Racing: Melbourne Cup heroes and villains

Racing legend Bart Cummings knows where to find Melbourne Cup winners - at New Zealand yearling sales, in this case at Karakaka last January. Photo / Greg Bowker

It's the race that stops two nations, and every Cup has its own tale of triumph or shattered dreams. Next Tuesday's 150th running of the Flemington feature will add another chapter.

THE HEROES

1 Phar Lap

In Melbourne over last weekend, a journalist wrote that if So You Think was to win Tuesday's $6 million Melbourne Cup he would replace Phar Lap as the benchmark of champions. It must have been a long lunch.

There is no other Phar Lap. Never has, never will be, certainly in the past 80 years. The 1890 winner Carbine is a consideration.

When Phar Lap won his final race before dying of arsenic poisoning in 1932, he had won 32 of his final 35 races, finished second twice and had been seventh in the 1931 Melbourne Cup under a crushing 68kg. His final race was the Agua Celiente Handicap in Mexico - then the world's richest horse race - and he smashed the track record.

Phar Lap's aura wasn't just because Australia and New Zealand were desperate for an idol in the depths of the Great Depression - he was a great champion as his runaway 1930 Melbourne Cup victory under 9 stone 12lb proved.

As his rider at the time Jim Pike said: "The only way they can beat this horse is to breed one with wings and get Kingsford Smith to ride it."

So You Think is a magical racehorse, certainly the best at the moment. If he wins the next three Melbourne Cups he might move out from Phar Lap's shadow.

2 Makybe Diva

When the great mare completed an astonishing three-straight Melbourne Cups in 2005, within minutes trainer Lee Freedman was saying: "Go out and find the youngest baby here [at Flemington] because that's the person who has the only chance of ever seeing this done again."

Freedman is probably right. Most statistics are there merely to be broken. But sometimes, and weight-carrying records in races like the Melbourne Cup is one of those times, they mean plenty.

When Makybe Diva won in 2004 she created a Melbourne Cup weight-carrying record of 55.5kg. Surely then, Makybe Diva couldn't stretch that to 58kg in 2005. Impossible. Unless you are a Makybe Diva.

The brilliant win was essentially a defiance of the weight as much as a racecourse performance. Maybe even that baby won't get to see something better.

3 Carbine

It's probably fair to say that Carbine is Otahuhu's favourite son. Nothing about Carbine's birth at Sylvia Park on September 18, 1885, suggested international fame, despite his stylish blueblood breeding. His unbeaten run of five races in New Zealand suggested a lot more.

But it was to be in Australia that he laid the foundation for everlasting fame. It's impossible to compare horses of different generations, but regardless of that what Carbine achieved 120 years ago has to be considered remarkable.

Outside of bad luck he was virtually unbeatable. He won 33 of his 43 starts, was six times second and three times third and he won 17 of his last 18 races.

On four occasions, he won two races in a day and in a stunning burst of form he won five races in three days at a Sydney carnival. His 1890 Melbourne Cup victory, under a weight-carrying record of 10 stone 5lb, was achieved over the largest Melbourne Cup field ever - 39 runners.

Later sold to the Duke Of Portland, Carbine began an English stud career and despite getting the tier-two mares behind St Paddy, he created lasting records.

More than half the 65 Melbourne Cup winners between 1914 and 1978 carried Carbine's genetics, just as Sunline and Makybe Diva did.

4 Kiwi

Has there ever been a better name for a racehorse that heads across the Tasman to rip off Australia's greatest race? The vision of Kiwi and Jim Cassidy sailing from a distant second last to Melbourne Cup glory in 1983 is burned into the memory of us all.

It mattered not at all that it wasn't a Cup field of the standard that have gone around in the past couple of years. Cassidy maintains that no horse he has seen before or since could have done what Kiwi did that day.

5 Bart Cummings

How can you leave him out of even a short list of Melbourne Cup heroes? We have said 12 Melbourne Cup victories so often it almost diminishes the feat, yet it is staggering.

For the record: Light Fingers (1965), Galilee (1966), Red Handed (1967), Think Big (1974, 1975), Gold And Black (1977), Hyperno (1979), Kingston Rule (1990), Let's Elope (1991), Saintly (1996), Rogan Josh (1999) and Viewed (2008).

THE VILLAINS

1 The two men who tried to shoot Phar Lap

The rumours had been around all week - Phar Lap was going to be "got at" leading up to the 1930 Melbourne Cup. Possibly even shot during the race. Only that much was incorrect.

