Mysterious station-bred hack that became a local champion.

There’s nothing like a good racing mystery – this one dates back a century and it could be straight out of a Dick Francis novel.

The true story unfolded in Rockhampton back in the early 1920s and as you would expect in a paperback turf thriller, the characters included a horse with a name befitting the plot, an owner who waited a lifetime before finding his champion, and a jockey that left a railway job to find his calling on a different kind of track.

Mystery Lad, whose parentage was shrouded in uncertainty, was the pride and joy of Central Queensland 100 years ago, when he scored unprecedented wins in both the Newmarket Handicap and the Rockhampton Cup at Callaghan Park.

His performance was incredible, with the races just a day apart.

The Newmarket was raced over six furlongs (1200m) and the Cup over ten furlongs (2000m), and Brisbane’s newspaper The Courier Mail wrote in the race summary of the Rockhampton Carnival that Mystery Lad’s two wins “marked the horse as a champion and the best that Rockhampton had seen in many years.”

First Rocky Newmarket & Cup Double won 100 years ago

In the Newmarket, Mystery Lad defeated The Jap by just under a length with Modestee a few lengths back in third. Starting the second favourite in the race and carrying 57kg Mystery Lad challenged the front runner Dan Brown in the home straight and proved too hardy for The Jap with Modestee tiring in the run to the line.

His rider, Pat O’Loughlin, was from the old school of jockeys and rode with a straight back and appeared to sit heavily on his horse, but no one could have ridden Mystery Lad better.

Mystery Lad was always in control of the Rocky Cup, and he could have won it at any point. When Mystery Lad, carrying topweight of 59.5kg, moved into third place with just 600 metres to run, the big crowd was already cheering him as the winner, then when he ranged alongside the leader Agnes Vareo, the volume of the crowd’s roar grew louder. At the 200m post, he was in full flight. Cheveley made his claim at the same time as the veteran Sim Dallas, but O’Loughlin was only kidding to his chasers, and with a dig of his heels to Mystery Lad’s ribs, he bounded clear to win by almost a length. Sim Dallas was almost at his shoulder, shortly after they passed the winning post with the pocket-sized Cheveley gripping on to third place. The race favourite, well-credentialled southerner Bernesk, finished in sixth place. Adam Wallace, another Sydneysider set for the Exhibition Handicap in Brisbane, also failed to measure up.

Commentators of the day wrote that Mystery Lad had a good even action and was capable of winning at any distance. After the 1925 Rockhampton Cup Carnival, Mystery Lad had won ten of his fourteen races, and O’Loughlin, a 35-year-old railway worker from the Mackay district, had become almost a household name in Rocky.

So too was Mystery Lad, everyone heard of his conquest.

Between 20th and 25th June 1925, Mystery Lad consecutively raced four times at Callaghan Park over a total of just over 32 furlongs, about 6400m (6.4 km), which was a mighty effort in any language.

Mystery Lad had an unremarkable pedigree

The story goes that Mystery Lad was sold for £6 by the owner of Waverley Station near St Lawrence, one of the oldest towns on the coast of Queensland, between Rockhampton and Mackay. He sold the unbroken youngster to the station manager, John McArthur, who had been at Waverley for 32 years.

Mystery Lad was by an unidentified stallion, thought to be a Stormbird colt who was at the St Lawrence property, from a station mare named Go On.

McArthur had watched the young horse gallop around the paddock well ahead of the other yearlings, and he thought he was on a safe bet to win a race or two.

He struck a deal with the boss and set about making him a racehorse.

Word spread quickly about the performances of the Central Queensland bush star, and before the Carnival was finished, Mystery Lad had been sold to race in Sydney.

Well-known Sydney trainer Mick Polson was at Callaghan Park and watched Mystery Lad race four times in a week with huge weights over various distances. Polson was stunned when Mystery Lad won both the Newmarket and the Cup and placed third at his two other appearances over the carnival that spanned five days.

Polson had heard the Mystery Lad was for sale for £1,000 and threw a low-ball price of £750 in an attempt to secure him for one of his Sydney clients, Jack Astley. However, before the deal was done, McArthur had to hose down a rumour that Mystery Lad was not the horse he and his boss, Station owner, C. Wright, claimed him to be. Wright confirmed that Mystery Lad was bred on his station, where a few colts were known to run promiscuously with mares, and he vouched that Mystery Lad had been sired by his Stormbird colt, and the dam was unquestionably Go On. The deal was done with a certificate of identification signed by Wright. The sale was a great return on investment for McArthur. McArthur also explained that in the early 1920s, blood mares roamed free at Waverley Station, in the Devil Devil region between Mackay and St Lawrence. Four stallions were allowed to roam the station.

Mystery Lad becomes Mingelo

In Sydney, Mystery Lad was trained at Moorefield by the shrewd and dapper Mick Polson, who had a great eye for a horse and a gift of pulling off big betting plunges.

Few would have known Mystery Lad’s northern form, and if they did, they probably thought it inferior to the south.

Oddly, Polson submitted a name change, likely to set up a sting.

Mystery Lad was reregistered as Mingelo, and he had his first start at Randwick in a Welter in early 1926, finishing 6th.

It was at his next race that the stable’s money went on. Backed heavily at Moorefield, Mingelo collected win bets of tens of thousands of pounds, winning in a canter over Woodville. Mingelo continued to be a good earner in Sydney, sometimes with Phar Lap’s jockey Jim Pike aboard. Later, he raced on tracks up the New South Wales coast and sometimes crossed back into Queensland.

At Grafton, Mingelo ran second in the 1926 South Grafton and Grafton Cups, won by Cyllene Laddie. Records show that years after his Rocky beginnings, Mingelo had nothing left to prove, but he continued to win races in the south.

He recorded his last big race win in 1928, beating Pulque and Sapilly in the New Year Handicap at Eagle Farm.

And what about Polson? Well, he continued to terrorise the bookies.

His most famous betting plunge was in America in 1934, taking $US100,000 from off-track bookies when Aussie, Trevallion won a $1200 Californian Claiming race, but that’s another story.

• David Aldred CEO