Phar is more of an Australian national icon than the most famous Australian racehorse of all time. The questions that have hung over his death are also the basis of Australia’s oldest conspiracy theory. Was Lap’s death the result of foul play or was it just bad luck that the famous horse collapsed and died shortly after winning his first race in the United States?
The Australian-trained, New Zealand-born horse was owned by American David J. David at the time of his death. Over the objections of David’s horse trainer and business partner Harry Telford, Phar Lap was sent to Tijuana, Mexico, where he raced in and won the Agua Caliente Handicap in 1932, earning a record purse of $100,000. After the race, he was resting in Menlo Park, California, where stable staff found him running hot and in severe pain. Within hours, the horse died of hemorrhage in the early morning of April 5, 1932.
Speculation about the cause of PL’s death began almost as soon as the news reached the Australian media. A necropsy was inconclusive, showing only that the horse had a severely inflamed stomach and intestines. Speculations ranged from death by mob poisoning to accidental lead poisoning to a fast-acting infection.
Given the enduring fascination with Phar and the mystery of his death, the story kept coming back in the news over the years. In the 1980s, equine pathologists reviewed the original reports and suggested that the 1930s necropsy pointed to acute bacterial gastroenteritis.
The preservation of various parts of PharL’s body has been fortuitous as scientists have been able to apply modern forensic methods to the remains. The horse’s skeleton is on display at the Te Papa Museum in Wellington, its heart is at the Canberra Institute of Anatomy and its stuffed body is on display at the Melbourne Museum.
In 2006, Australian Synchrotron scientists concluded that P Lap was almost certainly killed by a large dose of arsenic. Conspiracy theorists suggest this was organized by the American mafia who, at the time, controlled the illegal sportsbooks of the US racing scene. However, there is actually no evidence of involvement. of gangsters, although it is an attractive theory. Also, arsenic at the time was considered a “tonic” for both horses and humans, so it is possible that Phar suffered from accidental poisoning.
The most recent study in 2008 saw a sophisticated analysis of arsenic in hair samples from Phar Lap. This study distinguished between the arsenic ingested by the horse and the arsenic added to the remains during the taxidermy process itself. The results were that Ph Lap appeared to die after ingesting a massive dose of arsenic some 40 hours before his death.
Of course, science brings us one step closer to clearing up the mystery of Lap’s death. It would be a brave gambler who would count the odds in betting on whether the overdose was accidental or deliberate, and if it was deliberate by whom. Certainly the mob, running a profitable illegal horse racing betting system in the US, had a lot to lose if PhLap had continued to win in the US. But that’s just speculation, and we’ll probably never settle the issue. mystery of the death of Phar Lap.