In 1961 a master carpenter by the name of Reg Walsh quit his job as a salesman with the bootmaking firm of A.E. Matthews P/L and built a racing sulky in the garage of his home at Five Dock, New South Wales. It "sold before the paint was dry" and was the start of the most succesful sulky design and building organisation in Australia in the 20th century. Over the next 40 years Reg Walsh's company changed the very concept of the Australian racing sulky, its products capturing more world records over the mile, and by fantastically larger margins, than the combined output of all southern hemisphere sulky manufactures in both the 19th and 20th centuries.

Reg Walsh worked as a one-man business until 1967, when the enterprise moved to larger premises and became a 2-man business with the addition of James Walsh (eldest son of the founder) in 1967. After leaving school in 1958, James Walsh completed an apprenticeship in engineering, followed by the Leaving Certificate at night school. Immediately prior to joining his father in the business, he had been a Senior Management Trainee with the diversified foundry and engineering company of Malco Industries of Marrickville, N.S.W, and one of six State winners of the John Heine Memorial Scholarship in management studies.

Notwithstanding the conventional wisdom which held that Australian sulkies were uncompetitive in any other markets but Australia and New Zealand, James encouraged his father to consider the benefits of creating an export market for the sulkies, with the result that the first significant export sales were achieved in 1973, when 40 sulkies were exported to Sweden - an Australian post-war record at that time.

Jim and Reg Walsh in front of part of the 1973 Swedish shipment. The site is the company's second factory at 1a Fore Street, Canterbury, New South Wales.

To achieve a measure of vertical integration, the company purchased one of its suppliers of tubular steel components and moved to larger premises in Carlton, NSW, in 1974. As a matter of interest, in 1974 the price of a top-of-the-range Regal 3MC "Super" was $334-00, while the cheapest (unfinished) sulky was $219-00.

By 1976 the company had set up an Australia-wide distribution network for its products and reached an annual sales level of more than 900 sulkies per annum - the highest ever achieved by any race sulky manufacturer in the southern hemisphere.

In the 1960s and '70s, the major components of sulkies were made of timber (as they still are in some parts of the world). The illustration below is of a Regal DeLuxe hickory-framed sulky from this era; sulky number 2713 (fully restored and photographed in August/September 1999). By 1999, the only person in the business with any experience of repairing and restoring wood-shafted sulkies was James Walsh. Even Reg Walsh had to be coaxed out of retirement to line the shafts, as all other specialists in that line of work were dead or retired by 1999. Still, the result was excellent, and the sulky returned to happy owner, Barry Lew, of Dubbo, New South Wales.

Restoration of old vehicles was something the firm did regularly in the 1960s and '70s. However, in the face of the perennial timber shortages that plagued the industry, the company investigated a number of alternative materials over four years from 1970 to 1974. James Walsh studied the prospects of composite materials by attended a course on fibre-reinforced plastics at what is now the University of Technology. Ultimately, a new high-strength, lightweight stainless steel proved to be the best available alternative, and with it the company developed a revolutionary lightweight tubular stainless steel sulky in the late 1970s. After three years of negotiations with the Australian Harness Racing Council, the new sulkies were finally approved for use in early 1979.

These sulkies were not merely the old models in a new material, but completely new designs built to take advantage of the superior strength of stainless steel. They transferred some of the horse's weight to the wheels of the sulky, thus achieving a net reduction in the horse's energetic cost of locomotion and thereby enabling the horse to travel faster. On their first day of use the new sulkies achieved one world record, one Australian and one State record, and began an unprecedented era of sulky design innovation which continues to the present day.

The mighty Paleface Adios (with driver Colin Pike) setting a new world record of 1:11.9 (mile rate of 1:55.7) for the 1000 metres at the Great Avis Pace Against Time at Hawkesbury track in 1979. This was the official debut of the company's new stainless steel sulkies in Australia. The first models were called 'Time Trial Specials' in memory of their spectacular success in this event.

The company's biggest single export success prior to the early 1990s was against international competition for a contract to supply 374 sulkies to the Macau Trotting Club in 1980. These were delivered on price, and ahead of schedule.

The major annual harness race in the southern hemisphere is the Inter Dominion. The first winner of this event to use one of the company's new stainless sulkies was Rhett's Law, in 1982. Successive winners in the new Regal stainless steel sulkies were Gammalite in 1983 and 1984, Preaux Chevalier in 1985, Village Kid in 1986, My Lightning Blue in 1987, Jodie's Babe in 1989, Thorate in 1990, Mark Hanover in 1991, and Jack Morris in 1993. In 1994 horses using the latest Regal stainless sulky ran 1 - 2 - 3 in the Trotters' Final and 2 - 3 in the Pacers' Final, filling an incredible 5 of the top six spots in the series. In 1996 it was 1 - 2 to offsets as Young Mister Charles led Sunshine Band across the finish line. In the richest Inter Dominion of the century (the 2000), Shakamaker won in a Regal stainless sulky.

In the nineteen years 1982 to 2000 inclusive, only seven Inter winners have used anything OTHER than the company's stainless steel sulkies. Given that the average number of starters using Regal sulkies in this event varies between a quarter and a half of the total (in the 1993 Inter Dominion final, 3 out of 12 used the latest Regal, 3 used older Regals, and 6 used other brands), the result cannot be put down to chance.

