By Geoff Slattery
First published in The Age on November 2, 1983
A withering burst rewrites history
The trainer, the trainer’s wife and the jockey were all talking about dreams coming true after Kiwi’s astonishing last-to-first win in yesterday’s Melbourne Cup. There’s nothing new about that. The point is, nobody could dream up a story like that behind yesterday’s winner.
Kiwi wins the 1983 Melbourne Cup.Credit:The Age Archives
Consider Kiwi: a horse which cost $1000 in an era of $100,000 “cheap” buys; bought on a “silly woman’s whim” and named after a New Zealander living in Ireland; a horse never before seen on Australian race tracks and quite likely never to be seen again; a horse trained (shall we say in individual style) by a laconic 63-year-old sheep and cattle farmer who last saw a Melbourne Cup in 1947; and a horse ridden by a super-confident 20-year-old jockey with the audacity to come from last at the 800 metres. That’s some horse.
As the last of many replays flashed on the TV monitors, even the desperates waiting to get out on the last in Adelaide, almost three hours after the Cup had been run, still could not believe Kiwi’s run. How could a horse come from last at the top of the straight, force his way through a bunch of goners, switch course at least twice, and win bolting away with his ears pricked?
The trainer, Ewen “Snowy” Lupton said he never had any worries during the race. “He always races like that,” he said in one of his more expansive comments.
The jockey, Jim Cassidy, had more to say, but it was on the same theme as the trainer: “I was expecting him to sprint like that. He’s got a three-furlong (600 metres) brilliance. He produces it every time when he’s well, and he was right on today.”
That finish turned what many of the hard-bitten turf men were claiming was the Cup with the worst field for decades into one of the most memorable Cups. Already they are remembering yesterday’s event as “the Cup which Kiwi won from last”. It’s amazing what a withering burst can do to history.
Kiwi pulls ahead.Credit:The Age Archives
Most of the disappointing, strangely lifeless, crowd of 81,300 didn’t see Kiwi (9/1) until the last 50 metres. Certainly George Hanlon, who trained second place-getter Noble Comment (16/1), didn’t. In fact, before the replay, it was only Cassidy who really knew what happened to Kiwi in the run, and especially in the stretch.
“At about the mile he was leading on the wrong leg,” he said. “The ground was popping and moving underneath him a bit. But once he got to the bend he stared galloping right again. When we straightened up he got on the bit. I just slapped him behind the ear and said ‘Let’s go, old son’. I was travelling well, and I’d say of the 24 runners, 22 of them were hard ridden and I was coming home at 100 miles an hour.
“I saw Noble Comment in front. I thought he’s going to be one of the hardest to beat. He’s a seasoned horse. I saw him stick like glue in last year’s Cup. I thought he’s going to be hard to peg back, but then he was just going up and down in the one spot when I was coming quick. I was laughing then. It was a great race.”
He waved his whip in the air when he had crossed the line. No wonder. “The old blood started boiling straight away,” he said.
Anne Lupton, the trainer’s wife of 28 years, and the smiler in the family, went for Kiwi as a yearling sight-unseen. She had fallen in love with a Blarney Kiss colt which, unfortunately, broke a leg and had to be destroyed.
Jockey Jim Cassidy celebrates the Melbourne Cup win.Credit:The Age Archives
She wanted another Blarney Kiss, and another chestnut. “For some reason Blarney Kiss really appealed to me, and I’ve always been fond of chestnuts. I just picked him from the catalogue. I don’t know why. It just appealed to me,” she said.
Earlier she had preferred more colourful language. “I guess it was a silly woman’s whim,” she said.
They picked up the long, lean chestnut for $1000, which is probably about half the cost of some of the costumes some of the big-timers were wearing yesterday.
“Snowy” Lupton did the bidding. Apparently that’s a man’s job. “She wouldn’t do it,” he said. “He was knocked down for $1000. I thought there’s something wrong with him for certain. When he went in the box there didn’t seem to be much wrong with him. So I thought, well, he’s pretty cheap.”
The Luptons took home $195,000 for yesterday’s win, and $9500 worth of pretty cups.
Mrs Lupton, not unnaturally, sought the advice of a friend living in Ireland to help name the colt by Blarney Kiss. He was no help, which probably means he hasn’t too many crosses of Irish blood. “We’ve always called our friend Kiwi, and I said to him ‘Surely you can give me a name for a Blarney Kiss colt?’ He couldn’t, so I said we’ll call him ‘Kiwi’.”
“Snowy” Lupton left the course in the way he and his wife arrived — perched in the front seat of a horse transport.
It’d be surprising if the Cup win does anything to Mr Luton’s ego. As he was loading Kiwi on to the float next to the 1976 Cup winner, Van Der Hum, I asked how Kiwi had pulled up. “Good as gold,” said Lupton. Then he thought for a second. “Well, he’d HAVE to be, wouldn’t he?”
Those left in Kiwi’s wake had no excuses, although Bart Cummings, the trainer of the third-placed Mr. Jazz (10/1) and fourth-placed No Peer (25/1), was dreaming furiously well after the last race.
“Ironically, if Kiwi had kept running in New Zealand for another week, he wouldn’t have come, and Noble Comment, the second horse was not qualified and only made the field because the VRC used its discretionary powers. So, if Kiwi hadn’t come, and there was no discretionary clause, then I would have run first and second.”
