Best Australian Racing Stories (31 page)

Bart quinellaed the 1980 Caulfield Cup with Ming Dynasty and Hyperno but failed to get a placegetter in the Melbourne Cup, with Ming Dynasty finishing 17th.

Bart was awarded an Order of Australia for his services to horse-racing in 1982, an honour for both him and his industry. It seemed that springtime in Melbourne belonged to Bart Cummings. His record of seven Melbourne Cups seemed destined to remain intact for years to come.

Between 1979 and 1986, however, Bart's Cups fortunes slumped and his only placing was Mr Jazz—third in 1983.

Bart finished the 1985–86 season 11th on the Sydney trainers' list, the lowest he had been since opening his Sydney stable, and the ‘knockers' were out again. ‘They' said he was not putting enough effort into his horses and he was washed up as a trainer.

Unbelievably, in 1989, Bart found himself faced with a debt of more than $22 million when an ambitious syndication scheme he had hoped to get off the ground that year failed during an economic recession and he was left to pay for more than 80 yearlings.

Despite all his problems Bart won the 1989–90 Sydney trainers' premiership—his first in that city—and finished the season with six Group 1 wins, second to Colin Hayes with 13. However, Bart did not have a runner in the 1989 Melbourne Cup.

When 1990 rolled around, Bart had not prepared a winner of the Melbourne Cup for a decade, since Hyperno in 1979.

Bart put that decade of Melbourne Cup failures behind him in decisive fashion when he trained the 7 to 1 favourite, Kingston Rule, to win in 1990, and made it two in a row when Let's Elope won in 1991, with Shiva's Revenge finishing second to give him his fifth quinella in the race.

Let's Elope was the first mare to take the Caulfield–Melbourne Cups double since Rivette in 1939. Let's Elope was a duffer on rain-affected ground and, luckily for Bart, the spring of 1991 and the autumn of 1992 were seasons of fine, dry weather. The mare began a seven-race winning streak with the Turnbull Stakes in October, taking both Cups, and the Mackinnon, and returned in the new year to take the Orr Stakes, St George Stakes and Australian Cup, in course record time.

Bart had achieved what no other trainer had done. He had now won eight Melbourne Cups. Was there any stopping him from continuing to dominate the legendary staying event? He was certainly making it his race. Surely at his age he could not win another one!

Then, in 1996, along came a mighty stayer named Saintly. Darren Beadman wore the now-famous Dato Tan Chin Nam colours—black and white check with yellow sleeves—that day in November. It seems the born-again jockey sang a few hymns to the aptly named Saintly as they left the rest of the Melbourne Cup field in their wake. That was Cup number ten.

A new method of discovering ulcers in horses helped Western Australian galloper Rogan Josh to win the Melbourne Cup in 1999, giving J.B. Cummings his 11th Melbourne Cup winner in the process.

Bart was the first to use a video gastro-endoscope machine which offered a way of checking for ulcers in a horse's stomach. He used the process to sort out the health problems suffered by Rogan Josh and guided the gelding to a famous Cup victory.

In racing, fortunes are bound to fluctuate over time and even champion trainers have lean spells. Bart's top race wins dried up during the 2000–01 season in what was the start one of his worst losing patches.

The Cups King went 12 months without a Group 1 winner and did not even have a runner in the 2000 Melbourne Cup. He had six Melbourne Cup hopes—Crown Mahal, Matriculate, Philidor, Indian Ridge, Darne Cath and Ringleader—start in the Saab Quality in an effort to qualify one or two of them in the 2000 Melbourne Cup through a win or second placing, but they all failed to run a place. The closest he came to having a runner in the Cup that year was with Philidor, who had qualified 36th, and Matriculate, who had been 27th in order of entry in the race.

Going into his 2002 Melbourne Cup campaign, Bart had only one Group 1 victory for the season.

The fickle punters were quick to write Cummings off, suggesting that he had passed his best and age was catching up with him. He failed to have a placegetter in the Melbourne Cup between 2001 and 2007. Despite Bart's apparent rise to glory again with Rogan Josh in 1999 it wasn't proving to be another golden era.

It was during the 2002 Melbourne Spring Carnival that Bart claimed all the overseas gallopers coming to Australia were making it difficult for local trainers to get a start in the Melbourne Cup. These comments were misconstrued as sour grapes in some quarters. What Bart really feared was that Australasian breeders and owners were not bothering to breed good stayers and keep them in training.

