Racing: The race that stops two nations

Phar Lap. Photo / NZ Herald archives

Kiwi
Before the big European stables turned their attention to the Melbourne Cup 20 years ago, it was the New Zealanders who were the bane of the local trainers.

They hit hard - and often - in Australia's greatest race, most notably when Blarney Kiss gelding Kiwi stole the show in 1983 with his unbelievable finishing burst from last of 24 runners to claim the Cup with a youthful Jim Cassidy in the saddle.

Trained by sheep farmer Snow Lupton and owned by him and his wife Anne, Kiwi was bought as a yearling for only $1000 and Lupton rounded up the sheep on his farm on Kiwi between races. After he won the Wellington Cup (3200m) in January 1983 the Luptons targeted the Melbourne Cup over the same distance.

They only brought him over for the Cup six days before the race after he had won the Egmont Cup (2100m) on October 19.

Thirteen days later they were the toast of Australasian racing after Kiwi dropped out to last and was still there, some 25 or 30 lengths off the lead, at the 800m.

Cassidy began to weave a passage through the field but victory still looked a forlorn hope until Kiwi went whoosh in the final 100 metres.

The Cup's King
Bart Cummings first experienced the thrill of a Melbourne Cup win at 23 years of age when he strapped Comic Court for his father Jim in 1950.

In 1965 he earned his own place in Australian racing folklore when Light Fingers won the race that stops a nation.

The rest is history.

James Bartholomew Cummings has now trained 12 Cup winners and snagged the quinella five times, hence his sobriquet of the Cups King.

Once he started collecting the Cup, Cummings didn't stop.

Hot on the heels of his Light Fingers-Ziema quinella, Cummings provided the Cup one-two the following year with Galilee beating Light Fingers and made it a hat-trick when Red Handed scored in 1967.

Think Big gave the master trainer his fifth success when making it back-to-back victories in 1975. Gold And Black was the next Cup winner off Cummings' production line in 1977 and Hyperno did the trick in 1979.

Kingston Rule brought up win number eight. followed by Let's Elope in 1991. Saintly scored in 1996 and Rogan Josh in 1999 before Viewed brought up his dozen in 2008.

Phar Lap
More than three-quarters of a century on and he is still revered as the greatest thoroughbred to grace the Australasian turf.

Phar Lap's never-to-be-repeated spring of 1930 inspired New Zealand and Australia in desperate need of heroes at the height of the Great Depression.

After strolling home by four lengths in the Cox Plate - at 1-7 - Washdyke born and bred Phar Lap survived a shooting attempt on his life on Derby Day just hours before he easily won the Melbourne Stakes.

Three days later the nation was held in thrall as the "Red Terror", burdened with a record weight for a four-year-old of 9st 12lb (62.5kg), became the first and still the only odds-on favourite to triumph in the Melbourne Cup.

Phar Lap did what will never be done again by winning on all four days of the Cup carnival - over different distances.

Two years later Phar Lap went off to conquer the world and started by winning the then world's richest race in Mexico on March 20, 1932.

Just 16 days later he died in mysterious circumstances in America and two nations mourned as one. The big horse was gone but the legend had just begun.