In 1983 the company's founder, Reg Walsh, retired after 23 years, his many skills having built his firm from nothing to the largest and most innovative race sulky manufacturer the southern hemisphere has seen. James Walsh took over as Managing Director, and shifted the company's pace of innovation up another gear.

In 1986 the company's new managing director invented and patented the offset sulky. The first of these were built to the more liberal Northern Hemisphere design rules, and could only be used in Australia for time trials. However, in 1987 these sulkies achieved world fame when the two-year-old gelding Rowleyalla used one to become the first 2YO to break the two-minute barrier on Sydney's Harold Park (below).

The horse took 4.7 seconds off his own previous best, running an incredible 1:55.0, and became the only horse in history to break all world records for his age, gait and sex, for all standard track sizes, and to achieve that feat on the smallest (and therefore slowest) of standard tracks.

The sulky in which Rowleyalla achieved his unique record was subsequently donated by its manufacturer to the NSW Harness Racing Club Historical Society.

The offset Australian race sulky, named the Regal Ireland Special, was easily the most controversial new sulky introduced in Australia up to that time. Six months after it was approved in the Eastern States it was banned Australia-wide in accordance with the then official (but unpublicised) view that competition should be strictly between horses and drivers, and that sulkies should make no contribution to the result. Implicit in that ban was the recognition that the offset sulky DID make a contribution to the result, and the offset therefore became the only race sulky in the world to be banned for excessive speed!

However West Australia staged a 10 race series of full fields of the new sulkies in order to gauge their effectiveness. Over all distances tested they were an average 1.6 seconds faster than previously all-conquering symmetrical stainless sulkies, and safer as well.

In sprint races (1700 metres) they showed an astounding average improvement of 2.7 seconds - equal to 38 metres at a 2:00 mile rate! Those numbers were replicated in ordinary racing when in 1993 Inter Dominion Winner Jack Morris shaved 2.9 seconds off the world record for 2600 metres, and the next year when Valley Champ used an Ireland Special to reduce the world 2700 metre record by 2.8 seconds.

In 1990 the offset stainless sulky was taken to North America where, following on its spectacular debut at Freehold Raceway (seven wins from nine races entered), it was licensed for local manufacture. The increasing internationalisation of the business required the development of precision-engineered kit sulkies, with the result that, as from 1991, all Regal sulkies have been designed or re-designed as kits, and the great majority - including all exports - have been shipped as kits. One of the major user benefits of these kit sulkies has been much easier and cheaper repair and maintenance, combined with lower parts freight costs.

Another of Jim Walsh's original designs was the Regal Gemini Pairs sulky of 1992. Over the next eight years it broke at least one world mile record at every start. Following a training accident, the Gemini was rebuilt utilising a hitching method derived from a design by the Hittite people (Ancient Near East, and the inventors of interval training) of the second Millennium BC. The new design was known as The Hittite Special, shown left, and has broken all previous world records for pacing pairs over the mile. It set the outright world mile record on Sunday, August 30, 1998, with 1:56.8, which was 0.8 seconds faster than the fastest ever mile by either of the two mares hitched to the cart.

Of all pairs sulkies ever built in the last 200 years, only the Gemini and the Hittite Special have ever produced greater speeds than the best previous speed of the best horse racing to them—and they have done it repeatedly. In February, 2000, the sulky was upgraded with the addition of the company's revolutionary Floating Link Suspension.

In 1994 James Walsh became the first sulky manufacturer in Australia to be appointed to the board of a controlling body in harness racing, when he joined the board of the Harness Racing Authority of New South Wales as a reform candidate. He sat on the board for 18 months and took a particular interest in issues such as rule reform, track design and safety, and improved corporate governance.

In 1996 James invented and patented his "Floating Link Suspension", a new type of independent suspension specifically created to cope with the bending and twisting of a light sulky frame. It was an immediate success. In the Gig presenter, John Tapp, describing it as, "like riding on air". After waiting a year or two to gauge demand, other manufacturers followed Walsh's lead, producing cheaper, heavier, less sophisticated and harsher-riding carts. Walsh responded with an endless series of enhancements to the Brumby, easily maintaining its position as the smoothest riding light harness sulky ever made.

Finishing the 20th century in appropriate fashion, Walsh startled the canine world with a new cart of revolutionary design, the Regal Millennium Mini, a vehicle which combines for the first time the greatest light sulky design advances of the last three millennia: the single shaft, the dorsal hitch and full independent suspension. To that was added the first disc brakes fitted to any canine sulky, a speedometer/odometer and a series of hitches allowing anything up to five dogs abreast to pull the sulky.

In November 2003, Walsh's company was appointed a development partner in Sandvik of Sweden's new "Nanoflex" steel, a steel up to six times as strong as stainless steel, but the same weight. It is Walsh's intention to reduce the weight of his tubular components by two thirds, while doubling their strength. In the same month, R.J. Walsh & Son won the "Uniquely Bankstown" award at the annual Bankstown Industry and Export Awards - the first such award ever won by a sulky manufacturer in Australia. James Walsh is a foundation member of the University of Western Sydney's Nanotechnology Project.

Copyright James S. Walsh