by Jim Haynes
Thomas Cummins changed his surname to ‘Cummings’ on arrival and settled in the desolate South Australian hamlet of Eurelia, 280 kilometres north of Adelaide. At least he was now ploughing his own land, although it was rather barren land much of the time.
Bart’s father, Jim, was one of six sons Thomas and his wife brought up on the drought-stricken pastoral land in the north of South Australia.
Following two bad years, which included a cyclone, dust storms and thunderstorms, young Jim had had enough of Eurelia and, leaving his parents’ farm behind, he braved the unforgiving heat and trekked to Alice Springs to work for his bachelor uncle, James, who needed help running his large station, Granite Downs, at Ellery Creek.
Jim got precious little in return for all the hard work on his uncle’s property, but he took to handling and riding horses naturally and was quick to make his name as a rider. Jim also worked as a relief driver on the famous Birdsville mail coach, driving the section between Bloods Creek and Alice Springs.
Jim’s first major victory as a jockey came when he won the 1898 Alice Springs Cup on an aged mare named Myrtle, owned and trained by his uncle.
Fed up with conditions on his uncle’s property, Jim took up his uncle’s offer to take on Myrtle if he won the race. He took Myrtle, a gelding called Radamantos and an old stock horse, and headed south on the long and arduous 1720-kilometre ride back to Adelaide.
This was a truly amazing feat on its own, but two weeks after arriving at Jamestown he had Myrtle fit enough to win the local cup. It was the first official success for Jim Cummings as a trainer— and the beginning of the Cummings training dynasty.
Settling in Glenelg, Jim went on to set a record by training the winners of every classic race in South Australia and training winners in every state except Queensland.
By the time Bart Cummings was born on 4 November 1927 his father was established as South Australia’s top trainer. Young Bart worked around the stables and had various jobs away from home while his father allowed him to find his own feet and make his own decisions about life.
As a child Bart fancied himself as a jockey and used to practise his riding skills on Cushla, a brilliant galloper who won nine races for Jim Cummings. She was a docile mare and helped teach the nine-year-old Bart Cummings to ride.
Bart has been allergy-prone since childhood, and has suffered from asthma all his life. When he was 16 an Adelaide specialist diagnosed him as being allergic to horses and chaff. The doctor’s advice to stay away from both was advice Bart never heeded.
By 1947, at age 19, he was a registered strapper with the South Australian Jockey Club and worked for his father for £2 a week and his keep.
Jim’s best racehorse, Comic Court, was to steer Bart Cummings on the path to becoming a trainer.
Bart was Comic Court’s usual strapper at race meetings and he often rode him at trackwork.
Comic Court had failed in his first two attempts in the Melbourne Cup, finishing fourth as a three-year-old in the 1948 Melbourne Cup and 20th as 7 to 4 second favourite in 1949.
Experts then considered Comic Court suspect at 2 miles, although he was bred to stay the distance, by Powerscourt out of Witty Maid, who was a grand-daughter of Comedy King. He had multiple St Simon bloodlines on both sides of his pedigree, and the experts were proved wrong when Jim Cummings produced the five-year-old to win the 1950 Melbourne Cup.
Jim had owned Comic Court’s sire and dam, Powerscourt and Witty Maid. However, when racing was banned in South Australia during the war, Jim Cummings took up temporary residence in Victoria and sold both of them to the Bowyer brothers, who bred four classic winning horses from them.
Comic Court was foaled in 1945 and given to Jim to train.
The 22-year-old Bart was the strapper for Comic Court’s Melbourne Cup win and, as he led the horse back to the winner’s stall, he daydreamed for the first time about training his own Melbourne Cup winner.
About this time Jim Cummings was spending more time in Melbourne than Adelaide, and young Bart was often left in charge of his father’s home stables. Such responsibility was perfect grooming for the future champion trainer.
Still, Bart Cummings took no steps towards becoming a trainer until a decision by the South Australian Jockey Club forced him to take out a training licence. When his father went to Ireland for six months and wanted to leave Bart in charge of his team, the SAJC told Bart he would have to take out a training licence.
Bart took up training permanently in May 1953. He was given the bottom set of stables at his father’s Glenelg complex and a couple of horses, one of which was the Port Adelaide Cup winner, Welloch.
