Melbourne Cup Tour brings past and present together

[Wandering Eyes]

Whether recalling the deeds of past champions or pondering which horse might be the next, there’s no getting away from the allure of the Melbourne Cup.

Past and present came together this week when the Victoria Racing Club’s Melbourne Cup Tour arrived in New Zealand. First stop on Monday was Cambridge’s Kingsclere Stables to check out Mark Twain, the son of 2009 Cup winner Shocking who nailed a golden ticket to the big dance on November 5 with his last-to-first win in the Roy Higgins at Flemington in March.

On Tuesday the tour proceeded to Matamata and, amongst various others, caught up with retired trainer Jim Gibbs, the original trainer of 1995 Melbourne Cup winner Doriemus. The bonus for Gibbs was that one of this year’s tour ambassadors was none other than recently retired jockey Damien Oliver, who nearly three decades ago partnered Doriemus in the first of his three Melbourne Cups.

Doriemus belongs on an impressive list of horses selected by Gibbs at bargain prices, in his case $4,500 when he secured the slightly-built chestnut as a yearling in 1992. After winning two of his three starts as an autumn three-year-old, Doriemus caught the attention of Australian talent scouts and he duly changed hands to clients of the Lee Freedman stable, with Gibbs and his wife Ann retaining a 10 per cent share.

By the spring of 1995 the ugly duckling had grown into the equine version of a swan and he became the just the eighth horse to complete the Caulfield-Melbourne Cup double. Gibbs was still actively engaged with his Matamata stable, but that didn’t get in the way of enjoying the deeds of his star graduate.

“I was training out at Parkvale Farm by then and Lee would send him back here to make the most of the lovely spelling paddocks,” the Hall of Famer recalled. “It was quite something to see how he matured year by year and by the time he was five he was a big, powerful horse and he knew he was good.”

Freedman had put his toe in the water with the newcomer, giving Doriemus just one late three-year-old start, which he won, at the Queensland winter carnival and in the late spring he won another two races and finished third in his first major test, the Gr. 2 Sandown Cup.

A year later and Doriemus was all horse, finishing second in the Gr. 2 Turnbull Stakes and two weeks later going one better in the Caulfield Cup. In that race he burst through the pack to get up late and score by half a length, but his Melbourne Cup win was far more dominant.

Oliver had Doriemus ready to lodge his bid once the field had straightened up and after hitting the lead untested, he raced clear by four lengths over the VRC Derby winner Nothin’ Leica Dane and Irish raider Vintage Crop. Two years earlier that horse had changed the Melbourne Cup landscape with his victory for Dermot Weld and in 2002 Oliver and Weld combined to each add their second Melbourne Cup with Media Puzzle.

That was an especially poignant victory for Oliver, coming just a week after his jockey brother Jason had died from injuries suffered in a trial fall.   

Oliver, who retired last year with an Australian record 129 Group Ones in a career total of more than 3,000, went on to add a third Melbourne Cup – and trail-blazer Gai Waterhouse her first – with Fiorente in 2013, but his first will always hold a special place.

“Winning the Melbourne Cup is the ultimate for any jockey and the first one is unique,” says the man they call the GOAT. “Doriemus was just a good, tough stayer with tremendous stamina, and being in my early twenties he meant a lot to my career.”

Doriemus contested four Melbourne Cups in all, with Oliver in the saddle when he finished seventh from well back in 1996 and Greg Hall the rider in 1997 when he finished second in both the Caulfield and Melbourne Cups to the rampant front-runner Might And Power.

That Melbourne Cup is one that Hall would prefer to forget, having raised his whip in celebration thinking Doriemus had nailed Might And Power on the line, only for the photo-finish camera to confirm that he had failed by a nose.

Doriemus was retired after finishing well out of the placings in the 1998 Melbourne Cup and lived out his days at Melbourne’s Living Legends Park, where he died aged 24 in 2015.

While Oliver is on his first Melbourne Cup tour, the opposite applies to the man known as the Keeper of the Cup, Joe McGrath. As a long-time employee of the Victoria Racing Club, McGrath has played a pivotal role in displaying the Melbourne Cup to what is now a truly international audience.

“I came on board for the first Cup tour and 22 years later here I am still doing it,” McGrath said. “The Melbourne Cup has never needed any introduction where ever we’ve taken it in New Zealand and Australia, and as it’s become more international, the rest of the world has also come to recognise and embrace it.”

The 2024 Melbourne Cup tour covers 39 destinations across six countries. McGrath and his entourage have already visited the United States and Japan, and still have the United Kingdom and Ireland on their schedule.

And anyone lucky enough to hold with their white-gloved hand the golden trophy in McGrath’s possession can rest assured it’s the real McCoy.

“For sure,” adds McGrath, “that’s the Cup that will be presented to the next lucky winners on November 5. It weighs a total of 3.85 kilograms, 1.85 kilos of that consists of 18 carat gold and with the price of gold still on the rise, we’ve recently had it valued at A$750,000.”

The A$8,560,000 Lexus Melbourne Cup is one of eight Group One races scheduled across the four days of Flemington’s Cup Week programme. Total stakes for those eight races is A$23,775,775.

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