Bill, The Bastard, the Jericho and a legacy

For Victorian horse racing, the death of visionary and philanthropist Bill Gibbins will, in time, lead to a focus on his legacy.

In the wider community, Gibbins’ legacy is vast; a major supporter of charities Riding For The Disabled and Wheelchairs For Kids, earning him an Order of Australia. He was patron and life member of The Rats of Tobruk and, in 2007, outbid a property developer to save the Albert Park headquarters of the few surviving Rats, who had met at the site for 50 years.

In horse racing, Gibbins’ legacy, other than buckling bookies at the knees, is the Jericho Cup. And the loss of Gibbins will lead to speculation about the future of the race he created, funded and promoted with a passion that proved infectious, making it an almost instant institution.

The eighth Jericho Cup was staged at Warrnambool last Sunday.

The energy was missing because Gibbins was not there for the first time since the first Jericho was run in 2018. He had battled illness for many months and died at age 78 just days after the latest edition of a unique event he’d gifted horse racing and the town of Warrnambool.

The absence of Gibbins last Sunday contributed to a sense that the Jericho Cup was at a crossroads. He had funded the event for the first five years but passed the baton to Racing Victoria in 2022 and RV vowed to safeguard the future of the race.

Then head of racing, Greg Carpenter acknowledged that “in its short history, the Jericho Cup has already captured the imagination of the racing public and that is largely due to the tireless efforts of its founder, Bill Gibbins”.

The challenge, of course, is that Gibbins is impossible to replace, his energy and vision difficult to replicate. He had been the heart and soul, the ringmaster, the narrator of the Jericho Cup and the most famous man on-course.

But in racing circles, that fame wasn’t evident when he initially presented his Jericho dream to initially baffled Racing Victoria officials.

He was best known to bookies, a clandestine figure.

Well-known bookmaker rep Gerry Walsh said that, in his day, Gibbins had been a leviathan punter. Even in death, there is privacy between bookie and client but Walsh said Gibbins had a “monster bet” on 2000 Melbourne Cup winner Brew.

“Not so much in recent years but back in the day he was pretty huge,” Walsh said.

Gibbins had sold his trucking business in 2006 to Lindsay Fox for a reported $150 million, enabling him not just to bet but to support a number of charities with no fuss or fanfare.

“He was not a ‘look at me’ type of bloke,” Walsh said.

Gibbins paid $2 million to fend off developers to save the Albert Park gathering place for the ever-dwindling Rats of Tobruk.

“He was at home with Iolanda watching the ABC news and saw the house the Rats used was being repossessed,” Walsh said. “He said to Iolanda ‘I’m gonna buy that building and give the keys to the Rats’.”

Walsh remembers the man who saved the Rats and created his own Anzac-themed horse race as “a very humble bloke, not a Flower Drum (restaurant) type of guy”.

“He was a super bloke, really good company. He maybe missed one Warrnambool May carnival in 40 years. He had no airs and graces, loved his family, married his childhood sweetheart.”

A man who never felt the need to flash around his wealth. Gibbins’ family holiday house in Dromana remained unchanged for 50 years.

The story of the second Jericho Cup is almost as famous as the story of the first, run 100 years earlier, a half a world away.

Gibbins had been gifted a book that had sat idle on his bedside table for months.

Iolanda had prodded her husband, a self-confessed non-reader, to read the “darned book”, which he did, and in “Bill The Bastard” Gibbins learned of an extraordinary war story that he was determined to re-tell and reinvent.

Bill The Bastard had carried the dead body of John Simpson, the soldier with the donkey, from the battlefields of Gallipoli. He saved four Tassie soldiers from the 1916 Battle of Romani and, two years later, won a pop-up desert horse race laced with deception.

Anyone who knew Gibbins knew that such things would appeal to him. He had a great sense of mischief and a strong desire to ensure Australian legends were not forgotten but celebrated.

The dramatic story of the Jericho Cup through the battlefields of Palestine in 1918, where 34,000 Light Horsemen staged five races, complete with stewards, bookies and race books to distract the Turks from a planned deadly assault, inspired the former trucking magnate.

The Jericho Cup, the impromptu horse race with a hidden agenda, had to be commemorated.

Qualifying races would be held throughout Australia and New Zealand. Only Australasian-breds would be eligible to run. There would be other races on the program to celebrate Anzac heroes, horse and human.

Gibbins set the rules. The event was greater than the race, something critics of the Jericho – as a marathon for sub-standard horses – failed to see.  

The Last Post would echo across the racecourse, wherever that racecourse would eventually prove to be as Gibbins pitched the concept to Racing Victoria officials who took some time to cotton on.

“I started negotiating to have it at Ballarat … anyway Warrnambool heard about that and I think a few changed their minds,” Gibbins told racing.com last year.

“There were really only two choices, have a charge down the straight at Flemington on the 100th anniversary of Beersheba or do it 18 months later at Warrnambool.

“It’s just the logical place to have it through the hills and the Grand Annual course.”

Gibbins steamrolled his way through red tape to bring his dream to life. He drove club people hard, clearing the way and knocking a few noses out of joint.

Gibbins stumped up over $300,000 in prize money for the first five editions – plus more for trophies – joking last year that being inspired by Bill The Bastard had cost him $2 million.

“It was the dearest book I ever read,” he said.

Gibbins never doubted the Jericho because he never doubted himself.

“I said, ‘I’ll succeed alright’. I said, ‘I’ll get a field. It’s just a matter of how hard we work on it,” he said.

“In my life, if I get something that’s a good idea, I usually go hellbent. I was with this, I spent a lot of time, a lot of effort, getting it going.

“It’s a spectacular race. You’ve got to see it to believe it.

“When you’re celebrating the Jericho Cup, you’re celebrating your own history.”

Time will tell if Bill Gibbins’ wonderful horse race prospers or peters out. His death is a significant setback.

Industry pledges and goodwill cannot replicate the vision and passion of the man who dreamt it up and then made it happen through sheer force of will and a great reverence for Australian history.