Bart was thankful for more support from his old friend, Dato Tan, when the 2008 Melbourne Cup approached. The two were now ‘old men', and many saw both as dinosaurs of the turf. But Dato Tan owned the middle-distance galloper Viewed and Bart saw the chance to make him a Cup horse.

How could you bet on Viewed? He came into the race with a reputation as a wet tracker and the form in his four starts leading up to the Melbourne Cup read eighth of 15 at Flemington, seventh of 13, tenth of 17 in the Caulfield Cup, and last of 11 in the LKS Mackinnon Stakes.

Viewed went out at 40 to 1 and was supported by only the most loyal followers of J.B. Cummings. He hit the front at the 350-metre mark in the Melbourne Cup and was 2 lengths clear with 200 metres to run. When he began to tire with 100 metres to go, his 21-year-old jockey, Blake Shinn, thought he had gone too early.

Shinn said he could hear the Luca Cumani–trained Bauer closing in. Many thought the grey import had snatched victory but Bauer died slightly on his run as he closed rapidly and just failed to run out the final few metres to the finishing post.

The crowd roared as the English invader drew closer and the gap narrowed. For Bart it was an odd déjà vu, almost a carbon copy of the 1965 Melbourne Cup when his first Cup winner, Light Fingers, won by the narrowest of margins from stablemate Ziema. This time, however, the rival was an overseas horse, not a stablemate.

This made victory all that much sweeter for the two old friends, Dato Tan Chin Nam and Bart Cummings, both in their 80s.

After Viewed and Bauer crossed the line together and the agonising wait was over, the photo finish gave Viewed the race by a whisker.

The Cup eluded Bart in 2009, although he dominated the Spring Carnivals across Australia with an amazing run of wins in Group 1 races; including the Cox Plate and the AJC Derby, to take his tally of Group 1 wins to 257, more than double that of second-placed contemporary trainer Lee Freedman.

Bart has nothing else to achieve. He was inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1991, was an inaugural inductee into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame and has since been elevated to the status of Legend—and the only other Legend is Phar Lap.

Bart had his face placed on a postage stamp in 2007 and shared the
Weekend Australian
's 2008 ‘Australian of the Year' Honour with the 99-year-old Dame Elizabeth Murdoch.

The only active racing trainer to be given life membership by the Victorian Racing Club, Bart claims he has no plans to retire at age 82.

Since taking out his trainer's licence in Adelaide in 1953, J.B. Cummings has revolutionised Australian racing with his complete dominance of Australia's most famous race.

Bart's record of Melbourne Cup wins is similar to Don Bradman's amazing batting record. Neither are ever likely to be broken—unless Bart wins the race again.

Italian-born Luca Cumani, one of Britain's leading trainers, and the man whose horse Bart's nosed out in the Cup of 2009, paid his rival the ultimate compliment after the race: ‘His record is amazing because I know how hard it is to win a Melbourne Cup. He is a special man . . . He is the greatest trainer in the world.'

Bart's Melbourne Cup record

• 81 runners, 12 winners, 9 placegetters

• 15 per cent strike rate win, 11 per cent strike rate place, 26 per cent strike rate win/place

• 5 quinellas

Here's a stayer: The magic of Peter Pan

JIM HAYNES

‘HERE'S A STAYER!'

These were the words Frank McGrath said to his stable foreman when he first set eyes on the flashy chestnut Peter Pan.

It was a summer's day in 1932 when Peter Pan arrived at Frank McGrath's stables near Randwick racetrack. The leggy chestnut with the silver mane and tail was already well into his two-year-old season when he arrived at the stables of the man renowned as a trainer of stayers.

McGrath had trained Prince Foote to win the Melbourne Cup in 1909 and Peter Pan's owner, Rodney Dangar, thought the astute and patient trainer would be just the man to get the best out of his beautiful colt.

Dangar was a patient man himself. He had left Peter Pan to gallop and grow in the paddock, at his family property near Singleton, New South Wales, well past the time when most promising thoroughbreds would be shipped off to training stables. He was happy to send his staying prospect to a trainer of the old school, a man who had won his only Melbourne Cup more than two decades before.

Peter Pan was the result of one of those ‘happy chance' matings, a friendly gesture that was actually a last-minute afterthought on the part of Dangar's neighbour Percy Brown.

