Kerry Packer was without a doubt the greatest punter in Australian racing history. He began betting on horses as a child and retained his love of boats at the racetrack until the end of his life. Overseas, Kerry Packer loved to play at the casino tables, but in Australia the casinos weren’t big enough to handle his bets and his biggest punts were reserved for the race track.
As Packer’s wealth increased over the years, so did his gambling. The Costigan Commission report included the fact that Packer had paid $4 million to a bookie over an 18-month period between 1980 and 1981, and received only $1.2 million, a loss of almost $3 million.
In the late ’70s, “The Big Man,” as he was known in racing circles, would descend on a race track with several “gofers” and a larger number of hangers-on, all running around trying to listen to his instructions. When Packer gave the command, the gofers would run to the bookies, trying to place the bets simultaneously, for Packer’s bets were so large that they would immediately render a horse unbacked, as the odds dropped precipitously when the bookies bookmakers tried to balance their books. Once the betting began, however, Packer was a strangely impassive bystander, rarely getting excited about the finish line.
One of Packer’s most famous betting losses came at the 1987 Golden Slipper race at Rosehill. Betting $2 million on his horse Christmas Tree, he saw him finish fourth and that wasn’t the only loss of the day. Apparently the bookies had a world record $20 million in their purses, and Packer’s losses amounted to a staggering $7 million.
Just two weeks later, Packer backed Myocard to beat his own horse Major Drive, this time at Randwick. Unfortunately, the favorite Myocard, who had previously won the Tancred Stakes that year, also placed fourth, and Major Drive won at odds of 7-1. This was just the beginning of one of Kerry Packer’s biggest gambling sprees, rumored to have been in the order of $55 million. The stakes were so large that they can be calculated from AJC’s total gambling turnover. By the last day of the Carnival, Packer had lost $28 million to Sydney bookie McHugh. Packer then persuaded McHugh to raise his previous limit of $5 million to $10 million, and he proceeded to pick three straight winners. McHugh turned in his bookie’s license a few days later.
Packer’s legendary racing betting continued well into the 1990s. Another famous clearance was backing his own horse Mahogany in the 1993 VRC Derby. He also successfully backed Jezabeel in the 1998 Melbourne Cup, and the odds they went from 14-1 when he placed his bet, to 6-1 when the race started a few minutes later, and Jezabeel made it too.
Packer was not at a racetrack to socialize and mingle with the cream of horse racing society. It is even said that he was not a particular fan of horse racing: for him, the magic of the race lay in the thrill of the kick.
