Wise heads prevail.

The first Melbourne Cup I remember was 1965. It must have been a warm day. My father held a family Cup sweep and we listened to the race in the back garden on his portable HMV. My mother sat under the peach tree and held her winning sweep ticket as 3UZ’s Bert Bryant called Light Fingers across the line. My younger brother was beside her in the old wicker pram draped over with an old crocheted insect net. He was three months old.

Bart Cummings trained the winner that day, his first Melbourne Cup win; although he had first trained a starter in 1958. Yesterday he won his twelfth Cup with Viewed on the golden anniversary of his first try.

Like the numbers? Here's an even more impressive one: Viewed’s owner, Dato Tan Chin Nam first raced a horse in 1948 and has four Melbourne Cups to his credit. The two octogenarians make a great partnership. Cummings on Chin Nam:

"He is a benevolent owner. He never complains and knows what we do is best for the horses," Cummings said.

Everyone needs a client like that. Compare that approach to that of the Irish syndicate. Coolmore sent its three horses off like 400 metre runners in a marathon and then, when they ran out of legs, blamed the track for being too hard, the horses for being not ready or out of sorts (one of the jockeys said he was on the wrong horse) and the stewards for asking questions after the race with two of the syndicate's three horses pulling up lame. Reporters had a field day, one Herald Sun writer describing Septimus as 'looking for a lie-down' 600 metres out.

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Previous Melbourne Cup posts from this blog: 2007, 2005 and 2004 and sundry.