by Jim Haynes
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 eleventh 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 thirteen. 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 eleventh 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 of one of his worst losing patches.
The Cups King went twelve 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 had 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.
The only active racing trainer to be given life membership by the Victorian Racing Club, Bart revolutionised Australian racing with his complete dominance of Australia’s most famous race.
He passed away on 30 August, 2015, aged 87.
Bart’s Melbourne Cup Record:
81 runners, 12 winners, 9 other placegetters
15 per cent strike-rate win
11 per cent strike-rate place
26 per cent strike-rate win/place
5 quinellas
THE MELBOURNE CUP
LESBIA HARFORD
It is hard to imagine Lesbia Harford knowing much about horses, she was hardly the type to study a form guide or be seen in a marquee during the Spring Carnival. But she was a Melbourne girl and everyone loves the Cup!
Born in Melbourne in 1891 she suffered from a congenital heart defect and tuberculosis. She graduated in law in 1916 from Melbourne University in the same class as Robert Menzies. A radical socialist and champion of working women, she wrote wonderful poetry which she never bothered to publish. She died of tuberculosis in 1927, aged 36.
***
I like the riders
Clad in rose and blue;
Their colours glitter
And their horses too.
Swift go the riders
On incarnate speed.
My thought can scarcely
Follow where they lead.
Delicate, strong, long
Lines of colour flow,
And all the people
Tremble as they go.
QUEENS OF THE CUP
JIM HAYNES
Many would argue that Makybe Diva,
three times Melbourne Cup winner, is the greatest staying mare of the modern era. Others would say that she was one of the greatest stayers ever—regardless of age, era or gender.
Makybe Diva was bred and born in Britain and so was always six months out of sync to her Australian rivals. This made it near impossible to train her for classic two- and three-year-old races, as she was six months younger than all Australian horses of the same official age.
After she was born, Makybe Diva was offered for sale at the famous Tatts Newmarket sales but, luckily for Tony Santic, she was passed in and so was shipped out to Australia with her mother, Tugela, who had been bought in foal to Desert King by Santic, an Aussie who migrated from Croatia as a child and made his money in the tuna fishing industry in South Australia before moving full-time into the thoroughbred industry.
Santic had Tugela taken to Dick Fowlston’s Britton House Stud in Somerset before being sent on to Australia, and Makybe Diva was born there on 21 March 1999.
The filly’s name was derived from the first two letters of the names of five women who worked in Santic’s office and she raced in his now famous colours, a combination of the Croatian and Australian flags. Apart from two starts in Japan, she did all her racing in Australia.
With two lines back to Northern Dancer on her sire side and Northern Dancer and Nasrullah twice on her dam side, Makybe Diva was line-bred to stay all day and had plenty of Carbine blood.
She was broken in and conditioned in two spells at Scone with legendary horseman Greg Bennett. Like all the thousands of horses he has educated, Bennett taught her ‘to be a horse’ before she became a racehorse. ‘I think there’s more to life than running around a racetrack,’ Bennett often said.
Makybe Diva stood out as special when it became obvious she could carry Bennett’s 85 kilograms up ‘Heartbreak Hill’, the rough rise at the back of his Scone property, and not even be blowing. Plenty of horses don’t even get halfway, according to Bennett.
Bennett, a tough man who admitted he cried when the great mare won the Cox Plate, remembered she was ‘very smooth to ride’.
‘You could almost sit on her back,’ he said, ‘canter along, roll a smoke and drink a cup of tea at the same time.’
As she never started in the classic races at two and three, it is hard to line up a comparison between the tough bay mare and other great staying fillies and mares. She started once at three and finished fourth. She then went on a winning spree and won six in a row, starting with a maiden at Wangaratta and concluding with wins in the Werribee Cup and Queen Elizabeth Stakes of 2002. Although classed as a four-year-old mare, Makybe Diva was actually a three-year-old filly when she won those major races. The win in the Queen Elizabeth Stakes qualified her for the Melbourne Cup the following year and meant that her trainer, David Hall, could plan a light autumn and toughen the horse up slowly for her first attempt at the Melbourne Cup.
After two unplaced runs in the autumn she was rested for her spring campaign of 2003. She returned to run a series of fourth placings, culminating in the Caulfield Cup, and then took out her first Melbourne Cup by a length and a half carrying 51 kilograms.
This pattern was repeated in the autumn of 2004. Trained by Lee Freedman, after David Hall left to train in Hong Kong, she ran unplaced in the Chester Manifold Stakes and Australian Cup, third in the Carlyon Cup, and then went to Sydney where she finished third in the Ranvet and the BMW before winning the Sydney Cup.
In the spring the familiar pattern emerged again, with the mare running four times before winning the Melbourne Cup for two unplaced runs and two seconds, notably a close second, from barrier 18, to Elvstroem in the Caulfield Cup.
She returned for the most successful autumn campaign of her career in 2005. After an unplaced run in the C.F. Orr Stakes, she was a close second to Elvstroem in the St George Stakes, before winning the Australian Cup in record time. She then won the BMW in Sydney in a remarkable fashion, coming from the tail of the field to make up 10 lengths and run down Gai Waterhouse’s old warhorse Grand Armee. The Diva was sent to Japan and ran seventh in two international races over 2000 metres and 3200 metres, carrying 56 kilograms and 59 kilograms.
