The “Iron Gelding” was Australia’s first celebrity racehorse, traded for eight spring heifers

Jorrocks was foaled in 1833 at Bayly Park stud near Liverpool in New South Wales, later renamed Bayley Park, after the stud was moved to Mudgee. Jorrocks began his working life as a stock horse, until his owner, Henry Bayly, noted the horse’s stamina and strength and began racing him in local events. Jorrocks was descended from Australia’s oldest racehorse family, but he would not be allowed to compete in most races today because of his ancestry. His was sired by Whisker II (GB) (by Whisker, winner of the 1815 Epsom Derby). His dam, Matilda (Steeltrap GB) was a winner at Sydney meetings the previous year. As a result, Jorrocks is now usually described as an Anglo-Arabian, a horse of mixed Arabian and Thoroughbred bloodlines. His small head and ears and dished face are characteristic of the Arabian breed. Until the late 19th century, Arabian and part-Arabian horses competed alongside thoroughbreds and other mixed breeds in Australian races. Jorrocks was not the only successful Anglo-Arabian. In 1871, for example, the half-Arabian gelding, Saladin, won the Australian Cup and Hotham Handicap and is claimed to have finished third in the Melbourne Cup (although the judges disputed his placing).

Like many of Australia’s early racehorses, Jorrocks maternal grand-dam, Vesta, was part, and probably at least half-Arabian. Many colonial breeders looked to this breed to improve the quality of local bloodlines, and Vesta’s sire, Model, was an Arabian stallion brought to New South Wales by Sydney merchant William Browne. Vesta’s dam was probably a half or three-quarter Arabian mare known as Cariboo, descended from an Arabian or Arabian-Persian stallion, Old Hector, which was imported to the colony by another Sydney merchant, Robert Campbell, in 1807.

Jorrocks started on the track as a five year old and, after winning a large number of low-level races, was entered in his first competition ‘in good company’ at Homebush in Sydney. By this time, the horse’s original owner Henry Bayly had traded him to well-known trainer Richard Rouse for eight spring heifers, (around £40), Jorrocks having passed through the hands of several other owners and trainers during his career. He also seems to have raced under a variety of names, including Jollox and Jollop. Despite his itinerant life and the fact that, like all racehorses of his time he had to walk from his stable to his races, Jorrocks first race in good company was in March 1841, under the name of Jollox. At the old Homebush course he ran a good second to Chestnut Prince in the Ladies' Purse of three miles, open to all horses carrying 11 stone (70 kg). The Racecourse for Sydney was located at Homebush from 1841 to 1859. In 1860, the racecourse was moved to Randwick, its current location.

Jorrocks was a racing sensation. Inaccurate records mean it is unknown exactly how many races the horse won, but he achieved at least 65 wins from 95 starts. In 1843, carrying over 60 kilograms, Jorrocks took out the Australian Jockey Club (AJC) Metropolitan Stakes, the Cumberland Plate and the Champion Cup. Three years later, in 1846, he won 30 of his 31 starts, carrying at least 57 kilograms and galloping a usual two or three miles each race. Over eight years of racing in the 1840s the horse won his owners about £2688, or $457,000 in today’s money.

A bay (brown-coloured) Anglo-Arabian gelding, Jorrocks stood at 14 hands 2 inches high, relatively slight for a racehorse, even in the 19th century when horses were generally smaller than today. A racing commentator for the Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser recalled Jorrocks in 1892 as ‘strangely attractive’, noting also that he had ‘legs and arms like steel bars and muscular looking thighs, all the better to propel him towards a finish line’.

Jorrocks continued racing into the 1850s. He started nine times for four wins and five placings in 1850, but two years later trailed the field home in his last race. He was retired to Clifton Stud at Richmond and died in 1860 at the age of 27. He is remembered as the ‘Iron Gelding’ in recognition of his strength, endurance and longevity. His grave is marked by a memorial stone at the Royal Australian Air Force base at Richmond. Jorrocks was arguably Australia’s first celebrity racehorse. The diminutive Anglo-Arabian began life as a stockhorse, but went on to achieve at least 65 wins - his last win, at age 18, making him the oldest winning racehorse in Australian history.

RACE RECORD - 95 starts - 65 wins
EARNINGS - £2688
(4,000 sovereigns plus sweepstakes)