MELBOURNE CUP:WITH THE total of overseas raiders for tomorrow morning's Melbourne Cup reaching almost double figures some of the locals are dreading such a forceful raid in the way Darwin reacted to being buzzed by Japanese Zeroes in the second World War in 1942.

"Spot the Aussie!" growled the legendary Bart Cummings last week when scanning a list of potential runners. Since Cummings is the renowned "Cup King", having trained the winner of the Race That Stops a Nation a record 11 times, his bleary-eyed attitude towards this latest wave of foreign runners chasing Australia's most coveted sporting prize carries a lot of weight.

It's probably a good thing then that the impact of an equine virus in Japan means there will be no raiders from the Land of the Rising Sun this year. It's only a couple of years after all since Delta Blues led home Pop Rock for a Japanese one-two in the cup.

Not surprisingly there was some suitably Darwinian resentment at that result, which came four years after Media Puzzle won for Dermot Weld, and a full 13 since Vintage Crop kicked the whole international show off at Flemington in 1993.

For those hankering for the good old days when the sole non-Aussie to worry about in the cup was the odd rogue Kiwi, the only thing that could finish the show off completely now is if one of the "Poms" wins the world's most famous two-mile handicap.

"The Japanese have got a good idea (for the Japan Cup.) They choose the best horses and invite them from around the world, but four or five runners - only," is the view of Cummings, who is worried about the lack of places in the cup for home runners this year.

Like it or not, though, the internationalisation of the Melbourne Cup is well and truly in place. The presence of three horses from Aidan O'Brien's Ballydoyle stable reflects world interest in the race.

Normally a two-mile handicap would fly under the radar of the world's most powerful racing outfit. But the cup, as Aussies keep insisting, is different.

Since Vintage Crop's victory a total of 63 "imports" have run in the race including such star Irish names as Yeats and Oscar Schindler. In the circumstances a tally of three wins, five seconds and four thirds for the visitors can arguably be seen as disappointing. Certainly initial Aussie fears that they were going to be swamped for years to come have not materialised.

"There was hostility from some trainers at first and I was one of them," said Lee Freedman, currently Australia's leading trainer.

"After Vintage Crop we thought they were going to come over here every year and win it, and we felt that was wrong, as it is an Aussie race. But now we know how difficult it is to travel here so we are more relaxed."

Freedman himself is an example of how Australian racing has been touched by those outside influences in the last two decades. Most Australians still train on-track like their American brethren. The trend is growing though for separate training establishments in the European style. Freedman has his own base and has used his visits to Coolmore and Ballydoyle in Tipperary to good effect.

"I don't mind admitting I've pinched a lot of ideas from Aidan (O'Brien) - interval training, working them up a slope, that sort of thing. It's not completely the same as Ballydoyle but there's a lot of influence," he said.

If the top man is adopting more European methods then other Aussie trainers are slowly coming to terms with the idea that their old tried and trusted way of preparing horses may not be the only way.

By European standards horses are trained extremely hard in Australia. Fast work is described as flogging which pretty much reflects the no messing attitude taken towards getting horses fit. And when they are fit they are raced.

Many of the local cup runners will have seen action at the weekend in traditional warm-up events such as the Dalgetty and Mackinnon Stakes, valuable races in themselves but which also serve as useful tools in putting the finishing touches to a horse.

In fact they often turn into speculative delights as to which runner has tried least and kept most in reserve for three days later, something the normally hawk-eyed local stewards appear to turn a blind eye to by turning their binoculars back to front.

It's against such a background then that initial Australian incredulity at how Vintage Crop could win the cup after a six-week gap between races has to be measured. More recent results such as All The Good's Caulfield Cup victory a couple of weeks ago off a classic European preparation have also slowly but surely turned the Aussies around to the idea that there may be other ways of getting the job done.

In turn the traffic inwards has also contributed to a more adventurous campaigning of Australian horses overseas. In a racing world that is getting smaller and smaller the success of sprinters such as Choisir and Takeover Target at Royal Ascot shows the Aussies can come out swinging themselves. There remains, however, a rump of insularity at home about methods that stray from the Aussie norm.

Visiting jockeys have felt such venom in the neck over the years. Michael Kinane, a cup winner on Vintage Crop, was lashed by the media the following year for racing too wide on the legendary horse. Pat Smullen suffered the same fate in 2003 when Vinnie Roe was beaten by Makybe Diva. Frankie Dettori has been dismissed as a Euro shaper.

All three have been found guilty in the court of Aussie public opinion of going far too far off the rails. No matter the circumstances, being stuck to the rail is always position A in Australian racing. One off is just about acceptable and any further is positively sinful.

The European habit of going wide in search of better ground or a clearer run is like a red rag to a bull. In this matter it seems no one Down Under is willing to concede that different might not necessarily mean the same thing as wrong.

Silky smooth Europeans might be a preferred target but any home boy deviating from the norm gets it too. Kerrin McEvoy's return to ride in Australia after some years as Dettori's deputy at Godolphin might have been greeted with a fanfare but the last couple of months have been pretty torrid for the "boy from Streaky Bay". The general consensus is that he has gone native in his desire to secure a clear passage through a race: except it is usually put a lot more bluntly than that.

Given time, however, even torching visiting jockeys might lose its appeal. Australia's most famous race is coveted so much now that the international influence simply isn't going to go away. Internationalisation everywhere is proving to be remorseless.

That was obvious during the Breeders' Cup at Santa Anita when the long-awaited introduction of a synthetic surface achieved a levelling off in results between the best of Europe and America that has startled the Americans into some serious soul-searching about the future.

The breeding industry alone faces a seismic change that could cost billions of dollars as racing's new economic reality takes hold.

Compared to that, the Melbourne Cup remains something of a curio at the other end of the world, its value weighed more in prestige than in hard currency.

But winning it has become important to a lot of very wealthy people around the globe. And as Bart probably knows deep down, spotting a winner is always the most important thing, whether it comes from Tipperary, Tasmania or Timbuktu.