After her disappointing overseas campaign it appeared she was being weighted out of handicaps and had perhaps reached the twilight of her great career, but the best was yet to come.
In her final campaign, the spring of 2005, the great mare won the Memsie Stakes first-up; then ran second, beaten a nose by a great middle-distance horse in Lad Of The Manor, in the Feehan Stakes.
She then won the Turnbull Stakes and showed her class by winning the WS Cox Plate, coming six wide around the field on the turn to win running away from Lotteria and two-time winner Fields Of Omagh.
From that moment on, all talk was about the great mare winning her third Melbourne Cup. If she did, she would become the only horse in history to win three Cups; and only four others had ever won it twice! She would also have to smash her own weight-carrying record of 55.5 kilograms for a winning mare by lumping top-weight of 58 kilograms, and she would have to do it from barrier 14.
The nation was in a state of expectation and every aspect of the great mare’s life was examined in detail. Her relationship with jockey Glen Boss, who first rode her in the 2003 Caulfield Cup and was to be her jockey for eighteen of her subsequent 24 starts, was told from all angles by the media. The fairytale of the migrant fisherman made good and the great mare bred to northern hemisphere time became the main media story of the spring in Australia in 2005. The whole nation was ‘Makybe Diva mad’ as the Cup approached and it seemed the entire population had backed the great mare.
Of course, we all know that she did it, with relative ease, ridden perfectly by Glen Boss, and was then immediately retired to Tony Santic’s stud, appropriately named after her, where a life-size statue of the great horse stands at the gate. There are also statues of her at Flemington and in Tony Santic’s hometown of Port Lincoln.
In a great piece of tactical riding, Glen Boss had The Diva on the rails as they came down the straight the first time and he ‘put her to sleep’ and then brought her into the race five-deep at the turn. The euphoria that gripped the nation as Makybe Diva hit the lead and then dug deep under her record weight to race into immortality by over a length would be hard for anyone not versed in the history of the Cup to understand.
Australia had found a new idol and a new legend was born; one broadcaster called it ‘the greatest Melbourne Cup win of all time’ as she passed the post.
Her first foal, a colt by Epsom Derby winner Galileo, sold for $1.5 million at the Inglis Easter Yearling Sales in 2009 and her second, a filly by Kentucky Derby winner Fusaichi Pegasus, fetched $1.2 million the following year.
Makybe Diva’s career differed from that of some other great race mares in that she was always conditioned in shorter races for her victories in longer races. This makes her win and place rates look poor in comparison to some other great mares, like Wakeful and Sunline. The Diva started 36 times for fifteen wins, four seconds, three thirds, six fourths, and eight other unplaced runs. So, while Sunline and Wakeful have win rates of 69 per cent and 61 per cent respectively, Makybe Diva’s win rate was 41.5 per cent and her place rate 69 per cent, compared to 94 per cent and 93 per cent for Sunline and Wakeful.
Of course, when you make history by winning three Melbourne Cups, such statistics become meaningless and, as has been stated several times in this collection, comparing champions of different eras is mere folly, but we all do it anyway!
The nature of racing and weight allocation has changed dramatically in the 200-year history of Australian racing. The nature of the Melbourne Cup, too, has changed throughout its history.
Three fillies and eleven mares have won the Melbourne Cup and several others probably deserved to win it.
Of the three three-year-old fillies that won the Cup, one was great, one was pretty good, and the third was good enough.
Sister Olive had won only once before taking
out the big race, in the Maribyrnong Trial as a two-year-old. She had run well for a fourth in the Caulfield Cup and carried a light weight, as you would expect for a horse with few credentials. She was good enough to defeat John Wren’s good stayer The Rover, three Sydney Cup winners in Eurythmic, David and Kennequhair, a WS Cox Plate winner, Violoncello, and a Caulfield Cup winner in Purser, so she took some good scalps on that day in November 1921.
Auraria, the Cup winner of 1895, was a good filly that won the South Australian Derby and ran third in the VRC Derby behind Carbine’s best son, Wallace. She then won the Cup at 33 to 1 and won the Oaks two days later. She was a daughter of the great stayer Trenton and therefore a granddaughter of Carbine’s sire, Musket. She also carried the blood of the great imported stallion Fisherman on both sides. Her full brother, Aurum, was a champion on the track and at stud in England, but could not emulate his sister, although he ran third in the Cup carrying a record weight for a three-year-old in 1897.
The greatest three-year-old filly to win the Cup was Briseis, the first of her sex to win the race, in 1876, and she was probably the best three-year-old filly ever to start in the race.
At two Briseis, a daughter of imported stallion Tim Whiffler, went to Sydney and won the Doncaster Handicap, a flying handicap, and the All-Aged Stakes, at weight-for-age, in a week. She then set a record that has never been broken by winning the VRC Derby, Melbourne Cup and Oaks, all within six days. In the Derby she took 1.75 seconds off the race record and ran the second-fastest time ever recorded for the distance, in the world.
Sadly Briseis died in a freak accident in the breeding barn. Hobbled for her first mating, to King Of The Ring, she reared up, slipped over and fractured her skull, and it was left to her full sister, Idalia, to carry the bloodline successfully into the future.
The first tough staying mare to win the Cup was the 1904 winner Acrasia. She was aged seven and had run fourth in the Cup two years before. Her sire was Gozo, who also sired full brothers Gaulus and The Grafter to win the Cup in 1897 and 1898.