Grey streaks were starting to appear in the dawn sky as strapper Tommy Woodock, astride a grey pony, led his beloved Phar Lap out the back of Caulfield Racecourse, the Sydney pair four days away from potential Melbourne Cup greatness.

Woodcock tried not to freeze when he saw a car, ominously parked on its own up Glenhuntly Rd.

As he drew the pony and "Bobby" alongside, the two men, both on the driver's side, had their heads buried in newspapers.

As he turned into Etna St, he heard the Studebaker roar into life, cut the corner and draw alongside, the newspaper in the back seat replaced by a double-barrel shotgun.

As a precaution as he swung into the street, Woodcock had placed Phar Lap between himself on the pony and a wall. The shotgun exploded and the car tore off. Either the men lost their nerve as they aimed, or through blind good luck, not one shotgun pellet hit Phar Lap.

Later that day, Phar Lap won the Melbourne Stakes and was immediately hidden in rural Victoria before showing up at Flemington to win the Melbourne Cup.

No culprits were ever identified, but bookmakers, facing crippling payouts, were thought to be responsible.

2 Les Lewis, master nobbler

In 1969, Bart Cummings had Big Philou as the Melbourne Cup favourite - until 39 minutes before post time.

Cummings was with his brother Patrick when given the news Big Philou was scouring. It was inevitable he had to be scratched and Cummings said in his recent book that of his 12 Melbourne Cup winners to date he has not been as confident going into the race with any of them as he was with Big Philou.

There was the suspicion the horse had been nobbled because bookmakers needed to turn around a massive payout on a certainty to a massive haul.

Many years later as he was dying of cancer, a one-time Cummings stable employee Les Lewis signed a statutory declaration that he had doped Tails, who started favourite, and Big Philou in the early hours of Cup morning and had been paid A$10,000 for the deed.

Cummings said of Lewis: "He was odd, I didn't like the look of him. If you can pick a horse you can pick a human."

3 Neville Sellwood

To describe one of Australia's finest jockeys as a villain, is perhaps just a little too strong, but Sellwood twice gained Melbourne Cup notoriety.

The first was his ride on Tulloch in the 1960 centennial Melbourne Cup, won by New Zealand mare Hi Jinx from another couple of Kiwis in Howsie and Illumquh.

To get an idea, Sellwood rode Tulloch, the raging favourite, similarly to how your grandmother would ride the Cup favourite on Tuesday. Perhaps not as well.

Tulloch was the outstanding champion of his day. He had a staggering 64kg in the Cup on a 43.5kg minimum - So You Think has 56kg on Tuesday on a 50kg minimum, which is night and day.

Sellwood had Tulloch out of sight of the leaders and ran on to finish seventh, not far from the placegetters. Most believe the ride cost Tulloch an even greater place in history with the Cup to his credit.

Sellwood also cost New Zealand champ Rising Fast becoming the only horse to win the Caulfield Cup-Melbourne Cup double in consecutive years.

Rising fast won the 1954 Melbourne Cup with 59.5kg and went up to 64kg for his second attempt a year later. On a very heavy track, Rising Fast tried hard, but was badly knocked off stride by the light-weighted Tommy Smith-trained Toporoa and Neville Sellwood.

Remarkably, no protest was lodged, but Sellwood copped a two-month suspension for the interference. Neville Sellwood died in a race fall in Fance.

4 Ezra Norton

The newspaper baron, it has been said, made his fortune selling sex, scandal and anti-Semitism.

Sixty years ago, at a time when papers were the only real source of extended news, Ezra Norton campaigned heavily in his newspaper that it was cruel to run Tulloch in the Melbourne Cup as a 3-year-old.

Trainer Tommy Smith is rumoured to have taken a bet to win £33,000 that Tulloch could complete the Caulfield Cup-Melbourne Cup double. The horse looked a certainty which Smith was happy to tell anyone. Tulloch's owner was somewhere in the middle.

Norton was relentless and finally, Tulloch's owner pulled the pin and the Norton-owned Straight Draw won narrowly from Prince Darius, who Tulloch beat by six lengths in the AJC Derby and eight lengths in the VRC Derby.

5 Whoever cut the 9pm Melbourne Cup race train

The best entertainment outside the final 500m of the Melbourne Cup.

The last train back to the city now leaves at 8pm. To be fair, it would have taken five days to scrub out the 9pm trains against only a couple of days for the 8pm variety.