The horse, the prep, and the race itself — how the tactics of winning the Melbourne Cup have evolved

If you want to talk to someone who knows about riding the winner of the Melbourne Cup, Kerrin McEvoy is not a bad place to start.

His first ride came in 2000, when the then-20-year-old jockey from Streaky Bay in South Australia took on Australia’s most famous race on Brew.

It did not start off that well.

“It was quite bizarre because I picked up the ride on the Saturday and I was pretty happy to pick up the ride because he (Brew) dropped from 58 kilos down to 49 and he only won on the Saturday to get a spot in the race,” McEvoy says.

“Anyway, lo and behold, we went to the barrier draw after the final race on Derby Day and he drew 24. And I was a bit disappointed because it’s the widest barrier and it’s my first Melbourne Cup, but at the same time it just sort of freed it up for me.

“It almost let me just fly by the seat of my pants … I’m actually yet to ride one better in a 2-mile (3,200-metre) race since that day. 

“I ended up going across and just took my time and ended up getting one off the rail and then got a beautiful run around and, yeah, the rest was history.”

As we close in on the 164th running of the Melbourne Cup, it’s good to look at how the race has changed — and how it hasn’t — over the years.

The question of how to win the Melbourne Cup has several answers, and the starting point is the horse you need to make it.

The horse you need

For the first 80 to 90 years of the race, Australian-bred horses dominated.

Then, from 1950 to 2000, there were 30 New Zealand-bred winners as horses from across the Tasman proved they had what it took to win the cup.

In the 1980s, the winning range of nations widened with a trio of American-bred horses taking the honours. 

Two of the three — Beldale Ball and At Talaq — were owned by Robert Sangster and sent to Australia to be trained by the great Colin Hayes at Lindsay Park, Angaston, in South Australia.

Victoria Racing Club consulting historian Andrew Lemon says the first horse to win the cup after being imported for that very purpose was Irish-bred Blackwood in 1924, 12 months after its first attempt.

Dr Lemon went to his first Melbourne Cup in 1969, when Jim Johnson rode Rain Lover to victory. It was Johnson’s third cup win and Rain Lover’s second win in a row, carrying 60.33kg.

Since that day, Dr Lemon has missed just two cups in 54 years, and he will be at Flemington again on Tuesday.

So, what does he love about the race and its history?

“It’s the tradition and it’s an insight into Australia, an Australia that’s in some ways disappeared but in other ways is reinventing itself all the time,” Dr Lemon says.

“For me, it’s theatre and it’s that tradition and it’s the stories that come out of it.”

Since Irish-bred Vintage Crop’s victory in 1993, there has been a big increase in the number of overseas-bred winners.

These include the ones owned and trained overseas (the international raiders) and those that are bought by Australian interests and developed by top Australian trainers such as Gai Waterhouse, Sam and Anthony Freedman, Ciaron Maher and David Eustace.

The overseas horses who made Australia home include Green Moon (2012) and Fiorente (2013). Prince of Penzance (2015) was New Zealand-bred, as was Verry Elleegant in 2021.

The last two years have seen French-bred Gold Trip win for Maher and Eustace, and Irish-bred Without A Fight win for the Freedmans.

The most successful import of all is Makybe Diva, who won the Melbourne Cup three times in a row from 2003 to 2005, with the Cox Plate-Melbourne Cup double in 2005.

The mighty mare won in different conditions, carrying a record weight (for a mare) of 55kg in 2004, before smashing her own record carrying 58kg in 2005.

Seen as an Australian racing great, and trained by David Hall (in 2003) and Lee Freedman (in 2004 and 2005), Makybe Diva was bred in England and bought by owner Tony Santic to bring to Australia.

Among the international raiders was American-bred Media Puzzle (2002), the second winner for Dermot Weld. Americain (2010) was American-bred, trained by Alain de Royer-Dupré.

Dunaden (2011) was French-bred, trained by Mikel Delzangles, while Protectionist (2014) was German-bred, trained by Andreas Wohler.

Almandin (2016) and Cross Counter (2018) were German and British-bred respectively and both ridden by McEvoy. Cross Counter was the first cup win for Godolphin. Rekindling (2017) was British-bred and trained by Ireland’s Joseph O’Brien.

