Sports correspondent & historian with Sideline Sid

Racing Fans throughout Australasia are counting down the days until when the 2023 Melbourne Cup will be staged on its traditional date of the first Tuesday in November.

Only grey-headed geriatrics such as this writer, can remember when a Whakatane-owned horse won the ‘The Race That Stops Two Nations’.

Leicester Spring went to the National – Yearling - sales at Trentham in 1950 to buy his first racehorse. Paying a modest 325 guineas, the new Whakatane racehorse owner had purchased a brown gelding by little known sire Alonzo.

However there was some stout breeding on the other side of the Rising Fast pedigree, with dam Faster, having produced seven winners from ten foals.

Leicester Spring was a well known Eastern Bay of Plenty identity, initially arriving in Whakatane to practise as a chartered accountant, before founding the Whakatane Beacon newspaper in 1939.

Leicester was a multi-talented sportsman especially excelling on the cricket field of play. He still holds Bay of Plenty cricket records established in the 1930s and 1940s, with six wickets against Manawatu in a Hawke Cup match, earning NZ Cricket Hawke Cup history honours.

Rising Fast was a seasoned five-year-old in 1954 when he made the sea voyage to Melbourne for the spring carnival. During October and November 1954 the Kiwi galloper rewrote the Australian thoroughbred record books.

In around six weeks, Rising Fast won five top of the table Group 1 races and a Group 2 - including the Spring Grand-Slam of the Caufield Cup, Cox Plate and Melbourne Cup.

Trained by Ivan Tucker, at Takanini on the then fringes of Auckland, the Kiwi invader kicked off his Australian campaign in winning the Turnbull Stakes at Flemington in early October. He quickly followed up with another victory at 2000m, in the Caulfield Stakes, before stepping up to 2400m in the iconic Caufield Cup with win number three of his season goals ticked off.

Back to 2040m in the WS Cox Plate at Moonee Valley proved no barrier to the New Zealand horses winning sequence. Just three days before the Melbourne Cup, he lined up at Flemington in the LKS McKinnon Stakes, with victory number five coming in front of a large crowd on Derby Day.

Rising Fast was inconvenienced by a slow early pace in the Melbourne Cup, before looming into contention at the half-mile of the two mile race. He raced away from Hellion and 200/1 shot Gay Helios, to write his name into racing immortality as the only horse to this day to complete the Spring Grand-Slam.

The Australasian champion stayer returned back across the Tasman the following year. After winning the Caulfield Cup, the champion was denied back-to-back Caufield/Melbourne Cup victories, in receiving severe interference when mounting his run in the straight to finish second, to Toporoa.

Retirement saw Rising Fast end his amazing racing journey with 66,765 pounds in earnings, which was a small fortune in the times. It is recorded in his book “The Whakatane Beacon and Leicester Spring” that he brought a sheep and cattle farm at Te Awamutu, built a brand new house in Whakatane and invested further funds to expand the Whakatane Beacon, all by way of his wonder horse exploits on the track.

Rising Fast was a true champion, in that he won at different distances on both turning tracks and long straights like Flemington.

Rock hard or heavy surfaces made little difference, in the champion’s 24 victories, 16 seconds and two thirds from 68 starts – handling everything that his opponents - and the handicapper - could throw at him.