The rise and rise of Mark Kavanagh

The formline for Mark Kavanagh's training career might read "slow out, closer turn, brilliant finish".

Kavanagh has been upstaging the heavy hitters at the Melbourne spring carnival with a stunning list of big-race wins.

The 50-year-old has successfully made the training journey from Mount Gambier to Adelaide and now on to Melbourne.

It has, as he said recently, taken him 15 years to become an overnight success.

The former jumps jockey, who did not open his Melbourne stable till March, has had three individual Group 1 winners in Melbourne this spring, a remarkable achievement by a trainer who has only 40 horses in work, spread over stables in Adelaide and Melbourne.

Maldivian, who was too good for Miss Finland in the Group 1 Yalumba Stakes (2000m) last weekend, will be a short-priced favourite for the $A2.5 million ($NZ2.9m) Caulfield Cup (2400m) tomorrow and could join stablemates Devil Moon and Divine Madonna in next weekend's $A3m Cox Plate (2040m).

Devil Moon, who has won eight of her 16 starts, beat many of the leading Cox Plate hopes in the Group 1 Turnbull Stakes (2000m) at her last start and Divine Madonna recorded her third Group 1 win when successful in the Toorak Handicap (1600m) last weekend.

Maldivian and Divine Madonna provided the high point of Kavanagh's career when recording their Group 1 wins at Caulfield last weekend.

Kavanagh was probably destined to be involved in racing. His father was a jockey and the Kavanagh family lived next door to Bart Cummings' stables in Adelaide. It meant Kavanagh could claim that he had ridden three Melbourne Cup winners by the time he was 12, having sat on the Cummings' Cup winners Light Fingers, Galilee and Red Handed.

"I was 22 when I had my first ride, in a hurdle race, and I had to move from Adelaide to Mount Gambier to get a go," Kavanagh said.

He became a successful jumps rider but riding over fences in South Australia is not a passport to riches and he began training from Mount Gambier in 1991.

He won the local premiership in his first full season and later opened a satellite stable in Adelaide before making a permanent move to Adelaide in 2000.

Kavanagh borrowed heavily when he began training and again each time he moved.

Kavanagh is also proud of the fact that he has selected many of his notable winners. "Most of my horses I've had to buy and find friends for. I haven't just tripped over a good owner," he said.

Divine Madonna won Group 1 races in both Sydney and Melbourne last term and Maldivian was a group winner in Melbourne, persuading Kavanagh that the time was right to take the next step and establish a Melbourne stable.

"I had been planning it for a couple of years but it's a tough market (in Melbourne) and you have to have the good horses. But Adelaide was going nowhere and I knew what I had in the yard. I had the right ammunition." Maldivian, a Zabeel five-year-old who cost $A195,000 as a yearling, was a one-win horse at the start of this year but his 11 starts in 2007 have produced six wins and five placings. He has had two wins, a second and a third from four starts at Caulfield and drops to 53kg tomorrow – 6kg under weight-for-age – after carrying 59kg when beating Miss Finland and Anamato in the Yalumba.

"We just have to keep him ticking over now," Kavanagh said.

Maldivian was at $2.40 yesterday and is expected to be the shortest priced Caulfield Cup favourite since Tobin Bronze, who finished sixth as a $1.70 favourite in 1966.

However, Kavanagh is not getting ahead of himself this week. "It's a big field and anything can happen. It's a Group 1 race and you don't get them on toast."

- © Fairfax NZ News