The name Phar Lap comes from an Asian word for lightning; a sky flash. A passing dazzle of light, a spark in the night.
And so he was, the big copper racehorse, born in New Zealand, trained in Australia, whose dazzling speed made him one of those unexpected beacons of hope during the Great Depression and who, according to a report published in an international chemistry journal in April, was killed by a massive dose of arsenic.
Of course, no one who follows race horse history could be entirely surprised by that finding. For one thing, it built on preliminary results from 2006. But from the…
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