Chasing A Dream 1987-1988: The Les Carlyon Collection
Vintage Australiana Horse Racing Biography & Autobiography Australian Sport History Sporting Memoir Animals in Sports Short Story Collections
Chasing a Dream 1987-1988: The Les Carlyon Collection is a vintage hardcover first-edition anthology that gathers the very best of Australia’s most celebrated racing writer during the sport’s golden recent years. Published in 1988 by boutique imprint Raceplay, this scarce title distills Carlyon’s lyrical newspaper columns and track-side reportage into one elegant volume, giving readers track-side access to Bart Cummings’ domination of the Melbourne Cup, the meteoric rise of Vo Rogue, and the behind-the-scenes dramas that defined Australian racing in the late ’80s. More than results, Carlyon captures the scent of tan-bark, the roar of 100 000 grandstand voices, and the larger-than-life personalities who still shape the sport today.
Collectors prize the book for its rarity: most copies were read to pieces at racetracks, making a clean, jacketed first printing increasingly hard to find. This copy grades a solid very-good—pages are fresh, unmarked and tightly bound; the original illustrated dust jacket shows only light shelf evidence, preserving the bold galloping-horse artwork that makes it display-worthy on any turf-and-form shelf. Because it predates Carlyon’s later Gallipoli bestsellers, Chasing a Dream offers the purest distillation of his early prose—muscular, affectionate and wry—before the wider literary world discovered him.
For horse-lovers, students of sporting culture, or anyone seeking an evocative window on Australian social history, Carlyon’s storytelling is both education and entertainment. His essays double as reference material—pedigrees, race records, trainer interviews—yet read like short stories, making the book perfect for dipping into between races or devouring cover-to-cover on a wet Saturday afternoon. Own a piece of turf nostalgia that continues to appreciate in both monetary and sentimental value.
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