THE CUP - THE INCREDIBLE MR CUMMINGS
By Graham Potter | Monday, November 2, 2009
Trainer Bart Cummings doesn’t merely set the standard as far as achievement with regard to Melbourne Cup success is concerned. He raises the bar to a rarefied level where only he breathes easily.
The fact that he has several decades of experience on his rivals certainly helps his cause. It means that they, like their runners on the track, will almost always be playing catch-up.
Not that anyone is ever likely to reel him in. His honour roll is more than significant - 12 Melbourne Cups, 7 Caulfield Cups, 4 Cox Plates ... 32 Derbys, 23 Oaks, 16 Sires Produce Stakes, 16 St Legers, 13 Australia Cups, 10 McKinnon Stakes, 8 Newmarket Handicaps, 7 Lightning Stakes, 5 Doncasters, 5 Caulfield Guineas, and 4 Golden Slippers ... to mention just 162 of his Group 1 wins.
Cummings has a further one hundred plus Group 1’s to his credit. If that feat is not astounding enough in itself, the enormity of his achievement is brought home in no uncertain terms when you consider the fact that if you add all of Lee Freedman and Gai Waterhouse’s Group 1 victories together, their combined total still falls comfortable short of the great man’s score.
Cummings has had 78 Melbourne Cup runners. Of those 12 came back winners and a further nine were place-getters. He has quinella’d the race on five occasions and landed back to back wins four times. (Light Fingers and Galilee in 1965/66; Galilee and Red Handed in 1966/67; Think Big in 1974/75; Kingston Rule and Let’s Elope in 1990/91). He won the race three years-in-a-row from 1965 to 1967.
This year Cummings gets the chance to improve on all of those statistics. Last year’s winner Viewed will be out to emulate the achievement of the Cummings trained Think Big who won the Cup in 1974 and 1975. If the top weight should come up short, Cummings still has two chances of landing back to back wins as he also has Roman Emperor and Allez Wonder in the race.
Cummings has no problem giving others the opportunity to share in the ride. Last year Blake Shinn made the most of the opportunity offered when getting Viewed home by a whisker. This year Cummings connections will give the leg up to three riders who are all having their first Melbourne Cup ride. Brad Rawiller rides Viewed. Hugh Bowman is on Roman Emperor and Michelle Payne is aboard Allez Wonder. Just the fact that Cummings put them up must do wonders for their self-confidence.
A win by any one of these runners will not only hand Cummings Melbourne Cup number thirteen, it will also give him a clean sweep of the three ‘majors’ during the 2009 Carnival. Cummings has already won the Caulfield Cup with Viewed and the Cox Plate with So YouThink.
Viewed will be bidding to become the first back to back winner of a Melbourne Cup who has also won a Caulfield Cup in-between his Cup successes. He has been travelling particularly well this prep. A perfect warm-up in the Turnbull was followed by a strong win in the Caulfield Cup. Then again it was back to a perfect warm-up in the McKinnon on Saturday ... and now it’s on to the Cup .
Roman Emperor finished second to Viewed in the Caulfield Cup which underlines his credentials. There is a slight distance doubt about him running out the 3200m, but people have tried to second guess Cummings before and come out the poorer for their choice. Cummings wouldn’t be running a horse without a chance.
With Allez Wonder Cummings has given jockey Michelle Payne a chance to make a bit of history of her own. Payne won the Group 1 Toorak on the four-year-old mare and Cummings stayed loyal to the rider, keeping her on in the Caulfield Cup and now the big one.
Cummings tells us the horse is well. We know it will be primed to the minute. We know it has one of the desired prerequisites for a winning formula in a long distance race - a light weight - so you simply cannot dismiss her chances.
Come to think of it, Cummings is missing one thing on his resume ... a Melbourne Cup trifecta!
Too unlikely to contemplate, you say. Care to bet against it?
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