| PEOPLE |
YEAR: 1986
 |
Dave Todd, the man who bred and developed Cardigan Bay, world harness racing's first millionaire, doesn't bother to go to the races nowdays. He is 83 and feels his eyesight has slipped too much to enjoy the spectacle. "I like to sit at home and listen to them on the radio though," he said recently when reflecting on his successful lifetime involvement with harness racing.
Dave relinquished his licence to train seven years ago and contents himself in his twilight years with gardening, sea fishing and overseeing the training operations of his grandsons small team at famed Chimes Lodge, Mataura. Stuart and Richard Scott, his two grandsons, share their grandfather's love of standardbreds. But they know only too well that the chances of getting another in the same class as Cardigan Bay are one in a million.
Dave loves nothing better than a bit of trout fishing. In his younger days, he and his mates frequented the productive waters of the Worsley, Upukarora and other peaceful high country rivers. "But I have had to give the trout a miss lately...a cobber dropped in one day and borrowed my rod and tackle and hasn't got round to returning it." Ken Johnson, a good Stewart Island mate, who is a commercial fisherman, has introduced Dave to sea fishing in recent years. That pastime has introduced a new and enjoyable dimension of the outdoors for Dave, a keen deerstalker in his prime and still the proud owner of an outstanding Virginian (white tail) deer head exhibited in his lounge.
Price, racing men often point out, never made a horse. Dave Todd is the first to acknowledge that adage, because Cardigan Bay cost nothing to breed and went on to win more than $1 million in four different countries over nine seasons of competition on the world's major raceways. The old warrior is now content in retirement at Sir Henry Kelliher's Pukututu Island Stud, Auckland.
Dave trained the champion's dam, Colwyn Bay, for Alex Jopp, who farmed at Hindon, 25 miles from Dunedin on the Central Otago branch line. Colwyn Bay won four races but would have graduated to Cup class if not inconvenienced by an injured fetlock and deep seated corns. Jopp didn't want to retire the mare on the Hindon type of country and Dave offered to buy her. Her owner, however, insisted that she be gifted to Dave. A man never looks a gift horse in the mouth and the mare had a new owner.
Dave and his late brother Sandy, who was six years his senior, were close colleagues of George Youngson of Gore, another true blue Scotsman and another of Southland's grand old gentlemen of trotting and a pioneer in breeding. "George and I never charged each other stud fees...we had a reciprocal business arrangement," Dave recalled. "George was keen for me to send a mare to Hal Tryax, who arrived after the stud season was well underway." Colwyn Bay duly conceived to Hal Tryax, the first 2:00 three-year-old imported to New Zealand from America. Cardigan Bay was the result. "So, there's another story - a horse who won a million cost nothing to breed."
Cardigan Bay 'told' Dave literally from the word go that he had a big heart. During an aborted roundup of mares and foals at Chimes Lodge (gates were left open), a couple of mares and foals careered about for a long time. The two mares and one of the foals were easily caught when they became exhausted. But the sturdy Hal Tryax colt further defied efforts to be caught and was as fresh as a daisy some time after. "I knew there and then that he had to have a big heart and the constitution good horses are made of," Dave said. Bill Pearson, the Todd brothers' Gore-based veterinary surgeon, could see no reason why colts should not be gelded before they were weaned. Cardigan Bay was gelded at five months of age when still running with his mother. In hindsight, Dave reckons that early move might have helped to contain and harness the colt's remarkable energy and vigour.
Cardigan Bay wasted no time showing that he had plenty of what it took to make a good horse. He could pace a furlong in 15 seconds and furlongs in 15 seconds by a yearling are not easily kept secret. A big, raw and immature type, he did not mature into a racehorse until a late three-year-old. He was not tried at two. It was simply a matter of 'waiting' on the big horse. In any case the stable had the more mature and precocious 2-year-old Blue Prince, also by Hal Tryax, to fly the flag. Dave and Sandy sold Cardigan Bay to Aucklanders Merv and Audrey Dean for $5,000 and a couple of contingencies after he had won seven races for them. The rest is now history. "Looking back, I wouldn't have sold him then if I had owned him outright, but Sandy, a real Scot, reckoned financial independence was a priceless asset and the money went into paying off the farm mortgage and other commitments.
