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Today is the most important day in Australian sport

14th October, 2010
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14th October, 2010
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A remarkable action photograph of Phar Lap, the Australian wonder horse, December 22, 1931. AP Photo

Today isn’t Melbourne Cup day. No, it doesn’t mark the start of the Ashes. The AFL and NRL doesn’t get underway today either. So why is today a milestone day in Australian sport? Well, today marks 200 years since the first organised sporting contest in Australia.

I had the pleasure this week of catching up with veteran journalists Gary Lester and Ian Heads. They’ve put together one of the best books I’ve come across in a long time. It’s called ‘And the crowd went wild: sporting days that thrilled a nation’.

It starts with what’s widely recognised as the first ever, according to the records of the time, organised sporting contest in 1810 and goes right through to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics.

They do acknowledge that sport was, of course, played before this date, but it was of a more ad-hoc nature.

So October 15, 1810.

A three-day race carnival was organised around Hyde Park in Sydney at the insistence of Governor Lachlan Macquarie. Macquarie disliked sport, but thought the race carnival would be a good way to bring order to a wild colony in disarray following the ‘rum rebellion’.

Macquarie banned drinking, gambling and swearing at the newly assembled course and the well attended meet gave birth to a passion for sport that is the envy of the world.

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Who would’ve thought that a race meeting without gambling or drinking would be able to provide order?

Macquarie is dubbed ‘the father of Australian sport’ in the book. Not bad for a man who preferred war to sport.

Heads and Lester have dug deep.

I’m not generally a horse racing fan, but my favourite tales from the book come from the turf, like the Melbourne Cup not only being run on a Thursday from 1861 to 1875.

New South Wales trainer Etienne de Mestre and his Nowra stabled champion Archer won the first two cups. Victorian authorities, so incensed by Archer’s success, banned the champion from the third running of the Cup. Officially they said de Mestre didn’t get his entry form in on time.

A rivalry that still exists today between NSW and Victoria was alive and thriving.

Then there’s Phar Lap, a figure up there with Sir Donald Bradman in Australian sporting folklore.

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You see, Phar Lap wasn’t very good to start with.

Lester points out during our chat that even his breeding was rubbish. In his first race at Rosehill Racecourse in Sydney he started at odds of 33-1 and ran 13th … out of 13.

Chapter 6 is called ‘When Ned Kelly met Larry Foley’. Yes, that is Ned Kelly the wild outlaw.

The Larry Foley in question is described as a master boxer from Sydney. The occasion was a bareknuckle battle against Victorian-based Englishman Abe Hicken on the banks of the River Murray in early 1879.

Kelly and his gang had just robbed a bank in the NSW town of Jerilderie, which is about 170 kilometres north of Echuca, and decided it would be a good idea, while still evading the authorities, to take in the fight.

Foley would win a bloody battle and one of his rewards was a handshake and a chat with Kelly himself.

All of the modern day feats are there, too, and it got me thinking: what is the greatest sporting achievement in Australian history?

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Is it the first Ashes win by an Australian cricket team? Makybe Diva’s Melbourne Cup winning heroics? The St George Dragons run of rugby league premierships? What about Australia’s success at recent Winter Olympics?

Does success against international competition rate higher than that achieved on our own shores?

We’re a proud sporting nation. It’s remarkable, given our size, what Australian athletes have achieved.

If you love sport, then today is a day to celebrate. It seems we have a lot to thank Governor Macquarie for.

You can follow luke on twitter @luke_doherty and on Sky News Australia.

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