THE CUP - THE ICON v THE NEW KID ON THE BLOCK

By Graham Potter | Tuesday, November 3, 2009

If Bart Cummings or Jake Stephens train the winner of the 2009 Melbourne Cup racing enthusiasts around the country will celebrate the victory - not because they have the two race favourites, but because, should either win, their victory would showcase all that is good about the sport.

If it is Cummings the celebration will centre on the fact that he is a one-of-a-kind national treasure - a living legend. He himself might have another tear in his eye. There will certainly be a twinkle there, probably backed up by a classic one-liner as he charms the scrum of journalists who will surround him with dictaphones thrust towards him as they clamour to gather his every word.

Cummings’ humility only adds to his greatness. There is no grandstanding. No, I told you so ... in fact very few of his very few sentences contain the word ‘I’. His conversation combines a blend of candour, understatement and humour in a way which endears him to everyone. He is a champion.

If Stephens win, he might just make Cummings look like somebody who talks a lot because you would expect Stephens to be speechless.

What the previously little-know, part-time trainer has achieved in getting Alcopop to the Cup is the stuff of which great stories are made. It is all about the underdog - the battler - rising to the occasion against the odds. It is a true Australian story.

Like Cummings before him, Stephens, in his brief spell in the spotlight, has done things his own way. Like Cummings, his results speak for themselves.

The Melbourne Cup, of course, is not just a two way shoot-out. There are twenty other trainers trying to knock Cummings off his pedestal and put Stephens back in his place but, if the weight of money at the bookmakers is to be believed, they could all be playing second fiddle to the battle between the Aussie icon and the new kid on the block.

HRO Selection:
1 Viewed; 2 Master O’Reilly; 3 Alcopop; 4 Mourilyan.

Suggested big race trifecta ($112.00 - or a percentage as the pocket allows).
1 Viewed, 4 Master O’Reilly, 5 Mourilyan, 11 Alcopop - to win.
1 Viewed, 4 Master O’Reilly, 5 Mourilyan, 6 Roman Emperor, 11 Alcopop - to run second.
1 Viewed, 2 C’Est La Guerre, 5 Mourilyan, 6 Roman Emperor, 7 Ista Kareem, 11 Alcopop, 20 Daffodil; 21 Shocking, 24 Leica Ding - to run third