930. It was about one-tenth of the sum that the horse would have brought had he been sold at the end of his two-year-old days.

Still, many considered Pearce was well rid of him at the price. The ready buyer was one of the most colourful and irrepressible characters on the Australian Turf, well practiced in the black arts of conducting a racing stable. Tindall got Mollison just as he was being granted his training licence again by racing authorities after being out for a year over the running of one of his horses. The magic touch worked for a while with Mollison, too. Although he failed to win a race with the son of Seremond, under Tindall’s tutelage, he was narrowly beaten into third placing in a head-bobbing finish to the 1931 Newmarket and finished second, beaten less than a length, in the Doncaster at Randwick a few weeks later. Just how Mollison might have been helped to reach that elite level again was the subject of some speculation when the horse died prematurely soon after that 1931 autumn campaign.

2YO SEASON

10 Starts - 10 Wins

EARNINGS - £17,898

Maribyrnong Trial Stakes

Debutant Stakes

Maribyrnong Plate

1928 VRC Sires Produce Stakes

1928 Ascot Vale Stakes

Champagne Stakes

Rosehill Guineas

All-Aged Stakes

Chelmsford Stakes

Hobartville Stakes

1929 C. M. Lloyd Stakes

1929 Futurity Stakes

A brilliant, unbeaten juvenile, Mollison took on some of the best thoroughbreds of the 1920s