Charlie Thomas
Even today, almost 70 years after he retired from race-driving, only two drivers have driven more winners of the WA Pacing Cup than the richly talented Charlie Thomas who dominated the race in the twenties and thirties.
Born on 13th May 1900 to Fred and Frances Thomas (nee York), Charlie Thomas was the second of eight children (three boys & five girls) each of whom was heavily involved with the trotting industry.
Charlie’s brothers John and Don were both successful drivers with each of them driving in excess of 100 winners in Perth while Don went on to become WATA Chairman of Stewards.
Charlie’s sisters were all equestriennes with four of them winning Lady Riders races at the WACA Ground track. Hilda Thomas represented Western Australia at the 1923 Royal Sydney Show in seven events. She later trained pacers and her son Phil Coulson was a leading trainer and driver in his own right.
The entire family would compete in the annual Osborne Park Show and dominate proceedings in all categories from pony to high jump. Charlie and his sister Hilda went head to head at the 1923 Perth Royal Show in the high jump and while Charlie cleared 6 feet with a horse called Pathfinder, on its second attempt, he lost out to another trotting identity in Frank Weise who cleared the same height on Strathmore on the first attempt.
The 1923 Perth Royal Show was the venue for two Australian Mile records when the pacer Kola Girl time-trialled in a time of 2:07.8 to set national marks for both pacers and pacing mares while the trotter Princess Wilkes time-trialled in a time of 2:15.0 which was a new national mark for a trotting mare.
In early December 1912, when Charlie Thomas was some six months short of his 13th birthday, the WA Turf Club approved his becoming indentured to his father as an apprentice jockey.
As a 13yo at the Perth Royal Show, Charlie Thomas competed against nine other riders in a special event to determine the best bareback rider over hurdles. There was only one fall although Charlie came close when his horse hit a fence and he was thrown and made a recovery per medium of a desperate lunge for the horse’s neck.
Charlie’s natural ability in the saddle soon came to the fore and he rode his first winner as a 13yo and made headlines as a 14yo with a winning double with Anon and Visit and a second placing at a race-meeting at Wanneroo.
That night his father drove Wally M to victory at the WACA track. Fred Thomas appears to have been the first dual-licenced trainer to win races in both codes on the same day/night. The Wanneroo Turf Club had commenced racing in the late 1870’s and closed in the 1930’s.
Charlie was issued with a reinsman’s licence in 1916 as increasing weight curtailed his career as a jockey and he soon established himself as a fierce competitor on the tiny WACA track. His first trotting winner was Wally M at the WACA on 24th June 1916. Wally M was trained by his father.
In 1917, after he had thrashed a field with the Ribbonwood stallion Alfred Donald the Australian newspaper stated that “Young Charlie Thomas is a clever and dashing rider. When the money is on and serious business meant, he does not swank to win by a length when he can make it ten”. That same performance also caught the eye of the Western Mail who described 17yo Charlie as “one of the finest riders of trotting horses in Australia and few reinsmen are better judges of pace than the lad who rode Alfred Donald to victory on Saturday.
For all his early success and the accolades he was being afforded publicly, Charlie Thomas remained well-grounded and shied away from the hype.
In 1918 after landing a winning treble the Western Mail’s trotting writer “Camoola” lamented the fact that he was unable to convince Charlie to have his photograph taken to publish in the paper, although he did advise readers that Charlie had agreed to think the matter over.
While the newspapers of the time were generally effusive in their praise of Charlie Thomas’s efforts, on one occasion in 1919 he incurred the wrath of the trot writer in the Westralian Worker who gave Charlie some advice.
Reinsman Charlie Thomas on Saturday night rode Leila Ribbons like a monkey climbing up a stick. Stick a pin in yourself next time, Charlie, for you can give many alleged reinsmen 10 on (sic) when at your best. Backers were under the impression that the roan mare should have won but for your seeming attack of somnolency.
Charlie Thomas rode or drove 265 winners (257 in Perth) between 1916 and 1949 when his health forced a premature retirement from driving in races. He was the leading driver in Perth in 1921 and in 1942. He also finished 2nd on the premiership in 1918 and third in 1924 and 1926.
When Charlie Thomas won the 1920/21 Perth Reinsman’s Premiership at the age of 21 years 79 days he became the youngest driver ever to win the title although Max Johnson (21 years and 175 days) came close in 1952. They remain the only drivers under the age of 24 to win the title.
His 265 winners included four wins in the State’s premier race the WA Pacing Cup and only Phil Coulson (Charlie’s nephew) and Gary Hall Jnr have won the race on more occasions. A great rival of Charlie Thomas in Harold Richter also drove four WA Pacing Cup winners but, unlike Charlie Thomas, he trained each of them.
Charlie Thomas’s record in the WA Pacing is remarkable in that his 12 drives in the race included two third placings to go with his four winners to give him a placing at half of his drives in the race. Two of his unplaced drives were behind horses that he trained himself.
Charlie Thomas also has a WA Cup record that will never be broken as he rode the first of his four winners – Harold Rose for his father Fred Thomas in 1920. His other three wins in the race were all driven.
In the 1920 WA Pacing Cup, which carried a stake of £1000, heats and finals were run on the same night and in the first heat that year Charlie Thomas’s mount Harold Rose clashed with the even money favourite Monarch (Tom Foy) and finished second after Monarch was able to kick home strongly off an easy time in the lead.
