Cup king is true blue Australasian

It's been the same routine since 1958.

Bart Cummings picks his favourite New Zealand yearlings at the sales, then packs his bags and heads for Australia.

It's a tried and true formula and one which has led to incredible success and Bart's elevation to status as a  racing icon - a true Australasian great of the turf.

Yes, Australasian.

Just as the Aussies were happy to hail Sunline, Bonecrusher and Phar Lap as Australasian horses, we're going to make a concession and let them claim Bart as an Australasian as well.

After all, he spends the majority of his time there.

But Bart wouldn't be Bart if he didn't return to New Zealand each year, catch up with the familiar old faces, restock on the reliable New Zealand product and then embark on another Australian pilgrimage to plunder their finest races.

Chances are he will do just that again tomorrow in the race he has become most famous for winning - the Melbourne Cup.

Bart has won 12 Melbourne Cups already, tracing back to his first in 1965 with Light Fingers, bred by Te Awamutu's Molly Dawson.

Cambridge's Trelawney Stud provided Bart with his next Melbourne Cup winner, Galilee, the following year and the young man was on a roll.

Now 81, Bart told the Waikato Times that taking New Zealand-bred horses was an essential ingredient behind his success.

Back in the 1950s, he did his sums and found New Zealand-bred gallopers were winning 60 per cent of Australia's most prized races.

''I thought if you are going to succeed in this business, you've got to get over there and buy them and that's how I got started,'' Bart said.
''They were a bit cheaper then. I bought a Melbourne Cup winner for 750 guineas. That was Red Handed. And I bought Galilee for 375 guineas, mind you that was a lot of money in those days.''

The Melbourne Cup stake of A$5.65 million (NZ$7.2 million) is a lot of money these days and with three runners - one-eighth of the field - Bart has a fair dibs on the winner's share.

He prepares Cup favourite Viewed, winner of last month's A$2.5 million Caulfield Cup, and the New Zealand-bred pair of Caulfield Cup runner-up Roman Emperor and Toorak Handicap winner Allez Wonder, like Galilee, a product of Trelawney Stud.

Viewed won the race last year and tomorrow bids to become just the sixth horse to win multiple Melbourne Cups in the race's 149-year history.

Those ahead of him are Archer (1861-62), Peter Pan (1932 and 1934), Rain Lover (1968-69), the Bart-trained Think Big (1974-75) and Makybe Diva (2003-04-05).

Viewed is also bidding to become the 12th winner of the Caulfield and Melbourne Cup double in the same year and the first since great Cambridge mare Ethereal in 2001.

There hasn't been a New Zealand-trained winner since Sheila Laxon saddled Ethereal for Cambridge brothers Peter and Philip Vela.

But through Bart's amazing deeds, Viewed did provided us with an Australasian winner last year and the way his luck is going at the moment, the great man might just provide us with another Australasian triumph again tomorrow.

- © Fairfax NZ News