Like the Flannery family with Manzoice, the owner of Frances Tressady was new to this side of the sport. Alex Barlow raced as ‘Mr A.G. Vauxhaull’. He bought the filly cheaply enough at the Sydney yearling sales in 1922. He entrusted her to Sydney jockey Billy Foulsham, embarking on his training career.
Frances Tressady was foaled in New South Wales. Her mother was a fourth-generation descendant of 1877 Victoria Derby and Melbourne Cup winner, Chester. With a sustained run home, ridden brilliantly by champion jockey Frank Dempsey, Frances Tressady held off a late challenge. To add to her story, the filly saddled up again three days later and finished a good fifth in the Melbourne Cup – and then won the VRC Oaks, as odd-on favourite, on the Thursday.
As for poor old Drongo, although bred in the purple and competing throughout his career only in the highest class events, he had a run of near misses that few have matched. In 37 career starts – all on city tracks, including the Derby and two St Legers – Drongo finished second five times, with seven thirds. He never won a race.
Sporting journalist Bruce Walkley has written a whole, affectionate book about Drongo, giving the definitive account of how the horse got his name. The original reference was not unkind. The drongo shrike bird is found in the north and east of the continent. It has glossy black plumage with iridescent blue-green spangles, a long forked tail and blood red eyes. It is of the genus Lanius – the name of the sire of thoroughbred Drongo.
At his final two career starts, in 1925, Drongo finished fourth in the Adelaide Cup and then second in a classy handicap at Adelaide’s Victoria Park – beaten a neck. Sam Wells, cartoonist with the Melbourne Herald, was one of the first to lampoon the horse who could never win. The name made its way into Australian vernacular. A slow footballer in 1934 was ‘a drongo’. The expression morphed into ‘a bit of a dill’, and worse. By 1940, a poem in Air Force News described a hapless airman: ‘He was just a —— drongo, although he did his best. He was just a drongo, a bit behind the rest.’
Bobbie Lewis had ridden seven Victoria Derby winners before he rode Drongo in the 1923 race. Afterwards he described him as the unluckiest Derby colt ever beaten.
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