After his heat win Monarch started an odds on favourite in the final and Harold Rose was second favourite at 5/1. In the final however Charlie was able to get Harold Rose to the front with Monarch on his outside. The pair cleared out from the remainder of the field as Charlie Thomas stuck to his plan to make the favourite work and that year’s Cup earned the title of “The greatest race seen at the WACA” as Harold Rose and Monarch went head to head throughout with Harold Rose prevailing at the finish by a mere 18 inches.
Charlie Thomas won his second WA Pacing Cup in 1924 when Black Childe, 20/1 in early betting on the final, won both his heat and final on Boxing Day 1924 starting at 6/1 in his heat and 8/1 in the final. His starting price in the final was somewhat surprising as he was the only horse starting from the front mark and he was able to lead throughout and win by two and a half yards.
Black Childe, trained by Bob Betts for owner George Hiscox, had only been brought to Western Australia earlier that year and in wins in March and April of 1924 he had been driven by Dave Michael.
While small fields contested the finals of the 1920 and 1924 WA Pacing Cup due to the heats and final format, the 1935 Cup saw 19 horses face the starter including the half-brother and sister Con Derby and Connie Glo which had both won a Victoria Derby before being brought to Perth by trainer Greg Kelly.
Connie Glo had won the 1932 Fremantle Cup for Kelly but had been sold and was in the stables of Harry Moran when she faced the starter in the 1935 WA Cup. Moran had resisted the temptation to fast-work Connie Glo in the three weeks leading up to the Cup preferring to keep her away from the track.
Charlie Thomas followed Moran’s instructions to a tee and settled the 14/1 chance Connie Glo just off the pace before running past fellow mare Chic turning for home to win by 12 yards with Kolect finishing third just ahead of the dead-heaters Ben Huon and Northwood Lady.
Charlie Thomas’s brothers John and Don also drove in the 1935 Cup with John behind the 5/2 favourite Nelson Pronto and 16yo Don behind Adonaldson to become the youngest driver to ever compete in the race – it is a record he still holds.
The WATA had such a massive crowd on course in 1935 that they, in all practical terms, had to shut the gates but to placate those still outside trying to get in they opened the flat section of the course to free entry.
The fourth of Charlie Thomas’s wins as a driver in the WA Pacing Cup came on 31st December 1938 when he brought the rank outsider Lulu Mick from near last with a lap to travel to beat Arabian Sheik, Wilnas Gift and the 5/4 favourite Royal Edna back in fourth place.
Lulu Mick was trained by Bob Bradley and started at 33/1 and paid a straight out dividend of £16/5/- on the tote. Bradley had both Lulu Mick and Talga Boy in the Cup and elected to drive Talga Boy.
Charlie Thomas trained 114 winners of which 108 were in Perth. The best horse he trained would have been Big Sheik which won 11 races in Perth including a heat of the £1000 Autumn Cup, a heat of the 1944 WA Pacing Cup and two heats of the Christmas Handicap.
During the second World War racing opportunities in Perth were restricted to every second Saturday afternoon and trainers needed to be able to get a return from the betting in order to survive and Charlie Thomas was exceptionally good at that aspect of training.
He was able to get his horses fit enough to win when racing first up and Big Sheik was a good example of this winning first-up practically every season of the six years he raced and always well supported. When Big Sheik won a heat of the 1943 Christmas Handicap he was plunged from 14/1 to 4/1. On other occasions he was successfully backed in from 5/1 to 6/4 and from 7/1 to 11/2.
Charlie Thomas trained and drove his last winner on New Year’s Eve 1949 behind Big Sheik and his retirement from active involvement in the sport he loved so dearly was brought about by a heart condition. A couple of his horses were transferred to other trainers and Frank Kersley won three races for Thomas with the mare Miss Eugowra in the twelve months following his retirement.
A stroke in 1950 left Charlie Thomas paralysed on his left hand side and he was to have a further four strokes before two years later, in a desperate attempt to end the pain and in fear of another stroke leaving him bedridden, he took a rifle and shot himself while the family were at the trots. Charlie Thomas died on February 6th 1952 from a cerebral haemorrhage which resulted from the gunshot wound.
Charlie Thomas will always be remembered as an exceptional horseman from a family of exceptional horsemen and horsewomen. His talent as both a jockey and driver was unlimited and at times the racing writers from both codes seemingly ran out of superlatives to describe his skill and ability.
Later that year when describing the rising star of WA trotting drivers Phil Coulson, WATA Reinspersons School instructor Cyril Lilleyman was quoted in The West Australian “Phil Coulson could be described as a replica of his uncle, the late Charlie Thomas…He has the same style in the spider, good judgement in a tight finish and a good pair of hands.”
Some years later Phil Coulson erased his uncle’s name from the WA Pacing Cup record books by driving seven winners of the race. Even now, some 70 years after Charlie Thomas drove his fourth WA Pacing Cup winner only Phil Coulson and Gary Hall Jnr have surpassed that achievement. Thomas’s WA Pacing Cup achievement was even the more remarkable as none of his quartet of winners started favourite in the big race.
Enquiries about tickets to the 2019 WA Racing Industry Hall of Fame Induction night on 28th February should be directed to Hall of Fame Coordinator Suzy Jackson on (08) 9445 5371 or suzy.jackson@rwwa.com.au