Dave, born at Bothwell, seven miles from Glasgow, immigrated to NZ with his parents, Sandy and seven sisters when he was 12. He and Sandy rabbited about Central Otago in their teens. Alex McLellan of Invercargill trained their first winner - "a Sungod mare who wasn't much chop. Alex was a fine horseman and I learned so much listening to him, Jim McMurray and Barney Rushton...the younger fellows don't listen much to me, because they think I'm out of date with my thinking," Dave quipped. Dave and Sandy settled on a farmlet at Mataura in 1932. Over the years they bought small adjoining blocks when they came on the market. The farm grew to 180 acres and has since been handed over to the younger members of the family, Peggy and Ron Scott.
Sires they stood at Chimes Lodge included Grattan Loyal and Dillon Hall, "two of the best," Free Fight and Arion Axworthy, who was "no bloody good." Sandy devoted his time to the stud side of the operation and the books and accounts. Dave looked after the training side. Sandy seldom mated a broodmare until there was seed on the grass. Not long before his death 11 years ago, Sandy told the writer that too many stallions were abused by serving too many mares too soon in the colder southern breeding season. "It's the quickest way I know to ruin a sire," Sandy said. Dave and Sandy always claimed that every sire was condemned at some stage of other of his career. A lot of Southland breeders had written off Dillon Hall. That was until Acropolis, one of his sons, beat Plunder Bar in the 1943 NZ Sapling Stakes. "Then the phone just about rang off the bloody wall."
The Todd school was a tough one for horses. There was no holiday camp touch about it. An aspiring racehorse was guilty until it proved itself innocent. Looks and breeding counted for nothing if it could not run and show guts. Dave Todd was twice runner-up on the national premiership - once to Wes Butt and to Cecil Donald the second time. Had Dave not 'lost' a good horse to Jock Bain halfway through one season, he would have won the NZ Premiership. That was one dissappointment in a rewarding and fulfilling career. In the 1950s and 1960s in particular, Dave was ably served by Ken Balloch, a skilled and fearless reinsman who was part and parcel of the successful Chimes Lodge training operation. Fancywords and frills have never been evidenced about Todd and Balloch. Superlatives were not part of the combination's dictionary when it came to praising horses. Cardigan Bay, Blue Prince and Holy Hal were merely 'good' horses and not champions, terrific, great or anything like that.
When Jimmy Tryax won at Wyndham in November 1970, he became the 18th successive horse Todd had acquired from another stable to win first up for him. Dave reckons most of the secret lay in the fact that "half a kerosine tin full of worms" would be taken from a horse with a rigid worming programme, top feeding and a harder workload in training. So many responded immediately to the methods. There was no easy way out in the Todd and Balloch formula for success with horses. A horse had to line up and be counted and a poor one was not persevered with. It took about a fortnight to determine if a horse had a win in it.
When the Todd and Balloch judgement was on the line, the bacon was not always bought home. But it often was. Like the day Dave had a 'decent' bet on Colwyn Bay's nose at Wyndham. She duly obliged and the funds went up on stablemate Maestro, who came home at six to one later in the day. "I got a few hundred quid that day and it all went into the farm," Dave said. When the chips were down, Balloch had few, if any, peers in the south as a reinsman. Some of his contemporaries still like to recall the day at Winton when it was a 'money day' for the Todd runner Lassaloc. The mare was 'fair bolting' inside the last furlong and had nowhere to go. The situation was fast becoming desperate. Lassaloc had a wall of horses in front of her and Ken reckons the situation was getting 'bloody grim'. Then the front line drivers heard a threatening bellow from behind: "Get out of my bloody road or I will come right over the top." Lassaloc just made it and no more.
Dave Todd often regrets that he was before his time in trotting. Many horses are sold for big prices these days and breeding and training horses for sale was always part of the Todd operation. In 1945 he put down an all-weather track at Chimes Lodge. He and Jim Flynn were able to take Southland horses to Auckland in September and win. Twenty five years later, all-weather tracks took Southland harness racing by storm. Dave reckons no other innovation has played a bigger part in the development of Southland's multi million dollar harness racing industry.
Credit: Don Wright writing in NZ Trot Calendar 21Jan86