Cover image courtesy of the State Library of NSW, Lough Neagh leads the 1937 Autumn Plate field into the Randwick straight, where he was an eventual second to Allunga
At the time of Lough Neagh’s retirement in the spring of 1938, there were few racehorses that had better claims to versatility, which is a big call for an era with arguably the best set of horses ever seen in Australian racing.
A portrait of Lough Neagh | Image courtesy of the National Library of Victoria
The 1930s turned out the likes of Phar Lap (NZ) (Night Raid {GB}), Peter Pan, Chatham, Rogilla (Roger De Busli {GB}) and Ajax, almost all of whom are in the Hall of Fame today and almost all of whom, at one time or another, kneeled at the altar of Lough Neagh.
From 1930 until 1938, the chestnut gelding won 32 races and was placed 44 times in a career that posted wins in the six-furlong Doomben 10,000 and the two-mile Brisbane Cup. It would have been one of the greatest records of the era had Lough Neagh been a little more consistent across 127 lifetime starts.
He was owned and trained throughout his life by Brisbane man Tim Brosnan, who picked him up as a yearling for 100 guineas. Lough Neagh was bred in 1928 by Queensland Turf Club committeeman Bill Glasson at Manapouri Stud, and there wasn’t much to the horse's pedigree.
Lough Neagh winning the 1937 AJC Cumberland Plate by 4l | Image courtesy of the National Library of Australia
Decades later, a critical look at his breeding would decide he didn’t have ‘an outstanding sire or outstanding broodmare, or indeed any outstanding influences', and along with Rising Fast (NZ) (Alonzo {GB}), he was ‘certainly evidence of the so-called glorious uncertainty of breeding’ and a classic source of inspiration ‘to the breeder with limited resources’.
It wasn’t a flattering analysis for Lough Neagh, but the Queensland gelding defied any criticism during his eight years on the track.
He won the 1931 Queensland Derby, and Queensland Guineas double, the 16-furlong Randwick Plate (twice) and, when seemingly too long in the tooth as a 9-year-old, he set a seven-furlong Randwick record in the Tramway H.
Lough Neagh after winning the 1935 Tramway H. at Randwick | Image courtesy National Library of Australia
Lough Neagh was a marvel of condition that could run two miles and fail to blow out a set of candles. This was particularly noticed in 1935 when master trainer Dick Wootton, worldwise and wiry, was trackside at Randwick to witness Lough Neagh win a Randwick Plate. Wootton exclaimed he’d never seen a horse in any part of the world pull up better.
Brosnan, for his part, was a devoted trainer and applauded for the condition in which he presented his gelding over such a long career. Lough Neagh was clean-winded, surefooted and eager, even as an aged competitor in the later half of the 1930s.
When he retired, he had close to £40,000 (AU$72,500) in prizemoney, and he left the turf as Queensland’s greatest up to that point. Today, he is one of Queensland’s greatest ever, and the race in his name was instigated in 2009.
Trainer Tim Brosnan (left) photographed at Randwick in August 1944 with Captain Frauenfelder | Image courtesy of the State Library of NSW
After retirement, Lough Neagh lived out the next eight years of his life in Brosnan’s ownership, relocating to Disputed Plains station, near Casino, in the burnished summer of 1940. He was there until the winter of 1945 when, at the age of 16, he died of natural causes.
