Look; blink; rub your eyes; look again. Never mind “the camera never lies”, this is one of those images which makes you doubt the veracity of what you’re actually seeing.
So what have we got?
Two magnificent racehorses which have obviously just disembarked from the open horse trailer. Behind them a plane whose door is also open and which looks, thanks to the angle of the shot, about the same size as the gleaming animals.
According to the caption, the horses – Victory Rose and Premonition – have arrived at Dublin airport “for the Irish Derby this afternoon”.
So it is, in many ways, a perfectly normal scene. But there’s a touch of the surreal, if not downright sci-fi, about the combination of the airport building in the background and the prairie appearance of the grass in the foreground.
As it happened, the race that year turned out to be more of a thriller.
In the first ever photo-finish to an Irish Derby, Premonition beat Chamier by a head. Following a stewards’ enquiry, however, the result was overturned and the race was awarded to Chamier.
It was a sensation on the day and the ins and outs of what did or didn’t happen at the Curragh during those dramatic few minutes were debated by both sides for years afterwards.
Both of the jockeys involved – Bill Rickaby, who rode Chamier, and Harry Carr, who rode Premonition – published memoirs in the late 1960s that gave their respective reflections on the race.
Our photo, then, is definitely a case of the calm before the storm. But there can be no dispute about the beauty of the animals, their shining coats and rippling muscles – and the fact that, whatever else you might say, you’d have to agree that Premonition was aptly named.
Arminta Wallace