The game has changed

All up, since Vintage Crop’s win in 1993, just five Australian-bred horses have won the cup, the most recent being Vow and Declare in 2019.

Both Dr Lemon and McEvoy agree the game has changed.

McEvoy has ridden extensively in England, winning the world’s oldest classic — the St Leger at Doncaster — for Godolphin, as well as a string of big races here including the Caulfield Cup, Golden Slipper and The Everest (three times), as well as his three Melbourne Cups.

“I think time has shown that Australia and the Southern Hemisphere don’t breed stayers as well as what the Northern Hemisphere do,” McEvoy says.

“The cup’s evolved and it takes a quality horse to adapt to the style of race that the Melbourne Cup is running and that’s where it’s intriguing.

“Your typical two-mile English stayer can sometimes be a bit slow for a Melbourne Cup. So you’ve got to find that happy medium … to find the right type of horse that stays well but has enough speed to quicken into the final two furlongs (400m).”

Bart Cummings and the 10,000m cup prep

For years, the biggest theory about the preparation of cup horses belonged, naturally, to the most famous man in Melbourne Cup history, the “Cups King” Bart Cummings.

Cummings trained the winner at Flemington on a dozen occasions, so he worked out the formula better than anyone else in history.

Cummings believed that horses who ran in the cup should have previously completed a series of lead-up runs, ranging in number, and have a total of 10,000m in race distance under their belt before the first Tuesday in November.

A run on Derby Day in the Mackinnon Stakes (2,000m) or the Archer Stakes (2,500m) topped things off before the Melbourne Cup three days later.

Eleven of Cummings’s cup winners followed the formula of running on the Saturday before the cup.

Light Fingers in 1965, Think Big in 1975, Gold N’ Black in 1977, Let’s Elope in 1991, Rogan Josh in 1999 and his last winner Viewed in 2008 running in the Mackinnon, while others ran in the Archer.

Only Saintly in 1996 differed from this approach, with victory in the Cox Plate serving as its final race before going on to claim the cup at Flemington.

These days it’s not possible to follow this approach — the Mackinnon isn’t run on Derby Day any more, but the Saturday after the cup, while the Archer Stakes (while still a so-called “win-and-you’re-in” race) is now held in September.

But even before these changes, racing was shifting away from the Cummings tradition.

The last time a horse ran on Derby Day and went on to win the Melbourne Cup was the Mark Kavanagh-trained Shocking — that was back in 2009.

There is, however, one horse that has a chance to follow the Cummings model and win the Cup this year.

The horse is Zardozi, and it happens to be trained by a Cummings — James Cummings, the grandson of Bart.

Zardozi was the only runner in this year’s Melbourne Cup to run on Derby Day, with a fast-finishing fifth in the Empire Rose Stakes over 1,600m, taking its total prep distance to 11,400m.

Different approaches to the Melbourne Cup

These days, plenty of horses come through the Turnbull Stakes at Flemington in September, then the Caulfield Cup in mid-October and some — like Green Moon in 2012, Verry Elleegant in 2021 and Gold Trip in 2022 — run in the Cox Plate in late October before winning the cup in the same year.

Then there are the international raiders. Japanese horses Delta Blues — who won the cup in 2006 — and this year’s entry Warp Speed, both ran in the G1 Tenno Sho Spring before prepping for Flemington on Australian soil in the Caulfield Cup.

In 1993, Ireland’s Vintage Crop was the first horse to run and win the Melbourne Cup without a prior run in Australia. Vintage Crop, ridden by Mick Kinane and trained by Dermot Weld, had last run in the Irish St Leger (2,816m) at the Curragh.

In 2020, Twilight Payment won the cup for Irish trainer Joseph O’Brien after running in the Irish St Leger.

Media Puzzle (2002), famously won the cup with Damien Oliver riding for Dermot Weld, after winning the Geelong Cup 10 days out.

In 2010, Americain followed suit, taking the Melbourne Cup home after a win in Geelong.

This year, Onesmoothoperator, trained in England by Brian Ellison, scored a brilliant win in the Geelong Cup to set up for the Melbourne Cup.

