Perseverance might be its own reward, but Willie Mullins is hoping his own persistence tangibly pays off with perhaps the greatest victory of his stellar career in Tuesday morning’s $8 million Australian dollars (€4.85 million) Lexus Melbourne Cup.
It’s over two decades since the Irishman, who has rewritten jump racing’s record books, first tried to win the race that famously stops a nation.
Since then, he has become a regular visitor to Australia for the first Tuesday in November when the eyes of the racing world will focus once again on Flemington at 4am Irish time.
Mullins has finished second, third and fourth over the years, maybe even suspecting his luck was just plain out when Max Dynamite was a palpably unfortunate runner-up in 2015.
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Last year Vauban was widely expected to unlock the Cup combination only to flop as favourite in 14th, seven places behind his stable companion Absurde.
Both horses are back for another crack, this time with Vauban carrying topweight against 23 rivals, and once again among the favourites, as events appear to be conspiring in his favour.
A pipingly hot race day in 2023 saw a horse still tuned into European winter sweat up noticeably beforehand. Mullins concluded it was another symptom of having sent Vauban out to Australia too early and too undercooked.
This time William Buick’s mount has had a productive summer at home and the travel logistics have been more ‘smash and grab’. A decent draw in 11 is no minus either, especially considering main market rival, the ex-Joseph O’Brien trained Buckaroo, is stuck out in 21.
There’s consensus too Down Under that this might be a Melbourne Cup comparatively short of depth, containing a long tail of lightweights mostly filling space.
How that plays out in an intensely competitive handicap means luck in running will be a factor. But all things being equal, another element is how Mullins’s tenacity with a project he sinks his teeth into usually pays off in the end.
Runner-up half a dozen times over 20 years in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, he has won jump racing’s greatest prize four times in the last six years.
Whereas Dermot Weld and Joseph O’Brien have each won the Melbourne Cup twice, the resolution with which their compatriot is going at the task of winning it once is ominous for rivals everywhere.
“It’s probably the biggest flat race in the world that I can win with the type of horses we buy. That’s why it’s a race that we’d really love to win. We’ve been coming back and trying to win it. Hopefully this year is our year,” he said.
“Last year a lot of people had us marked down for that, but I think our horses’ preparations this year have been good. Vauban’s form has been very good all season and he brings great depth of form into the race. Absurde has done nothing wrong, and I think he’s a horse that’s maturing all the time in his mind,” Mullins added.
Rivals to the Irish pair include horses from Japan and England, as the Cup’s international element continues despite last week’s controversial elimination of Aidan O’Brien’s Jan Brueghel.
The Leger winner’s failure to pass a veterinary exam has generated plenty of headlines on the build-up, with O’Brien adamant his horse was fine and labelling the level of appraisal as “ridiculous”.
It has even prompted suggestions of an anti-international bias by locals supposedly sore at having their biggest shop-window event being won by overseas-trained runners.
It’s a more mundane reality though that home attention is focused more on a domestic audience that in recent years has started to have more ambivalent feelings towards racing in general.
A series of fatal injuries sustained in the Cup, including O’Brien’s Derby hero Anthony Van Dyck in 2020, and his Cliffs Of Moher two years earlier, has damaged the Cup, a race that like the Grand National generates publicity in proportion to its spotlight.
For that reason, maybe the best outcome in PR terms generally could be victory for one of the record four female riders in the race.
Michelle Payne memorably created history by winning nine years ago and Englishwoman Hollie Doyle could have the best chance of emulating her.
Doyle is on Sea King who easily won a warm-up race for the Cup in Bendigo last week. The other English hope, Onesmoothoperator, also impressed when landing the Geelong Cup, a race Ireland’s Media Puzzle famously won before landing the Cup that matters most in 2002.
But 31 years after Willie Mullins watched in the stands as Vintage Crop changed the Melbourne Cup forever, the Irish jumps maestro could be on the verge of seeing his persistence pay off with glory and the not insignificant reward of a $4.4 million Australian dollars (€2.66 million) first prize.
