VWeekend: Return of racehorse queen Francesca Cumani to Melbourne Cup
Horse racing presenter Francesca Cumani lives life at full speed, juggling work, kids, horses and travel but as she returns to Australia for “the best carnival in the world”, the Melbourne Cup, she says she wouldn’t have it any other way.
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Stepping out of the stables, only just showered and with a brush – if that – absent-mindedly put through her hair after the long haul from the UK, Francesca Cumani’s life trajectory changed forever.
Sandown Racecourse is not normally the place where television stars are found.
But it was on a brisk morning in the back blocks of Melbourne’s southeastern suburbs that a somewhat startled and shy young English rose bloomed, finding herself talking to a scrum of Australian racing media.
Her knowledge of racehorses was next to none, having grown up on the back of one since before she could walk as the daughter of famous Italian horse trainer Luca Cumani.
As she waffled on, just out of the quarantine compound, about the two horses she was in charge of – Purple Moon was a favourite and “fancied” for the Melbourne Cup in 2007 – a television executive down at Channel 7 headquarters later liked what he saw.
“I was kind of thrust into it and it was quite out of the blue. I was sort of like, ‘Blimey, what am I meant to do about this?’ Television was really never something I thought I would be doing. I lacked the confidence and never saw myself as a TV presenter,” Cumani tells V Weekend as she prepares to return to Australia once more – now as one of the world’s leading racing identities and television experts for this year’s Melbourne Cup Carnival.
Her racing family in the UK still like to give her a ribbing for being referred to as a “strapper” in the many newspaper articles and stories following her media debut in Australia, as is the case when a fresh new face and bright young thing is discovered.
The somewhat crass-sounding Aussie racing term for a person who looks after racehorses – from cleaning out the stables, feeding, grooming and saddling for trackwork and races – isn’t used back in her home country.
“My parents always laughed back home as they would see these newspaper articles from here calling me this ‘new strapper’. We don’t call them strappers at home. I got exposure through that,” she says.
And just like that, Cumani’s TV career began. It didn’t hurt to have the help of one of the most legendary and knowledgeable broadcasters – not to mention the nicest man in television – Bruce McAvaney by her side teaching her along the way.
“Bruce McAvaney, I mean he is just so lovely.”
“I’m such a confidence person and thrive off being told I’m doing OK. I knew myself quite often (that) it was disastrous.
“I was so green and honestly not very good,” she says in that rather self-deprecating British way from her farm and “haven” in Newmarket, UK.
“But when someone tells you, ‘Don’t worry, you are doing fine’, it brings the best out of me. He was so gentle, encouraging and so lovely to work with, so I was incredibly lucky to have him by my side, guiding and steering me.”
Cumani acknowledges it was one of those “right place, right time” moments, and a turning point for Australian racing television.
“It sort of fell into place, but it also felt quite right at the time having a female voice,” she says. “Traditionally the girls had always done the fashion and the colour and the men did the serious business covering the racing.
“So I think it was time.
“There were also a lot of international horses going over then, so having a female voice who lent a bit to the international horses and gave it a bit of context, it all sort of fit into place.”
Other people who would also help steer her in those early days have also become key figures in Australian racing. A somewhat lowly ranked TV producer and editor would sit with Cumani watching re-runs of races after hours and taught her “the difference between Cranbourne and Ballarat”. Andrew Hore-Lacy is now Seven’s head of horse racing.
But Cumani doesn’t back favourites. As broadcasting deals have been gear changed in racing from networks Seven to Ten and now to Nine, so has Cumani. She goes where the races are.
“I’m more aligned to the Victoria Racing Club, really. It’s a good challenge to work with different broadcasters and different people – it keeps you on your toes,” she says.
“I think I bought some niche things, walking with the horse in the paddock and walking alongside them to really try and inform and educate people at home what I’m seeing, so they can see it, too.
“I’ve brought that over here to the UK and it has now been adopted.
“I feel like the balance is good, it is very much 50/50 with men and women on the coverage and before it was a bit weighted the other way.”
The well-bred racing identity certainly doesn’t look half bad in a dress, and her fashion choices and attire have garnered plenty of attention along the journey.
But she puts it all firmly down to an old university friend, and now highly sought after personal stylist, Sarah Byrne.
“I’m still a tomboy,” she laughs, wearing some “ancient jeans, a scruffy white T-shirt” and fiance and insurance broker Max Johnson’s old fleece jacket as she prepares to go for a ride after our interview.
“I’m what you call pretty daggy. I haven’t washed my hair for about a week because I’ve got too many children and things to worry about. I’m one or the other: I’m either very polished and dressed up at the races, or I’m very scruffy.
“The fashion side of things I put down to my friend Sarah Byrne. She loves things that are a bit different; she goes hunting through the charity shops and is like, ‘perfect’. Sometimes I’m wearing very expensive designer brands and beautifully made pieces, or sometimes it’s something she has dug out of a car boot, charity shop or vintage fair.
