Who Was I?

Cover image courtesy of the National Library of Australia

For a great many years in recent history, the G1 Tancred S. was known as The BMW, which was a successful moniker for a new generation of racegoers, but equally buried the memory of an important Sydney racing identity.

Harry Tancred was an inaugural appointee to the first-ever Sydney Turf Club (STC) board of directors in 1943 and, with the passing of time, his lasting legacy is as its vice-chairman from 1945, and as its chairman from 1953 until his retirement in July 1959.

While there are plenty of races honouring administrators of the past, Tancred earned his oats more than most. He governed the STC at a time of great change in the sport of kings, and his broad-mindedness was very effective for the Club.

He was closely associated with the initial investigations into starting stalls and the photo-finish camera, and ultimately these new contraptions ended up at every track in the country. Tancred also oversaw the initial use of electrical timing devices at Rosehill and Canterbury racecourses, as well as the display of winning margins on the infield semaphore.

By most accounts, he was a lively and intelligent chairman. Tancred was attentive to innovation and ideas, and he possessed remarkable grace. He always tried to right his own shortcomings and, under his chairmanship, the STC settled beautifully into Sydney’s racing scene.

Gallery: Images courtesy of the State Library of NSW

Tancred was chairman of the STC when the first Golden Slipper was run and won by Todman in 1957, but this wasn’t his only association with great horses. He owned the New Zealand-bred champion High Caste (NZ), who demolished the Australian racing scene from 1939 until 1942.

High Caste was a point of enormous personal pride for Tancred, the horse trained by Jack Jamieson at Randwick through a scintillating career of 27 individual stakes wins at the highest level. He was a brute of a horse, and known widely as the ‘Strawberry Bull’ because of the roan flecks through his rich, bay coat.

High Caste’s success was very relatable to Tancred because the STC chairman had been a formidable rugby union player as a young man. Through a few formative years in New Zealand, he played senior provincial rugby before returning home to Australia, and he played for the Waratahs at a New South Wales state level, as well as for the Wallabies.

Gallery: Images courtesy of the State Library of NSW

At 6’2” and weighing 100kg, Tancred was a strawberry bull himself and, though towering over almost everyone in his everyday life, he was still approachable and full of respect for the ideas and opinions of others. It made him a recognisable and successful chairman of the STC, not to mention a formidable businessman.

Born in 1897 in Balmain, Sydney, Henry Eugene ‘Harry’ Tancred followed his father into the butcher and abattoir trade, and Tancred Bros. became one of Australia’s formative wholesale butcheries. It was a consuming and successful career for which he travelled widely, but still Tancred devoted thorough energy to the STC.

His legacy to Sydney racing is one of the best of all racing administrators and, two years after his death from a coronary occlusion in 1961, the H.E. Tancred Cup was inaugurated over two miles. It was pulled back to 2400 metres in 1973, and in 1977 it became the Tancred S.

‘Tosser’ Tancred, as he was known, would have been pleased with that, and his race has been a Group 1 since 1979. It’s a fitting tribute to a man of great importance to post-war Australian racing.