TAJ ROSSI
(Painting by Michael Jeffery 1974/VRC Collection)
Cummings would also say in his autobiography titled Bart - My Life (2009): “There was nothing Taj Rossi couldn’t do that spring (1973). I thought Taj Rossi was the best three-year-old ever to have raced, certainly the best I’d trained, and believed that the sky was the limit for him. But he caught a stomach virus the next autumn and just wasn’t the same.’ 3 Taj Rossi was raced by Melbourne businessman Victor Peters who, along with his wife Lila, also raced the very good Fulmen back in the late 1960s. Their colours of white with the brown circles would become synonymous with quality throughout the late 1960s, 1970s and early 80s. They mainly raced horses in their own name and found their way into the top echelon of races across the country. There was a Cummings connection throughout. Feature races were not unfamiliar to the Peters owned horses. The Peters would later establish Fulmen Park on the Mornington Peninsula named after their first racehorse, a winner of 8 stakes races including the Brisbane and Adelaide Cups. Taj Rossi was retired to stud in 1975 and leased to Spendthrift Farm, Lexington, Kentucky in the US for a couple of seasons. He would return to stand at Dr Phil Redman’s Turangga Farm in Scone, NSW with the best progeny to include Taj Eclipse (1983 VRC Oaks) and Taj Quillo (1986 VRC Gadsden Stakes) both raced by the Peters family. He’d also sire the popular 1989 AJC Doncaster Hcp winner, Merimbula Bay. He died at the relatively young age of 15 in 1985. Interestingly, through the Grahame Begg trained Lunar Flare, a dominant winner of the 2022 VRC The Bart Cummings (G2) at Flemington and more recently the Andrew Ramsden Stakes (LR) by 5 and a half lengths, we have seen a return of the famous Peters colours. This has come about via part-
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