Brown had booked five mares to go to the imported stallion Pantheon. Pantheon had been imported from Britain to race in Australia and was a very good stayer. His eight wins included the Rosehill Cup, the CB Fisher Plate and two AJC Randwick Plates over 2 miles. He started favourite at 9 to 4 in the 1926 Melbourne Cup and finished third, ridden by the famous Jim Pike. He was placed a further 18 times, giving him a good record for a stayer of 27 wins and placings from 34 starts.

Percy Brown had negotiated a good discount deal to send five mares to Pantheon in his first season at stud. However, when the time came to despatch the mares, he only had four available, so he crossed the road and asked his neighbour if he had a mare to make up the number.

Dangar had an unraced mare named Alwina, whose sire St Alwyne had also sired Melbourne Cup winners Poitrel and Night Watch. He'd bought the mare from the famous Arrowfield Stud for £210 and had no immediate plans for her when Percy Brown called in. He pointed to her in the paddock and said, ‘Take that one'.

So, without any real planning, two great staying bloodlines converged to produce a horse that many believe was certainly the prettiest horse to ever win a Melbourne Cup.

Frank McGrath was impressed by the colt's good looks too, but he was more impressed by his solid proportions and strong, clean-cut stayer's legs. He began training him as a stayer and didn't even start him in a race until four months later, in May 1932. The fact that the chestnut was unplaced in a two-year-old handicap at Randwick didn't seem to bother McGrath one bit. He immediately sent him for a spell, and that was Peter Pan's entire two-year-old campaign—one race, unplaced.

The horse managed to run a nail through a hoof and McGrath had to help him overcome an infection and nurse him back to fitness before he could return to training in the spring. This delayed plans a little but didn't stop Peter Pan being the well-backed favourite at 5 to 2 in only his second start in a race, first-up, over a mile in a novice handicap at Warwick Farm.

It was stable money that brought the price in to 5 to 2; the colt had run sensational times at trackwork and Frank McGrath said he thought he had ‘the best thing ever on a racetrack'.

What the astute trainer had forgotten was that Peter Pan had only ever raced once in a field of horses and once in front of a crowd. This almost brought the well-laid plan undone, as the colt stopped racing whenever the other horses got close around him. In desperation jockey Andy Knox took him to the outside, only to have the inquisitive colt turn and stare at the yelling crowd.

Knox eventually managed to straighten the flashy youngster and he raced home to dead-heat for first with the runaway leader, Babili. This at least saved the stable from embarrassment, not to mention the trainer's bank balance.

It is remarkable to realise that Peter Pan's next start in a race, his third in the Rosehill Stakes over a mile, saw the raw young colt pitted against the Melbourne Cup winner Nightmarch, the Sydney Cup winner Johnny Jason, and Veilmond, the winner of the ARJ and VRC St Legers.

Peter Pan may have been a raw young colt, but he was good enough to defeat the Melbourne Cup winner by half a length, with the Sydney Cup winner behind them in third place.

Two weeks later, in only his fourth start in a race, Peter Pan contested the AJC Derby. Ridden for the first time by Jim Pike, who had ridden his father into third place in the Melbourne Cup six years earlier, Peter Pan won, easing down by a length and a half. Behind him were such good horses as the Chelmsford Stakes winner, and famed stayer in later life, Gaine Carrington, the AJC and VRC Sires' Produce winner Kuvera, and Oro, who would later win a Metropolitan Handicap.

By now Frank McGrath was not the only one looking at the pretty horse and thinking, ‘Here's a stayer'. Peter Pan was backed in at 7 to 2 to win the Caulfield Cup at his fifth start.

Andy Knox was back in the saddle at Caulfield, as Jim Pike could not ride at the three-year-old's handicap weight of 46.5 kg. It was to be Knox's last ride on Peter Pan.

The golden horse with the silver mane and tail was still ‘a big baby' in racing parlance and, displaying his often wayward behaviour once again, he missed the start badly. Andy Knox then raced him wide down the straight the first time round in order to catch the field and find a position, but the early sprint unsettled the horse and he pulled throughout the race and ran out of steam to finish fourth behind Rogilla, on raw talent, despite a dreadful run and a less than memorable ride.

It was a poor enough ride for Frank McGrath to sack Andy Knox and engage lightweight Melbourne jockey Bill Duncan to ride the horse in the Melbourne Stakes over 2000 metres on Derby Day.