THE BELZONI
T he horse who won James Dunbar’s 1849 Flemington Cup trophy was a true thoroughbred. Belzoni’s grandsire, Little John, won the prestigious 1821 King’s Plate at Lewes Racecourse in East Sussex. The pioneering Henty family imported Belzoni’s sire – also named Little John (1831), a grey – to Tasmania, later to Victoria. Belzoni was described as “a neat horse, possessed of every good quality in moderation”. He won several races in the years 1847-49 including a hack race at the annual Melbourne meeting at Flemington in 1848. His owner was James Elijah Crook, licensee of the Wool Pack Inn at Bacchus Marsh, who lived to a great age. Crook was an enormous man, weighing in at around 146 kilograms. Luckily for Belzoni he was not the nominated ‘gentleman rider’ for the 1849 Flemington Cup at the Flemington Inn course. The jockey, Richard Dimmock Lovelock, ran a Melbourne livery stables. Belzoni won the race in two heats on the one afternoon. J.E. Crook’s son James Crooke – he added the “e” to the family name – was only two years old when “The Flemington Cup” was run but as a boy he remembered his father nimbly driving the horse harnessed to a buggy through the gold field diggings at Ballarat. He admired Belzoni as “a bright bay gelding with very muscular loins, standing about 15.1 hands.” “The end of Belzoni was tragic,” Crooke recalled as an old man. “He disappeared one day, and is supposed to have been stolen by bushrangers. My father valued him a good deal, and offered a substantial reward for his recovery. Nothing was heard of Belzoni for a time, but on my father returning to Bacchus Marsh after a trip to Tasmania, he found a letter awaiting him from the Sydney police to the effect that Belzoni had been found abandoned.”
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