The Aussie View

A bit of the usual Aussie sour grapes mixed with the the globalisation effect that brings us the paradise papers.

Melbourne Cup goes off-shore, day runs aground

Greg Baum

If winning Melbourne Cup jockey Corey Brown said it once, he said it seven times. While still in the stirrups on course: "I just can't believe it. I'm lost for words. I can"t believe I've done it again."

Six-time Melbourne Cup winner Lloyd Williams says Rekindling's trainer Joseph O'Brien is set to be the best in the world.
In the mounting yard: "I still can't believe it." On the jam-packed podium: "I'm honestly lost for words." In the media conference: "I'm actually speechless."

There is an element of make-believe about all Melbourne Cups. This year, it was that Brown won for Irish trainer Joseph O'Brien on Rekindling. Jockey is 41, trainer 24 and horse three, not old enough even for kindling, all rare ages in a Melbourne Cup. "I can't quite believe it," said O'Brien, of course. "It hasn't sunk in yet."

Second was Johannes Vermeer, another Irish horse trained by O'Brien's father, the legendary Aidan. Both horses were owned in chief by the eternally top-hatted Lloyd Williams, 77, who by the last furlong was guaranteed to win his sixth Melbourne Cup. O'Brien jnr's effort to eclipse his father prompted Williams to remark: "Extraordinary. It's close to being able to walk on water."

This was the blinking-back-tears, tell-your-grandchildren part of the day. But at a more prosaic level, this Melbourne Cup was not so much a fairy story as the further recession of Australia's greatest race into the realm of equine other-worldliness.

More than half the field was bred and trained elsewhere than Australasia, and seemingly most of it was was owned by a virtual cabal of the well-off with money to burn. This is not merely wage slave's envy; pre-race, Williams said that for every promising horse he saddled up on Cup day, he was funding nine who were useless.

Williams had six runners in the Cup, developer Phil Mehrten seven. Both were in Rekindling, as was Gerry Ryan, a previous Melbourne Cup winner with Americain in 2010. The nearest to an Aussie battler in the field was Canberra's Single Gaze, which finished 17th.

Williams made Rekindling's win sound completely logical, but he would have had half-a-dozen equally plausible narratives in his back pocket. This day, he boasted the first two in the Melbourne Cup, but also the last two. He couldn't lose.

Some days, it feels that the Melbourne Cup has become the race that bypasses a nation.


Perhaps this became inexorable when another Irish horse, Vintage Crop, won the race 25 years ago, blazing a trail. This day, for the first time, none of the placegetters were Australian. Rekindling had and will have no other race in Australia. O'Brien the younger arrived in Australia only on Monday and will be gone by Thursday. On the stopwatch, his visit will be shorter than some of his races.

Australia has not helped itself by allowing its staying tradition to atrophy. But at a time when we are looking back through the breeding of our politicians to question their Australian bona fides, it is worth asking: is this how we want our greatest race constituted?

This year, the public's answer seemed to be "um". More than 100,000 were expected, but the bare 90,000 came. A cold and blustery day did not help. The concrete shell of what will be spanking new grandstand crowded the Flemington landscape. It spoke of heydays to come, but was a shadow on this.

And it became extraordinarily tacky. On the podium, Emirates' airline's Barry Brown banged on interminably about the "shared history" of race and sponsor, as if there was some equivalence, and detailed Emirates' future plans for flights in and out of Australia, after which he had the front to say "without further ado ... "

Williams in his turn burbled about how he wouldn't be seen dead on anything than Emirates on his jaunts to Nice and Milan. He goes to France and Italy, you know, a lot. This was one commercial that should have been kept in confidence.

Of Regal Monarch, who collapsed dramatically in an earlier race, there was no mention, nor of jockey Joao Moreira, who was thrown underfoot in the fall. Fortunately, his only damage was to miss a Melbourne Cup ride on Thomas Hobson, not that racegoers were told. Nothing must blot the picture.

By then, few were listening. Half the crowd were on their way home by then, some teetering, a few dealing with crises of their own constitutions. Some Melbourne Cup traditions die hard.