With Ciaron Maher and David Eustace, Gold Trip heralded the start of a new Melbourne Cup dynasty and Sydney racing – particularly Chris Waller – will get enhanced opposition.
Yesterday the training team triggered memories of Bart Cummings when he produced his opening Melbourne Cup winner, Light Fingers, in my first Melbourne Cup in 1965. Little did I realise then what was to follow.
Certainly Vintage Crop 1993 under the astute Dermot Weld opened another relevant chapter and opened the floodgates for internationals, but the realisation was apparent.
Trainers David Eustace, Ciaron Maher and jockey Mark Zahra.Credit:Getty Images
But Gold Trip, which is French-bred but locally owned by Australian Bloodstock, triumphed for Maher-Eustace, who have already shown a knack with stayers in what is very much a computer age. And computers – in the space ship to Mars category for horses to Cummings – played a role in a Melbourne Cup that possibly won’t in other ways make the annals of the all-time greats.
“Not in the first 50,” opined jockey turned pundit Glen Boss, who added so much to the Big One when taking three on Makybe Diva. “But it was the Melbourne Cup, and there is always something great about it.”
“Messy but delighted for the winning owners,” quipped Gai Waterhouse, who has also left her mark on the staying test.
Slather and whack again featured when Patrick Moloney, who handled runner-up Emissary, was outed for 15 meetings and slugged $20,000 for careless riding.
Perhaps it will be tagged the “Crock’s Cup” due to dropouts and the reputation of Gold Trip, whose action was suspect until the trainers and their computer found the key and gave Mark Zahra a lapfull of horse, which he exploited deftly.
When Zahra left Perth, many figured he would be better placed at Kalgoorlie than the Melbourne Cup at Flemington.
“Around 20 years ago I came here on trial and had my first ride in the Wangaratta Cup on Melbourne Cup day,” Zahra recalled after the race.
As Zahra made his surge on Gold Trip, stablemate Interpretation dropped back through the field, reviving recollections of disastrous incidents in the history of the staying test. “No abnormalities,” Maher commented following the official vet report.
Maher explained that their training procedure uses computers as well as the eye, and “we have only scratched the surface” in an operation that extends from Ballarat to Warwick Farm and will grow even further north of the border.
“We are getting 30 new boxes [at Warwick Farm] and have purchased a farm in Berry [NSW] to get a procedure as close as well can to what we do in Victoria,” Maher said when asked whether he would be taking on the might of Waller on his home territory.
Computers played another role with Gold Trip because the sydnicators, Australian Thoroughbreds, have a special data base that finds horses racing in Europe that would be best suited by Australian conditions.
Gold Trip was one of the Maher-Eustace team’s five runners in the Big One yesterday, and taking out the minor placing with High Emocean confirmed that the trainers are in the heady realm of Melbourne Cup specialists, of which Cummings stands supreme.
Yes, and Emissary, a Great Britain import, split the Maher-Eustace pair. The gelding is prepared by Mike Moroney, who won a Melbourne Cup with Brew.
At least High Emocean gave colonials a presence, being a New Zealand-bred which figured prominently with the early Cummings successes Light Fingers and Galilee.
Unfortunately, the early scratchings due to scans and veterinary vigilance from the Melbourne Cup put a pall, tagged by colleague Andrew Webster as “inconvenient truths”, yesterday on the staying test.
Old timers wonder just how many topliners would have made the field in previous years: Galilee wasn’t a sound type and champion Kingston Town was hanging together by a thread when a gallant second to Gurner’s Lane. Problems like the “grey area” in Durston’s left hind leg that brought about his withdrawal may not have stopped him in the past. Durston is tuned by Waller and beat Gold Trip in the Caulfield Cup.
Again there were bleats from abroad that the Melbourne Cup isn’t one of the world’s great races nor a true group 1 because it is a handicap.
Be it weak, messy, and not in the first 50, yesterday was still a memorable chapter. Take a bow Maher and Eustace. And well done Mark Zahra.
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