‘The last of the great turf writers’: Max Presnell’s time at the Herald comes to an end

In 1964, a young Australian reporter – and alleged punter – named Max Presnell boarded a train in Darlington, in County Durham in the north of England.

He was headed to London to place one of the biggest bets of his life on an underrated horse in the Ascot Gold Cup (4014m), one of the world’s most prestigious staying races put on for kings and queens.

The horse had little weight on its back, and because it came from the north of England would receive scant respect in the betting ring. Better still, the nag loved the wet.

“On the train ride down, the rain was coming down,” Presnell recalls, rubbing his hands together. “I said, ‘How good is this?!’ I’d mustered all my financial reserves. It was going to be 10 to 1.”

Unfortunately, there was too much rain. By the time Presnell arrived at Ascot, the race meeting had been called off for only the second time since its first running in 1807.

“Of course, with a pocket full of money, I went to a casino instead,” Presnell continues. “Then I was on the next train back to Darlington at midnight with no money. Three days later, I received a letter from John Fairfax asking if I wanted to come home. I had nothing and they paid my way back. If that horse had run at Royal Ascot, I would have won and I’d still be there.”

How lucky for those of us who value words, reporting, unflinching opinion, and the enduring romance of the track that Royal Ascot was too waterlogged for business that day.

Presnell returned and for the next 60 years, in newspapers, radio and TV, he brought the characters and colour of the track to life.

Sadly, it’s come to an end.

A month ago, the legendary Presnell, 84, wrote his last column for The Sydney Morning Herald. He’s too proud to write a final piece – “It’s like writing your own obit,” he grumbles – but his contribution is too significant to simply brush aside.

He started with Fairfax in 1954 as a 15-year-old copy boy with the now-defunct afternoon paper The Sun and served his cadetship the following three years before being graded in 1961.

That year, he backed Fine And Dandy to win the Doncaster into Sharply to win the Sydney Cup, won a thousand pounds and headed to England for three years. “I thought I was a punter of some substance,” he says. “That didn’t last long.”

In total, he has provided a staggering 67 years of service to Fairfax mastheads. For context, economics giant Ross Gittins earlier this year celebrated 50 years at the Herald.

“Ross had a great foundation in the Salvation Army,” Presnell says. “I was the son of a publican at the Doncaster Hotel. Ross was spreading the good word on the street while I was frequenting Bub Brown’s SP garage in the back streets of Kensington.”

Max Presnell was the man. Still is.

“I’m just a tabloid hack,” he says.

Really? Come on, Max.

“And proud of it! Those were the days, son. One of the more famous Herald sporting editors said I’m an old-time racing writer. I said, ‘That’s the best rap I’ve had. Banjo Paterson was a racing writer’.”

He adds: “Nobody could ask for a better deal than I’ve got. But newspapers have changed. I grew up in a different world. It’s now different to how I believe it should be done.”

Fox Sports boss Steve Crawley learned about writing turf alongside Presnell at The Sun and The Sun-Herald in the 1980s, listening on as he and his contemporaries would dictate 40 inch-perfect paragraphs down the phone line to a copytaker in the office straight after a race.

“Max is the last of the great Sydney turf writers,” Crawley says. “There was Bert Lillye, Les Carlyon, Bill Whittaker, Keith Robbins, Tommy Brassell, John Holloway, Ken Callander, Bill Casey – and now Max Presnell. Max had a different way of telling his stories; the same as he dressed a little differently and basically ran his own race. We’ll miss more than his words.”

It was his words, though, that made Presnell compulsory reading. Like the late Carlyon, you couldn’t get enough of him.

He had one eye on the present, while doffing his fedora to the past. In more recent years, he transported the reader to a time when Sydney and racing was ruled by characters who belonged in a Damon Runyon play.

A 2010 column about Perce Galea, the famous gambler and illegal casino operator, stands out. Galea was part-owner of 1964 Golden Slipper winner Eskimo Prince with his son Bruce.

“Following the official presentation, Perce threw a wad of notes over the fence into the crowd,” Presnell wrote. “Some say it was £150 in £10 notes, others a hundred in single pounds. The bundle is unlikely. It would have spoilt the cut of Galea’s suit.”

