Cover image courtesy of the National Library of Australia, LKS Mackinnon (centre) at Randwick c.1930
A generation of racegoers that grew up watching the 1983 film Phar Lap will forever judge Lauchlan Mackinnon as a wiry, stiffly spoken swell that was out to destroy Phar Lap (NZ) (Night Raid {GB}). Whether it was an accurate portrayal of the man or not, Mackinnon will long be assumed as such.
Privately educated, deftly dressed and highly opinionated, he likely deserved some of the reputation he was handed in 1983, but there’s always more to the story.
Lauchlan Kenneth Scobie Mackinnon was born on Christmas Day on the Isle of Skye in 1861, the same year as the Melbourne Cup emerged, and he sailed to Melbourne in 1884. He was a solicitor, by the end of his life a partner in the firm of Blake and Riggall, with 43 years spent ‘bending over blue papers and arduous phraseology’.
Flemington Racecourse c.1918, showing the members' grandstand, birdcage and mounting yard by the riverside before their relocation in 1924 | Image courtesy of Victorian Collections, Ballarat Heritage Services
He was a man of rules and rigour. In 1906, with more than just a passing interest in horse racing, Mackinnon joined the committee of the Victoria Racing Club (VRC) and, from 1916 until his death, he was the club’s chairman. His views on racing were purist, namely geldings being barred from the Classics, women having no place in the sport and there being too much racing.
During the Phar Lap years, Mackinnon’s relationship with the famous horse probably wasn’t as aggressive as the film made out. Still, he declared all the way through Phar Lap’s glorious career that the gelding was inferior to Carbine (NZ) and, after the horse's crushing defeat in the 1931 Melbourne Cup, he declared that had Carbine been in the field with such a weight (68kg), he would have won.
It was a good example of Mackinnon’s lifelong inability to read the room and, in a way, he didn’t help himself when it came to popular opinion.
This aside, Lauchlan Mackinnon guided the VRC through the First World War and the Great Depression. They were troubling times, and, under his leadership, it almost seemed like the Club didn’t skip a beat.
A caricature of Mackinnon from the magazine Table Talk, August 1927
Mackinnon oversaw the transformation of Flemington in 1924, when the Members’ grandstand, birdcage and mounting yard were moved from their riverside spot to their current location, and ‘the steady progress and prosperity of the VRC, and its increasing influence upon the sporting life of the community, were largely attributable to his sound judgement and legislative ability’.
Alongside his executive leadership of the VRC, Mackinnon owned the brilliant miler Woorak and the 1914 Melbourne Cup winner Kingsburgh. He also won the 1907 Sydney Cup with Realm, and a Toorak H. with Iolaire in 1906.
He owned Chatsworth Stud in the Goulburn Valley from about 1912 until 1921, at which Woorak successfully stood, and after that, Mackinnon continued to breed horses at the old Maribyrnong Stud. In 1924, some months after the famous dispersal of the Moses brothers’ Arrowfield Stud, he privately bought the 1920 Melbourne Cup winner Poitrel, who had stood there.
Gallery: Memories of Lauchlan Mackinnon
Mackinnon’s elegant and somewhat reserved passion for racing sustained him his whole life, right from his first race meeting in London in 1878. When he died in Melbourne on August 25, 1935, he was still serving as the starchy but successful VRC chairman.
In 1936, a year after his death, the Melbourne S., a 10-furlong (2000 metre) feature on Derby Day, was renamed the Mackinnon S. in his honour, and it was such for 85 years until the VRC, chasing its relevance, renamed it just this year.
