Racing: Cummings in happy Trentham return

SYDNEY - Bart Cummings, the most recognisable name in Australian racing, has a two-pronged mission in New Zealand this week.

The 78-year-old wants to buy a Melbourne Cup winner at the upcoming Karaka yearling sales, but he will also take time out to fly to Wellington on Thursday to be a guest at the dinner marking the centenary of the Wellington Racing Club's Trentham track.

He hasn't been a regular in the capital since the national yearling sales shifted to Karaka, south of Auckland, in the 1980s, but he has many fond memories of when they were at Trentham.

He got his big break in racing because of them.

He bought his first Melbourne Cup winner at Trentham. Light Fingers was not a big youngster, but Cummings liked what he saw. She was also a sister to The Dip, an earlier buy at Trentham who won some good races for him in Sydney.

Light Fingers won the 1965 Melbourne Cup, from Ziema, also from the Cummings stable. Galilee, another Trentham graduate, won the Cup the next year, beating Light Fingers, and Red Handed gave him a phenomenal treble in 1967.

Since then he has had eight more Melbourne Cup wins. The dual winner, Think Big, was a New Zealand buy, as was Gold And Black, and Let's Elope, who won the Caulfield-Melbourne Cups double in 1991, was a moderately performed filly in New Zealand when she was exported to the Cummings stable.

He bred Saintly, another of his most admired horses, from New Zealand-bred horses.

The veteran trainer has 265 group one wins to his credit and was inducted into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame in its inaugural year of 2001.

It hasn't all been success, though. He has known the ups and downs of the sport - he was almost ruined as a trainer when left carrying A$20 million ($21.82 million) in debt when schemes to market yearlings as tax shelters collapsed in 1990.

Last year he had been without a group one win for four seasons, but God's Own, a Redoute's Choice colt, changed that with an incredible win in the Caulfield Guineas in October.

Another three-year-old, Pendragon, was an unlucky second in the Victoria Derby, and two-year-olds Wonderful World and Assertive have been good winners for him in New South Wales.

His owners are clearly happy. Cummings forked out A$900,000 for a Redoute's Choice colt at the Magic Millions sales on the Gold Coast last week and he might be ready to continue the fireworks at Karaka.

Cummings hailed from solid racing stock. He strapped Comic Court, winner of the 1951 Melbourne Cup, for his father Jim.

When the young Bart started off on his own account, he figured New Zealand was the place to go to buy good horses.

"I looked at the statistics and found most of the group one horses on the eastern seaboard for races over a mile-and-a-quarter were bred in New Zealand.

"So being a young fellow, I thought if I want to succeed I have got to get over to New Zealand to buy some."

He wasn't a prominent buyer to start with, but took time out to tour stud farms and study the physiology of the horse.

"I realised what a great country for breeding New Zealand was compared to drought-stricken Australia.

"Some seasons in Australia are very good but New Zealand is always good. You can get two inches of rain any fortnight in the summertime there.

"You've got the trace elements in the soil that are important for the horses."

He adopted his own buying principles, with pedigrees important as a guide. "The pedigree gives you the background and it is like doing the form, trying to pick a winner at the track. But you have got to have an eye for a horse.

"I put that down to instinct, that covers it all. If you haven't got an eye for a horse you have got no hope."

Accumulate is likely to be Cummings' big chance in this year's Melbourne Cup. He will miss autumn racing, but should be ready for a tilt at the Cup in the spring. "I think he's good enough." Cummings and New Zealand expatriate jockey Jim Cassidy are among the guests at the centennial dinner in Wellington.

The club has scored a coup by joining forces with Te Papa to secure the loan of Phar Lap's preserved heart from the National Museum of Australian in Canberra for a month.

* The yearling sales at Karaka begin on January 30.

- NZPA