Report suggest two-times Melbourne Cup winner Joseph O’Brien could have up to ten runners in this year’s Melbourne Cup.
Will he actually have ten runners at Flemington? I doubt it. But anything approaching that number would, in my opinion, have significant downsides for the Melbourne Cup and its ability to connect with the Australian public.
International participation has added enormously to the Cup, giving the race global relevance. We should want the Japanese star, the European Group 1 winner and the headline international trainer coming to Flemington. What doesn’t add to the race is international participation simply for the sake of numbers.
Through the 2010s, the international presence grew significantly and, for mine, the Cup never felt more distant from the general public than when almost half the field was made up of raiders.
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I’m not talking about racing tragics, who know the form and have watched the replays from Ascot, York and Deauville. I’m talking about the person who watches racing five times a year, the audience the Melbourne Cup has historically reached better than any other race in Australia. If half the field consists of horses they’ve never seen, trained by people they don’t know and potentially ridden by jockeys flying in and out for the occasion, it becomes harder to build any meaningful connection.
The passport isn’t the problem. Connection is. And the Cup is still Australia’s best chance to turn once-a-year viewers into lifelong fans and punters.
Ka Ying Rising is the perfect example. The world’s best racehorse returns this spring to defend his Everest crown and, for mine, his presence in Australia last year had a greater impact than any international Melbourne Cup contender I can recall. He was a genuine headline horse, while his Australian connection through trainer David Hayes and jockey Zac Purton gave the local audience an immediate link to his story. His return this year will be even bigger.
That is the sort of international participation Australian racing should crave: elite horses that add quality, intrigue and a story capable of cutting through beyond racing’s hardcore audience.
The Cup has had internationals achieve similar resonance, but usually because they became part of the story over time. Red Cadeaux and Prince Of Arran returned year after year and became familiar names, while Charlie Fellowes brought personality and character that helped build a connection beyond the horse itself.
None of this is a criticism of Joseph O’Brien. He comes from arguably the most powerful training family in world racing, has already won the Melbourne Cup twice and is completely entitled to bring as many horses as he likes. The question isn’t whether he should be allowed to do it. It’s whether a Cup containing a large number of relatively unfamiliar horses from one international stable is the best version of the race for the Australian public.
We’ve seen the power of connection in the past two Cups. Knight’s Choice was trained in Queensland by Sheila Laxon and John Symons and ridden by Robbie Dolan, while last year Half Yours gave father-and-son Tony and Calvin McEvoy and Jamie Melham an extraordinary Cup story. Melham became just the second female jockey to win the race and the first woman to complete the Caulfield-Melbourne Cup double.
Those stories continued after the horses crossed the winning post. The participants were here celebrating, doing interviews and appearing across mainstream media, giving the broader public personalities and stories they could grab hold of.
That doesn’t mean we should shut the internationals out, nor does it mean an Australian-bred horse should somehow be prioritised. The reality is that a significant portion of our staying population starts its career overseas before being purchased by Australian interests anyway.
What we should want are international horses that add to both the quality and the storyline of the Melbourne Cup, rather than relatively anonymous stayers simply making up the numbers.
That becomes particularly relevant now the VRC pays $100,000 all the way down to last. It is prizemoney, but for an international connection it is effectively a travel incentive dressed up as prizemoney.
At the same time, I’ve long argued we should be creating stronger incentives for locally-trained stayers through an expanded Golden Ticket system.
The concept already exists, but the Australian Golden Ticket races are concentrated in Victoria. Why not turn it into a genuine, year-round Road to the Melbourne Cup, with races such as the Perth Cup, Hobart Cup, Adelaide Cup, Sydney Cup and Brisbane Cup carrying ballot exemption into Flemington?
Before anyone jumps down my throat, I know some of those races are currently bog average. But change the incentive and you quickly change the quality.
Win one of the major Cups and you’re in. And if some of those races need to move to create a balanced, year-round program of opportunities to qualify for the Cup, then shift them.
It gives the Melbourne Cup an incredibly simple narrative for recreational and casual fans to follow throughout the year. And it gives local trainers and owners hope that they can realise the dream of having a Cup runner.
International horses needn’t be excluded from that pathway either. If an overseas trainer is absolutely desperate to win a Melbourne Cup, come here earlier, target one of those races and campaign the horse in Australia. A European stayer that contests the Sydney Cup, stays for the Brisbane winter and builds towards Flemington is no longer an anonymous international arriving shortly before the first Tuesday in November. It has become part of our racing season.
The question is whether having ten runners from one international stable would make the Melbourne Cup better.
For mine, international flavour is essential, but international domination isn’t. Around six raiders, perhaps eight in an exceptional year, spread across different countries and stables feels like a healthy balance: enough quality and intrigue to make the Melbourne Cup genuinely international, while leaving enough room for the local horses, trainers, jockeys and owners whose stories allow Australians to feel part of it.
The Melbourne Cup’s magic has always been that it can be both an Australian institution and an international sporting event.
We should be very careful not to lose one in pursuit of the other.