“I think that’s what has made people more interested in what I wear because it is not kind of standard, or just stuff you find kicking around High St. It is not weird, it is just varied. So I have huge trust in her and she knows what looks good and what works.”
Cumani has become used to the media interest in her home country, working for ITV racing and here in Australia, and takes it all in her stride.
“I think once at Ascot last year I wore something slightly more lower cut than normal and it got a lot of attention; I was also early days pregnant and my boobs had gotten bigger and I think it got people a bit excited,” she says.
“But I tend to have the fine line between practicality and fashion and I’m there to do a job and I can’t be tripping up on my dress.
“Sarah would have a great time if she came to Australia. She is very Irish and very entertaining and is an excellent side saddler. She does things a little bit differently and it would be fun for her to be in Australia because it’s a slightly different vibe. You can have a bit more fun with the fashion down there; there are less rules and less rigidity so you can go a little bit left field.
“We like local small British designers who know the brief and make things for racing – a lot of the designers we started wearing were pretty unknown and now everyone is wearing them, so we have to keep finding new ones,” she laughs, while commending Australia’s own homegrown designers for their unique take on racing attire.
“I wore a bit of Perri Cutten recently. The lovely family sent me some coats and they have become very useful this summer in London which hasn’t really been a summer at all, so they have kept me very nice and toasty.”
It was the 40-year-old’s last pregnancy that saw her scratched from covering last year’s carnival. Not from her own doing, mind you. She would have been here if she could – she likes to keep busy. But doctor’s orders prevented her from attending.
“I would have come – I mean, I would have looked like a whale, but I would have come.
“It takes a lot to keep me away, but a pandemic and a baby can do that.”
Her third child, Nina (she shares a boy, Harry, with her former husband, Australian polo player Rob Archibald, and son Teddy with fiance and former triathlete Johnson) came with some drama.
Visiting her in-laws about two-and-a-half hours away, near Leeds, in the lead-up, Cumani and her fiance were shocked to discover they had been snowed in. They were due to return home to give birth in December.
“We woke up on Saturday morning and we were like, ‘Oh it’s snowing, that’s nice, it will melt overnight’. It didn’t. My fiancé’s dad and a few of the neighbours had to dig out a 300m path for the car to be able to get out. Eventually we managed to get out as the sun was going down, and we were halfway home when a tyre blew out and we had to get a tow truck.
“We eventually got home and I then had a caesarean birth at 7.30 the next morning.
“I’m just glad she decided she didn’t come earlier,” she laughs.
That pesky thing called Covid-19 and a worldwide pandemic also prevented her from attending at Flemington. She says nothing will stop her in her tracks from returning this time.
“I just think the Melbourne Cup Carnival is the best carnival in the world,” she says. “Every country has something different, but when you get to Melbourne there is so much to enjoy. I think you guys do the whole carnival so well from the food, fashion layout of course, to the roses, the big screen, the new stand … everything is done to a very high level and it shows.
“There is a lack of complacency in the sense where other courses and carnivals perhaps sit on their laurels and just are known for being good. I don’t know whether it’s an Australian thing, but there is always this sense to grow and to keep improving and to want to do better than they have before, and it keeps it relevant and keeps attracting people to the sport.
“Some foreign people, or English people, are a bit sniffy about it and say, ‘Oh, the Melbourne Cup, it’s a handicap’ – because most races are a weight for age.
“But I think that is the beauty of the Melbourne Cup and why it captures the imagination of the people – anything can win.
“It’s not just the best-bred horse that comes along and wins. Anything can win.”
As someone who prefers to be on the back of a horse “24/7”, spending every waking hour, school holiday or moment off riding (she spent her gap year from university in Kenya on riding safari tours), Cumani says she tries to bring her perspective to racing and a younger audience.
She says the bad press the sport sometimes receives around animal welfare doesn’t always highlight the good things, love and care that people in the industry show their horses.
“I think horse racing gets unfair press for certain things. But I very much see it as my job to highlight the positives and show how everyone who works for the horses loves the animals. I have no qualms about the welfare side of things so I think it is about getting that message across.”
As she prepares for this year’s carnival, Cumani says she simply can’t wait to return to the country that not just gave her a leg up to a now-extraordinary career, but created it.
“I try and pack a lot in between work, kids, home, horses and travel. I’m naturally wired like that and wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I’m thrilled to be coming back again.”
Her brother, Matt Cumani, also got the taste for Australia and now trains his thoroughbreds at his Miner’s Rest farm near the town whose name she once had to learn in Ballarat.
“It’s funny how it all works out,” she says.
Originally published as VWeekend: Return of racehorse queen Francesca Cumani to Melbourne Cup
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