Twelve Melbourne Cups will always sound better than 13 of anything else. But there is enough merit in Bart Cummings’ baker’s dozen of Australian Cup wins to put the race high on his list of accomplishments.
The 83-year-old trainer will attempt to win his 14th Australian Cup at Flemington on Saturday with Precedence, a horse who is also shaping as his best chance to win another Melbourne Cup.
Since he won his first Australian Cup in 1968, Cummings has won the race with three of his best mares, one of his most troublesome horses and one who comes close to being his all-time favourite.
“We’ve had some good ones win it, some that weren’t that good too,” Cummings said.
“Some of them won the Melbourne Cup as well, one or two of them should have won it.”
Among the good ones is Saintly, a horse who ranks close to the top of the Cummings’ list.
Saintly won the Melbourne Cup and the Cox Plate in the spring of 1996, eight months after his “lead-up” run in Flemington’s autumn feature.
“He didn’t beat much, but it helped me get him ready for the other races,” Cummings said.
The Cummings-trained mares to win the Australian Cup rank among the best to have raced in this country – Leilani, Let’s Elope and Dane Ripper.
A measure of his regard for both Leilani and Saintly is that he named his Sydney stables after the former and his Melbourne premises after the latter.
Leilani won seven Group One races and finished second to her stablemate Think Big in the 1974 Melbourne Cup before carrying 58.5kg to win the 1975 Australian Cup.
Few better horses raced in Australia in the early 1990s than Let’s Elope who put together a seven-win streak that began with the 1991 Turnbull Stakes, included the Caulfield-Melbourne Cup double and continued into the following year with the Orr Stakes, St George Stakes and Australian Cup.
Dane Ripper wasn’t in the same league as the other two, but she proved herself more than worthy by winning the 1997 Cox Plate before coming back the next year to win her Australian Cup.
The other Melbourne Cup winner among the 13 Australian Cup winners is Hyperno, a horse who presented the great trainer with one of his more difficult tasks.
“We used to have a lot of trouble getting him to go on to the track in the morning,” Cummings said.
“Then someone worked out that he’d go if you walked him backwards.”
Hyperno won the 1979 Melbourne Cup, ran seventh as favourite the next year and sixth the year after that.
His Australian Cup came in 1981.
In the rush to recognise Cummings as the greatest trainer of stayers Australian racing has known, it is easy to overlook his outstanding record with sprinters.
A glance at the Newmarket Handicap honour roll does a lot to correct any misapprehension.
Cummings has trained eight winners of Australia’s most coveted sprint prize – and oddly enough, is content he is not to be going for a ninth this year.
Like most of her rival trainers, Cummings has conceded the Group One Flemington sprint to Black Caviar.
The Peter Moody-trained mare is attempting to become the first horse in Australia to build a 10-from-10 winning record on Saturday and is long odds-on favourite to do so.
“I don’t have a runner, but if you did you’d be hard-pressed to beat her,” Cummings said.
Cummings rated his best Newmarket winner as the 1978 champion Maybe Mahal.
“But I doubt she’d have beaten this one,” he said.
Trainer Danny O’Brien, who will oppose Black Caviar with his very good colt Star Witness, put a clear perspective on the champion mare’s dominance.
“I would have backed my horse to win any of the past 10 Newmarkets,” O’Brien said.
“But not this one.”
O’Brien thinks enough of Star Witness’ ability to be planning a European campaign mid-year and is pleased Moody isn’t doing the same with Black Caviar.
“If she was going over, you just wouldn’t bother,” he said.
Australia’s most powerful stable, Sheikh Mohammed’s Darley operation, is represented in the Newmarket by the handy mare Beaded.
But the stable’s Melbourne representative Paul Snowden is contemplating nothing more than a minor role in the race.
“It’s a great race for her to run in,” Snowden said.
But only in terms of getting her fit for an event that sits somewhere below Black Caviar standards.
“We’ll be fighting it out for second or third,” he said.
“We’re looking at the Goodwood in Adelaide.”
Black Caviar is already the world’s highest-rated sprinter, but she will only be attempting to maintain that status at home.
Moody is adamant he won’t be taking his mare overseas to establish international credentials.
“You don’t have to go outside this country to be an international success,” Moody said.
“There’s plenty of planes that come this way.”
At her current price of $1.25, Black Caviar is the shortest-priced Newmarket favourite in the race’s history, a record held since 1946 by Bernborough who won the race at the equivalent of $1.44.
AAP TURF