The race itself

At least in the modern era, frontrunning winners in the Melbourne Cup are memorable — and that’s because they’re rare.

Since the late 1980s there has been Might and Power, who hung on by a swish of the tail to beat Doriemus in a photo finish in 1997; Empire Rose, who beat Kensei by a short half head in 1988; and Twilight Payment, who ran his rivals into the ground for a win in the COVID year of 2020.

Dr Lemon also refers to front-running wins from Lord Fury in 1961, Artilleryman in 1919, and Newhaven in 1896. Winners from the very back of the field are also rare.

The most famous has gone down in cup folklore, from a grey old day at Flemington in 1983, when Combat ran hard to take a five-length lead.

At the back was a New Zealand horse called Kiwi, bought for $NZ1,000 and originally used to round up sheep on the farm of owner-trainer Ewen “Snowy” Lupton and his wife Anne.

As the field entered the final section of the race, Kiwi was second last. Jockey Jim Cassidy began to weave through the field and Kiwi was up to 16th at the 400.

At 250m he was 11th, but just before the 200m Cassidy shifted Kiwi outside, with eight horses in front of him.

Cassidy had been told to be ready at the clock tower (200m out) and Kiwi got the space he needed and the horse flew home to clinch a famous cup win by nearly two lengths.

The first turn

McEvoy says every runner in every race needs a plan to get the best possible spot for your horse’s style.

“But for a Melbourne Cup, your first box to tick is to get the horse relaxed,” he says.

“When you get into a rhythm and relax, they breathe better, they can conserve their energy better for the business end of the race.”

The opening straight is a long run to the first turn, passing the grandstand and the winning post.

“Horses have won from basically every barrier from the inside to the outside because they’ve got a good long run to the turn,” Dr Lemon says.

“[But] if they get caught out wide … on that first turn out of the straight, that’s a huge disadvantage. It’s not irrevocable, but it is a real disadvantage.”

McEvoy agrees, getting caught on the turn is bad.

“In saying that though, I was on a position on Cross Counter and probably Almandin, where I was able to pop off to the three-wide line with cover and a horse to follow from sort of the 1,600 or the 1,400 (metres to go) onwards,” he says.

“So I think as long as you have some cover and a horse to trail, then that’s fine.”

Chicquita Lodge

One of the next markers in the race is Chicquita Lodge, the first on-course stables built at Flemington in the late 1950s.

“They were called Chicquita Lodge because there was a very popular mare, if you’re thinking about Winx and Black Caviar, Chicquita was a bit of a superstar around that period,” Dr Lemon says.

Trainer Tony Lopes ran the stables, situated near the 1,200-1,400m mark, or more than halfway through the race in the cup.

“After Chicquita made him famous, (Lopes) decided to call his stables Chicquita Lodge. And there was a sign which said Chicquita Lodge, it’s still there, it’s obscured by some of the sponsors advertising signs and so on.”

The pace picks up

“There’s times when you can ride in it and you’re sort of dead in the water at the half mile (800m), which can be a bit of a deflating feeling, but each time I’ve won it I’ve been able to get a good passage through,” McEvoy says.

“I was a long way off them on Cross Counter as well and he needed a barnstorming finish to get up, which he gave me. There’s a lot that happens from the 800 metres onwards.

“You’re sorting out the wheat (chances to win) from the chaff (horses fading) by the time you get to the 800-metre mark and that can usually help pick your path home.”

That path home can clear at about the 400m, depending on your luck, but as with Kiwi in 1983, the clock tower is the final marker in the race. It was added in the late 1920s or early 1930s as a steward stand just over 200m out.

“I guess in racing tactics there’s this notion that because it’s a long straight, if you make your run too soon, you might get caught by another horse who has just been held in reserve a little bit,” Dr Lemon says. “So that’s the superstition or symbolism of the clock tower.”

McEvoy has three cups in the bank. What would it mean to win another in 2024?

“It’d be pretty special. This year I’m on a horse called Absurde, which is a horse that ran in the race last year.

“[It’s] trained by the master Willie Mullins and a horse that’s ran in the race last year and seems to be in better form this year.

“It [a win] would be to equal the cup wins with Bobby Lewis and Harry White, that would be pretty special. It would be a pinch-myself moment for sure.”