The race that never ends

Once a champion trainer on the track, Jack Holt became a champion for medical research – a race for cures that continues today.

In the first half of the 20th century, the hope that Jack Holt brought to the racetrack could be found in the roar of the crowds at Flemington, Caulfield and Randwick.

Holt, known at the time as the ‘Wizard of Mordialloc’, won three Caulfield Cups, two Sydney Cups, five Cox Plates and the 1933 Melbourne Cup. He headed the Victorian Trainer’s list twelve times.

In the first half of the 21st century, Jack Holt still brings hope, but it is of a different kind. For when he died in 1951, he left 200,000 pounds – an enormous sum in those days – to establish a school of medical research at St Vincent’s.

The money was enough to secure premises, hire staff and convince one of the world’s leading biochemists, Dr Pehr Edman, to take the director’s chair. The St Vincent’s School of Medical Research, now known as SVI, officially opened on 23 April 1958.

In the years since, SVI has made many major discoveries particularly in the study of proteins – the essential building blocks of the body. All diseases involve a change in protein behaviour.

These breakthrough discoveries at SVI have in turn advanced approaches in treatment, offering hope to sufferers of diabetes, cancer, osteoporosis, obesity and cardiovascular disease.

Our scientists and researchers are considered amongst the world’s best. And each of them comes to work each day striving to give more hope to more people suffering debilitating disease. Jack Holt’s legacy lives on.