Good old days ... Roy Higgins, Light Fingers and Bart Cummings in 1965. Source:News Limited
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The old-timers, old trainers mostly, used to measure the years by the Melbourne Cup.
They didn't say, "That was 1965". Instead they'd say, "The year Light Fingers won the Melbourne Cup".
Or the year, say, their son was born was "Even Stevens' year", never "in 1962".
They remember the Cups because they remember the stories. As for the rest of us, we love the Cup because we love the stories.
Light Fingers was a small mare with a light frame and her jockey Roy Higgins called her "Mother".
1. Dunaden (Barrier 16) Craig Williams 59kg
2. Americain (12) D Oliver 58kg
3. Jakkalberry (19) Colm O'Donoghue 55.5kg
4. Red Cadeaux (18) M Rodd 55.5kg
5. Winchester (22) J Mott 55.5kg
6. Voila Ici (13) V Duric 55kg
7. Cavalryman (6) L Dettori 54kg
8. Mount Athos (8) Ryan Moore 54kg
9. Sanagas (4) Nicholas Hall 54kg
10. Ethiopia (14) R McLeod 53.5kg
11. Fiorente (2) J B McDonald 53.5kg
12. Galileo's Choice (11) P J Smullen 53.5kg
13. Glencadam Gold (7) Tommy Berry 53.5kg
14. Green Moon (5) B Prebble 53.5kg
15. Maluckyday (9) J A Cassidy 53.5kg
16. Mourayan (3) J Bowman 53.5kg
17. My Quest For Peace (1) C W Brown 53.5kg
18. Niwot (15) D Dunn 53.5kg
19. Tac De Boistron (21) O Dolueze 53.5kg
20. Lights Of Heaven (17) L Nolen 53kg
21. Precedence (20) B Shinn 53kg
22. Unusual Suspect (23) G Schofield 53kg
23. Zabeelionaire (24) C Newitt 52kg
24. Kelinni (10) G Boss 51kg
After she won the race Higgins dropped down beside this little mare he loved and, exhausted in victory, she cradled her head under his arm. There was a picture.
Snowy Lupton bought Kiwi for $1000 for his wife to ride around their dairy farm. He was convinced to enter him in a Wanganui handicap after noticing his turn of foot and, 18 months later, that was Kiwi last at the clocktower, about to live forever.
More recently, Media Puzzle was Damien Oliver's story. Makybe Diva had it all to herself. This new era of super stayers, with royal blood and princely pricetags, is killing what Australia holds dear in the Cup.
The last Melbourne Cup I covered was won by a French horse nobody had heard of ridden by a French jockey nobody cared about. The entire coverage of Americain's Cup - which was 2010 for those who don't consider themselves an old-timer - was as dry as Sahara sand.
The trick to picking the Cup winner was always to pick the dead 'un in the Mackinnon Stakes the Saturday before every Cup.
Now, everything in the Mackinnon is trying - they have to be, to win an exemption. What's the world coming to?
Somewhere along the line Racing Victoria turned the Melbourne Cup into a horse race, and it is killing it. The best horses always won the Cox Plate. The best story won the Melbourne Cup.
The pandering to international stayers, the ease they qualify, the lack of exemptions in Australian racing for Australian horses, the lack of staying races and staying prizemoney to encourage breeding for stayers, is killing what made the Cup our institution.
Just this week David Hayes, Chris Waller, Gai Waterhouse and Mark Kavanagh acknowledged the days of finding a $1000 horse like Kiwi, or Wendy Green's $13,000 find in Rogan Josh, were over. They already knew it was virtually impossible to sneak one in at the weights by winning an exemption, such as the Lexus, because there aren't enough of them.
So all four bought tried European horses at the Newmarket sales in the hope of snaring a Cup chance for next year.
The hundreds of thousands they paid for those horses doesn't go back into Australia's racing industry. The millions in prizemoney the European stars take back to Europe doesn't either.
Slowly, the Cup is losing its charm. It is becoming nothing more than a four-legged stockmarket. Look at Waterhouse, who already has her European Cup runner, Fiorente. She went to Werribee this week to take her first look at him.
Whoever told Racing Victoria the Cup was a horse race? Thousands will still go to Flemington on Tuesday, and thousands won't even see the race, as happens every year. Even this was part of the Cup's charm. They all go on the memory of what the Cup was.
Slowly, the imports are ruining the Cup's story. When it finally disappears, as it will if this imports obsession continues, the race will begin to diminish.
The Cup has always been the story, the ones we still talk about years later.
And the best Melbourne Cup story is still the year Peter Cook won it aboard Just A Dash (1981). He accepted his trophy and began his speech when his voice choked. Everybody knew the story; Peter had emulated his father Billy, the winner of Cups aboard Skipton (1941) and Rainlover (1945).
Back then, racing officials knew this was what the Cup was about. This was the story. This was the romance.
Better yet, they knew Billy, 75, was somewhere in the outer and so scouts were sent to find him.
What a moment it would be. Cameras sending the picture around the country.
"I'm not going," Billy said when they finally cornered him. They were dumbstruck. Why possibly not?
"I didn't bring my teeth," he said.
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