Bart’s first city winner was Wells, which won the SAJC Devon Transition Handicap (6 furlongs) at Morphettville on 12 February 1955.
Three years later Stormy Passage gave Bart his first feature win in the city by taking out the 1958 South Australian Derby at Morphettville.
Bart’s first weight-for-age winner came in the VATC Under-wood Stakes (10 furlongs) at Caulfield when the unfancied Trellios beat the favourite, Lord, by half a length.
The future ‘Cups King’ had an inauspicious start to his Melbourne Cup career when his first runner, Asian Court, at 40 to 1, finished 12th in 1958.
Bart’s first Melbourne Cup success came with a quinella seven years later, at his fourth attempt, in 1965, when one of his favourite horses, Light Fingers, won and another of his runners, Ziema, finished second.
Bart spotted Light Fingers as a yearling at Pirongia Stud in New Zealand. He did not think the foal was much to look at but as she took off across the paddock it was a different story. As soon as he saw her move Bart said he noticed the mighty stride of a natural galloper.
‘She had tremendous will to win and would strain every limb in her body to do so,’ Bart recalled.
Light Fingers almost missed the Cup in 1965. In the Caulfield Stakes she clipped the heels of Winfreux and almost fell, causing her to rick a muscle in her shoulder. It looked like the end of her spring campaign and she was forced to miss the Caulfield Cup, but the magic of Bart Cummings had her ready to run on the first Tuesday in November.
Bart had three runners in the 1965 Melbourne Cup: the big, tough stayer Ziema, another hardened character The Dip (winner of the AJC Metropolitan Handicap), and Light Fingers. It looked like Ziema would take the Cup until Light Fingers emerged from the pack to challenge. The tiny chestnut mare and the big black gelding went to the line locked together and Light Fingers won by a lip.
Light Fingers was raced on lease by Melbourne grain merchant, Wally Broderick, who owned her older full brother, The Dip. The two were well named, being by the French stallion Le Filou, which translates as ‘pickpocket’. ‘Dip’ is an old Aussie slang term for just that, a pickpocket. Light Fingers’s name was clever and an obvious choice as a full sister to The Dip.
Light Fingers was originally named Close Embrace by her owners, the Dawson family. This name came from her female lineage; her dam, grand-dam and great-grand-dam raced as Cuddlesome, Fondle and Caress. Wally Broderick preferred the name to come from the sire’s side to match her full brother, and re-registered her before she raced in his famous colours of white with royal blue spots and cap.
Bart then went on to chalk up three Melbourne Cups in a row, with Galilee and Light Fingers adding another quinella in the 1966 race and Red Handed winning in 1967.
Bart’s second quinella in the race saw the owners of the unlucky Ziema, the Baileys, win with Galilee; while it was Wally Broderick’s turn to finish second, again with little Light Fingers.
Galilee was an astute buy 12 months before Bart’s first Cup win with Light Fingers. His success on the track is an example of Bart’s eagle eye and training ability.
Galilee threw his offside front leg out at a 45-degree angle, which produced an awkward, almost laughable, gait; but Bart noticed that Galilee was not knock-kneed but pigeon-toed, and that he actually put his hooves down perfectly. Good training and shoeing could overcome t
he condition. The Baileys trusted Bart and consequently won the Melbourne Cup in 1966 after going within a whisker the year before with Ziema.
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In the spring of 1966 Galilee had an arthritic condition, and as the rumour spread he drifted from 6 to 1 to 14 to 1 for the Caulfield Cup. However, there was no indication of soreness when Galilee unleashed his withering finish to beat Gala Crest by a length and a half to give Bart his first Caulfield Cup victory.
Bart attacked the 1966 Melbourne Cup with two starters: Galilee and Light Fingers. Bart brought Light Fingers to Melbourne rather short of condition, with only four lead-up runs in which she had been second twice and third once.
Once again history was made when Bart became the first trainer to quinella the Melbourne Cup twice. With little more than a furlong to run Light Fingers stormed to the front. For a moment it seemed she would triumph until Bart’s better-conditioned runner, Galilee, breezed past her for an easy 2-length win.
Galilee was a champion. He became the first racehorse since Even Stevens in 1962 to win the Caulfield–Melbourne Cup double and was recognised as the best horse in Australia since Tulloch.