In the late 1990s, his weekly appearances on Sportsworld on Channel Seven each Sunday were compulsory viewing as he and Melbourne-based expert Keith Hillier went at each other with host Bruce McAvaney acting as referee.

“I was the ringmaster and I loved it,” McAvaney says. “Max had such a beautiful turn of phrase. We’d either have a huge laugh or we’d go to the dictionary and find out what he was talking about. What I remember most about Max is that he always had this clear definition of a ‘champion’. He was very reticent in declaring one. When he did, you knew it was special.”

Presnell has seen generations of “great” horses, but only a handful of “champions”.

“Two of the most overused words in sport are ‘champion’ and ‘luck’,” he offers. “I’ve seen too many great horses, but how do you say one is better than the other? It’s just a feeling. Most talented horses or humans are good for champion performances, but it’s where it’s sustained and you walk away and know that you’re in the presence of something outstanding here.”

He covered the biggest stories and the biggest scandals, from Fine Cotton to Jockey Tapes, and was respected for his unwavering ability to call it as it was.

“In our business, if you write something you can’t worry if it’s going to upset someone,” he says. “My greatest fallout was with George Moore.”

One of the greatest jockeys of all time, Moore often clashed with trainer Tommy Smith, with whom Presnell was close.

“I once called George a ‘Pitt Street farmer’,” he laughs. “Someone got in touch with me and said, ‘Iris Moore is gunning for you’. Iris was George’s wife. Did I ring up and take my punishment like a man? I took three weeks leave.”

When Moore died in 2008, Presnell delivered the eulogy – at Iris’s request.

His best story was one of his first. “The protest after the 1961 AJC Derby was the first big story I ever did,” he says.

Mel Schumacher on Blue Era had beaten Tommy Hill on Summer Fair in the shadows of the post, but Hill quickly fired in a protest, which was uncommon in those days because the use of film was in its infancy.

“Everyone thought Tommy Hill had gone mad,” Presnell says.

But Hill was adamant he’d been wronged when he fronted chief steward Jack Bourke.

“Mel Schumacher leant over and pulled my leg and pulled me back near the post,” Hill said. “I got beaten by a head, that cost me far more.”

“Are you sure?” Bourke asked.

“Mr Bourke, I would know if a snake bit me.”

Schumacher was incredulous.

“Preposterous,” he told the inquiry.

Then they showed the grainy footage and the head-on shot consigned Schumacher to his fate.

“He was given life, walked off the course – and we had the story in the paper,” Presnell recalls. “When you’re a 21-year-old cadet, it’s not easy spelling ‘preposterous’ to a copytaker.”

Presnell might have filed his last column for the Herald but they won’t be his last words. He’s going to start his own website. He draws inspiration from his great mate Les Bridge, who earlier this month won his second Doncaster Mile with Celestial Legend – at the age of 85.

“I don’t believe in the word ‘retire’,” Presnell says. “It’s never been work. It’s a way of life. I’ll still go to the races, still have an opinion.”

In recent years, I was blessed to cover some big race meetings with Presnell. What stood out was how the big-name trainers, jockeys and owners would approach him to talk, rarely the other way around.

But my enduring memory of Max isn’t a story he’s written, nor a question asked. It’s not his myriad tales of the track and newsrooms, which I could listen to for days.

Sitting in the tiny press box at Moonee Valley on Cox Plate Day in 2013, I noticed him get up and make his way for the door.

The horses were about to be brought into the mounting yard, which is located at the back of the main grandstand, so I decided to follow him. It was my first time covering a meeting at the Valley.

I watched in awe as Max weaved a magical path through the crowd of sloshed racegoers like he was Clive Churchill, the fullback of his beloved South Sydney, jinking and weaving around women wobbling on high heels and men swaying back and forth, staring at the TV screens. He’d set a cracking pace and it was hard to keep up.

Suddenly, he took off down a ramp, then some stairs, through a door, before popping up in the betting ring, a wad of hundreds in one hand, race book in the other and both eyes on the tote boards.

Max Presnell was the man. Still is.

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