When I first moved to Australia six years ago, I was warned that Aussies (and those from Melbourne in particular) were sports mad. Turns out, they always have been. Real-life Johnny Day was Australia’s first international sports star. At the tender age of 10, he became the world champion of Pedestrianism (a form of competitive walking – the 19th century was a different time), defeating the likes of the Moscow Maestro, Bluey Vellnagel, and Magic Buffalo. Four years later, in 1870, Johnny won the Melbourne Cup on the appropriately named horse, Nimblefoot, wowing the crème de la crème of Melbourne society and Queen Victoria’s second son, Prince Alfred, who was the first member of the royal family to ever visit Australia.

Despite this illustrious sporting career, not much else is known about Johnny Day. This is where Robert Drewe steps in – creating fiction out of fact and legend to give us the rest of the story of Australia’s first, and youngest, sports celebrity. In Drewe’s version of history, Johnny is invited to celebrate with Prince Alfred, a lord, a notorious bookie and the Victorian Police Commissioner following his win in Melbourne. That evening, way out of his depth, Johnny witnesses two murders at the local brothel putting him on the run, ending his sports career and starting his life as a fugitive.

With all the absurdity of a Dickensian romp, Drewe has fictionalised the life of the stranger-than-fiction character of Johnny Day. Told in a series of vignettes, Nimblefoot is a coming-of-age story, a thriller, and a damning examination of the devastating class, gender and racial politics of the 19th century. At turns, the story is hilarious and heartbreaking and, above all, never dull.

Tristen Brudy is from Readings Carlton