‘Not only is Cummings the man of the moment but also at least the racing man of the decade,’ one newspaper claimed. ‘His Cups win climaxed a run of successes, as no other Australian horse trainer has known.’
Cummings’s success in major races surpassed even that of Sydney’s Tommy Smith, who had broken almost every training record.
Racing historians were astounded at Bart’s feat of claiming the Caulfield, Melbourne and Sydney Cups with Galilee. In more than a century no trainer had prepared one horse to win that hat-trick.
Bart’s most astonishing, and highly profitable, 1966–67 season, with a small but strong team of horses, set a Commonwealth training record—winning $358,918 in stakes money.
Bart finished the season with seven cups to his credit. He had quinellaed the Melbourne and Adelaide Cups, and won the Caulfield, Sandown, Sydney, Brisbane and Queens Cups. It was one of the most sensational training performances in Australian racing history, a record that may never be equalled.
No man had trained three Cup winners on the trot. But soon after Galilee won the 1966 Melbourne Cup Bart forecast he had another ‘good thing’. He announced that Red Handed would win the 1967 Melbourne Cup.
Again Bart’s expert knowledge of horses stood him in good stead when he had settled for an ‘ugly duckling’ chestnut colt by Le Filou, lot 202 at the 1963 New Zealand yearling sales.
Bart had tried to prepare Red Handed for Galilee’s 1966 Melbourne Cup but then, as a four-year-old, he fell in the Geelong Cup in October, breaking a bone in the near hock, which ruled him out of the Cup. It was only with careful nursing and skilled veterinary care that the chestnut stayer was brought back to racing ten months later.
Red Handed was a frail-looking, plain customer.
Few people noticed that Red Handed almost fell in the straight the first time around in the 1967 Melbourne Cup while travelling wide and looking for a position. He was well back in the field for most of the race but hit the front 400 metres from home. With 100 metres to go he seemed beaten when Red Crest passed him and forged clear. However, Red Handed fought back, drew closer with each stride and went on to win by a neck.
Bart had become the first trainer in the 107-year history of the Melbourne Cup to train three successive winners of the race. The normally unflappable, deadpan trainer admitted Galilee had given him a big thrill when he won in 1966, but said the pleasure was far greater when Red Handed completed the hat-trick. It was also the first time Bart’s stable colours—the now-famous green and gold diagonal stripes with a white cap—had been carried to Melbourne Cup Victory.
Bart’s third Melbourne Cup had come along just when some people were saying his luck had run out and he owed his success in 1965 and 1966 to two horses ‘anyone could have trained’.
Red Handed’s win was a typical example of Bart’s earnest pursuit of perfection—patience and care, attention to detail, homework and hard work have always been essential to the Bart Cummings style of training.
Bart claims he does not believe in luck, but he admitted he gave Red Handed a helping hand by using Light Fingers’s bridle on him in the 1967 Melbourne Cup.
By Melbourne Cup time the following spring Bart had trained plenty of winners, but his four runners in the Flemington marathon were all beaten out of the placings. It was the first time in four years he had failed to get a winner or a placed horse.
‘I don’t suppose a man can go on expecting to train the Melbourne Cup winner year after year,’ he philosophised laconically.
Bart opened a permanent stable in Melbourne during 1968 with enough space for 60 boxes. Since 1965 he had been making two raids a year on Melbourne’s rich purses, and the new set-up was his first step in his plan to become the first trainer to operate self-contained stables in three capital cities: Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney.
By the late 1960s Bart was getting among the big prize money just as he planned. He was soon to feature in one of the most stunning incidents in the history of the turf in Australia.
Leading up to the 1969 Melbourne Cup Bart had four acceptors in the big race: Big Philou, Swift General, General Command and The Sharper. The first of a series of sensations occurred when Big Philou was beaten into second place by Nausori in the Caulfield Cup. Cummings entered a protest against Nausori, which was upheld. For only the second time in the history of the Caulfield Cup, the result was altered by the stewards to place Big Philou first.
Big Philou was to be withdrawn suddenly, just 45 minutes before the start of the 1969 Melbourne Cup. Bart noticed the horse scouring profusely in his stall and advised the stewards that the horse was distressed. It was one of the most sensational dramas in Cup history.
