MCG guide Robert Green’s family connection leads to the long-term loan of one of racing’s treasures to the National Sports Museum
At the height of legendary bookmaker Sol Green’s career, a couple of mail trucks would service his Elizabeth Street offices daily, chock full of feature double slips and accompanying cheques.
Many of those envelopes were addressed simply: Sol Green, Melbourne. Such was his renown and such was the popularity of “the punt” among battlers nationwide.
Green had migrated from England in 1885, arriving penniless and sleeping rough but armed with a brilliant head for figures that soon saw him fielding in the paddock at Flemington in the early 1890s. He quickly became Australia’s biggest bookie.
In 1906 he ventured to England and bought a mare in foal to Derby winner Persimmon. Sol shipped her back home and the resultant foal eventually raced with great success as Comedy King.
And that, in a nutshell, is the provenance of Comedy King’s 1910 Melbourne Cup, passed down through the family and placed on loan to the National Sports Museum (NSM) by Sol Green’s grandson Robert Green, an MCG guide whose thoughtful gesture is acknowledged with thanks.
Although Robert and wife Jan are not keen racegoers, they usually attend the Melbourne Cup and are pleased that the trophy will now emerge from the bank vault and go on public display in the new Australian Racing Museum which, as part of the NSM, opens in the first week of October.
“The 1910 sterling silver cup was specially made in England as it was the 50th year of the event,” said Robert.
“It was presented to my grandfather 100 years ago and my earliest memories of it are at the family’s summer home in Sorrento, where it was on display filled with flowers.”
The Sol Green story had a happy ending. A noted philanthropist who by 1930 rivalled John Wren for wealth and generosity towards worthy causes, he invested wisely in property and when he died aged 79 in 1947 his estate was valued at half a million pounds.
