If youโve ever seen the 2006 comedy The Benchwarmers, you probably remember the part of the film where they try to enter a full-grown man named Carlos into a Little League game by forging a birth certificate in green crayon that simply reads, โI am 12.โ If youโre unfamiliar with that film, imagine trying to enter Usain Bolt into a high school track meet by dressing him up in a wig and sunglasses. The story of Bold Personality and Fine Cotton is very much like both of those scenarios, except with racehorses.
Every once in a while, someone devises a scheme that is such a hack job that it makes you shake your head and wonder how the hell they thought they were ever going to get away with it. Essentially, a horse racing syndicate tried to substitute a much faster horse for a much slower horse by using hair dye and white paint, botched the paint job, failed miserably, and became one of the most notorious stories of deceit and stupidity in the history of Australian horse racing.
This scandal has to be one of the most impressively absurd schemes in history. It involved kangaroos, illegal drugs, hair dye, and spray paint, and left the horseโs owners floundering for a way to cover up their lack of foresight. Itโs a story of greed and idiocy that victimized several horses and a whole lot of gamblers. Ask anyone who was living in Queensland, Australia in the mid-1980s, and theyโll surely remember this historic blunder.
How It All Started
John โThe Phantomโ Gillespie clearly wasnโt very good at learning his lesson. Back in 1982, the horse breeder and conman substituted a horse named Apparent Heir for a horse of much lesser ability named Mannasong at a race at Doomben Racecourse in Queensland, Australia. The idea was essentially to rig the race. Since Apparent Heir should never have been let into the race because of his superior ability to the rest of the field, he should have won the race easily. However, thatโs not what happened.
Apparent Heir surprisingly did not win the race, resulting in a lot of people losing a lot of money and growing very angry with Gillespie. Somehow, even with people calling for Gillespieโs head, he was able to avoid prosecution for the scheme, although he did serve some time in jail while awaiting trial, and was allowed to continue participating in the sport of horse racing.
After waiting a whole two years for the 1982 debacle to wash over, Gillespie decided it was time to try out his scheme again, hopefully with more success this time. So, in 1984, Gillespie started making some new friends and hatching his plan.
While Gillespie was sitting in Boggo Road Gaol awaiting trial for his transgressions in 1982, he met a man named Pat Haitana who was serving time for passing bad checks. Pat eventually introduced Gillespie to his brother Hayden Haitana, a licensed horse trainer. Together, John Gillespie and Hayden Haitana decided that they would take another stab at a horse substitution scheme (which is known in the industry as a โring-inโ).
Where Things Went Wrong
Gillespie and Haitanaโs plan was simple and pretty much followed the same principles as Gillespieโs 1982 scheme. In 1984, Gillespie bought a fine horse by the name of Dashing Solitaire and hired trainer Wendy Smith to get it ready to race at Eagle Farm Racecourse in August. Two weeks later, Gillespie bought another horse named Fine Cotton, an old nag that was sure to never have a chance at victory over its entire career.
Fine Cotton was trained by Hayden Haitana and was entered into as many races as possible leading up to the big race at Eagle Farm Racecourse. Of course, Fine Cotton lost every single race that he entered. The whole purpose here was to lower Fine Cottonโs odds, making him a huge underdog and thus increasing the payout when Dashing Solitaire (who was to impersonate Fine Cotton) won at Eagle Farm.
Gillespie then started recruiting some seedy characters to get in on the scheme. He tipped off a mobster named Mick Sayers, who was presumably going to bet on the race and then give Gillespie some sort of kickback after his wager hit. Sayers also apparently owed money to George Freeman, one of the more famous organized crime figures in Australia at the time, which further broadened the reach of this scheme.
Then, everything started going wrong. Dashing Solitaire got spooked by a group of kangaroos and ran into a barbed-wire fence, injuring himself only a few days before the race. Gillespie, who was either too hubristic to admit defeat or in too deep with some criminal enterprise, decided that they would have to find a solution.
Hayden Haitana suggested that they give Fine Cotton a fighting chance at winning by hopping him up on a cocktail of amphetamines to make him run faster, but Gillespie thought that plan left too much to chance. Instead, Gillespie suggested that they substitute a different horse named Bold Personality for Fine Cotton. There was just one problem: Bold Personality was a totally different color than Fine Cotton.
Fine Cottonโs coat was nearly black and Bold Personality was a much lighter shade of brown. But Gillespie came up with a simple solution to get over this hurdle: they would dye Bold Personality with Clairol hair dye. Haitana agreed to do it himself; however, when the process was finished, Bold Personalityโs coat actually became a lighter color than it had been before, making the horse look almost orange. Whether this was because Haitana did not apply the product correctly or because it was never meant to be used on a horse is unknown.
Then, they noticed another problem. Fine Cotton had distinct white markings on his hind legs, whereas Bold Personality had no such markings. As a solution, they grabbed a can of white spray paint and sloppily painted similar markings on Bold Personalityโs legs. So, when it was time for the horses to line up for the race at Eagle Farm on August 8th, they sent that poor horse to the gate with a strangely orange coat and a pair of spray-painted hind legs.
Race Day
Criminals from all across Australia who had caught wind of the scheme showed up to Eagle Farm and placed bets on Fine Cotton (who was really Bold Personality). With how poorly Fine Cotton had performed at his previous races, his odds opened up at 33-1. However, with so many people placing large bets on Fine Cotton (knowing that he was a ringer), the odds quickly shortened all the way to 7-2, arousing a great deal of suspicion about the horse.
Still, the racing stewards did nothing to stop Fine Cotton from participating in the race. As the horses came to the finish line, Fine Cotton beat the favorite, a horse named Harbour Gold, by a nose. Itโs believed that the conspirators would have netted around $1.5 million from the win; however, the racing stewards started to suspect something fishy and immediately stopped the payouts.
As Fine Cotton approached the scale, the spray paint on his legs was beginning to run and was leaving a trail of white as he walked, making it glaringly obvious that some sort of foul play was going on. Some reported that people in the crowd even started shouting โring-in.โ The racing stewards then asked Hayden Haitana to provide the registration for Fine Cotton, but he ran out of the racecourse without complying. The stewards eventually confirmed that a ring-in had taken place and Harbour Gold was declared the victor.
The Aftermath
Ordinarily, a 2nd Novice Handicap race such as this would not have made any headlines. However, the substitution scheme brought this race into the national spotlight and has made Fine Cotton and Bold Personality household names in Queensland and throughout Australia.
Gillespie and Haitana both served prison sentences for their involvement in the scheme. Both men were banned for life from participating in horse racing in Australia. Haitanaโs lifetime ban was eventually lifted per the recommendations of several stewards. Gillespie later claimed that he netted $1.8 million dollars in the infamous 1984 Eagle Farm race by betting on Harbour Gold. No one has been able to confirm whether he was telling the truth or not.