Big Philou had been nobbled, and the repercussions dragged on for more than a year. After receiving the result of the urine samples and droppings taken from Big Philou, it was discovered that the gelding had been administered a drug called Danthron.
Bart did not know how Big Philou had been ‘got at’. VRC stewards swabbed 14 of Bart’s horses between November 1969 and August 1970 but all swabs returned negative findings.
In 1974 Bart was involved in a battle with Tommy Smith to become the first Australian to train horses to win more than 1 million dollars in stakes money before the season ended on 31 July.
On 17 June Bart pipped Tommy to reach the million-dollar mark. Bart picked up $200 in the first race at Caulfield when Lady Antoinette finished fourth, and even though Hello Honey was unlucky to finish second in the Birthday Handicap at Warwick Farm, the $1200 prize money she won did the trick. His runners went on to earn $12,250 in four starts—Eagle Farm, Warwick Farm, Caulfield and Victoria Park—that day, giving him a total of $1,011,252 for the season.
Bart had few better years than 1974. His stable took $272,360 over four days at the Melbourne Cup Carnival at Flemington, winning a staggering $432,430 from the time the Carnival opened with the Caulfield Guineas on October 12. His nine winners and a dead heat in the four days of the Melbourne Cup meeting were a training record for Victoria.
In 1974 Bart spearheaded his effort to win his first Melbourne Cup since 1967 with the great mare Leilani and the aptly named Think Big.
Leilani was easily his highest stakes-winner, with $143,550 from wins in the Toorak Handicap, Caulfield Cup, Mackinnon Stakes and Queens Cup. Astonishingly, Bart was to quinella the 1974 Melbourne Cup with horses he had cleverly acquired in 1972.
The trainer with a special eye for stayers had taken a chance at the New Zealand sales on a good-looking yearling and made the successful $10,000 bid. This on-the-spot decision was to prove as astute as his choice of Light Fingers, Galilee and Red Handed in previous years.
On Bart’s arrival back in Australia, a Malaysian banker and property developer, Dato Tan Chin Nam, from Kuala Lumpur, asked him to buy a horse, preferably a stayer, and Bart suggested Think Big. A
t the same time as he bought Think Big he liked the look of a filly by Oncidium from the good race mare Lei. Bart snapped her up on lease and registered her as Leilani.
Leilani became the 11th mare in history to win the Caulfield Cup, giving Bart his third victory in the race. Her Caulfield Cup win had been so convincing that she became a short-priced favourite to win the 1974 Melbourne Cup.
On the other hand, Think Big’s 1974 Melbourne Cup campaign was unimpressive. He finished last in the AJC Metropolitan at Randwick on 7 October, failed in the Coongy Handicap at Caulfield on 16 October on a heavy track and was eighth in the Moonee Valley Cup on 26 October.
It rained heavily on the morning of the Melbourne Cup, but the track was still officially ‘good’ and Leilani was made 7 to 2 favourite.
Leilani loomed into contention in the straight and appeared to have the Melbourne Cup in her keeping until Think Big wound up and charged home to win by three-quarters of a length. Think Big had given the trainer his fourth Melbourne Cup, and with Leilani’s second placing he had managed to quinella the race for the third time.
In May 1975 Bart shifted to new AJC stables at Randwick Racecourse and named the yard ‘Leilani Lodge’. In June that year he chalked up his 13th Derby victory when Bottled Sunshine won the Queensland Derby.
During the 1974–75 season horses trained by Bart earned $1,399,182 in five states, creating another Australian record. The Cummings magic carried on into the 1975–76 season, and Bart approached the 1975 Melbourne Cup with three chances: Holiday Waggon, Leica Lover and Think Big.
Bart was confident of winning his fifth Melbourne Cup with either Leica Lover or Think Big. Think Big had again been unimpressive in lead-up races, beating only one horse home in the Mackinnon Stakes.
With 100 metres to go in the Cup Think Big grabbed the lead and the only challenge came from his stablemate, Holiday Waggon, who tried hard before finishing three-quarters of a length away second. Think Big knew only one thing—how to stay. It was another Melbourne Cup quinella and Bart’s fifth Melbourne Cup, making him the first man to achieve five Cup wins in the 20th century.