How Viewed’s Melbourne Cup win inspired James Cummings to chase his own Cup dream as a trainer

Using the handwritten notes, whispers and grunts of his famous grandfather, James Cummings will chase his first Melbourne Cup winner on the 10th anniversary of Bart’s last Cup success.

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BART Cummings didn’t like email.

By fax machine, is how training staff and the office secretary would communicate the morning’s Randwick trackwork times.

On a foggy Thursday morning in the autumn of 2011, the legendary trainer was lying in a Sydney hospital bed, recovering from a respiratory ailment.

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At his bedside was a fruit bowl, the fax machine and a red ball-point pen.

“Red, it was always red,’’ grandson James Cummings said.

Before landing the prestigious role as head trainer for Godolphin’s ‘Blue Army’ last year, James began his tutelage as foreman for his legendary grandfather at just 21.

“On this one morning, Bart wanted particular work done with a horse, who we were aiming for a Group 1 race on the Saturday,’’ James said.

Bart Cummings with grandsons Edward and James.

“But it was such a foggy morning that Thursday morning that anyone at Randwick — and I mean Gai (Waterhouse), John O’Shea, all the trainers — they couldn’t clock the complete sectional times of the horses.

“Therefore, our horse only had the final 200m clocked and written down.

“I had made sure the horse did the work, but the fax that the office secretary sent through to Bart didn’t tell the full story.

“So I spoke to Bart midmorning on Thursday and then again in the afternoon and he was just furious with me — but he wouldn’t say exactly what he was angry about.

“So I said, ‘I’ll come and see you in the morning, Bart.’

“I went to the hospital and I see a fax printout lying on the desk next to his bed and beneath the empty trackwork times is his underline in the red biro.

“He absolutely gave it to me — but I stuck up for myself, adamant the horse did the work he wanted him to do.

“And at that point, I’m a 21-year-old learning to appreciate what pressure really is, yet, I’ll never forget the lesson.

Bart Cummings was the master of preparing a horse for the Melbourne Cup. Picture: Nicole Garmston

“I’ll never forget the work he wanted me to give the horse.

“And I’ll never forget what people outside the family thought about what lengths Bart would go to for a horse.

“Still, right up until the end, plenty thought he was mad.’’

James’ wife, Monica, may have been one of them.

“When I took over as Bart’s head foreman, we had a two-year colt in training,’’ James explained. “The horse got a temperature and he (Bart) deadset blamed me for the horse getting the temperature.

“So here I was, going back to the stables at six o’clock at night and then I’d take Monica to dinner — we were just dating at the time — and then after dinner I was going back and checking the temperature again.

“And Monica would say; ‘My god, no one else would be doing this.”

“I said: ‘Well, that’s the expectation’, that every little thing that went wrong, my head would be on the chopping block because that was the way Bart wanted it.

James Cummings has had great support from wife Monica since taking the reins at Godolphin. Picture: AAP

“He made me feel the blame for anything that went wrong in the stable.

“If a horse was first-up at Canterbury in a maiden and it had knocked up with 50 metres to go, he’d turn to me and say ‘you’re not swimming this horse enough.’

“And that sort of pressure at that young age really helped accelerate my learning and gave me a really good insight into the way Bart thought.

“There was an expectation for a level of excellence.’’

Three years after his Hall of Fame grandfather’s passing at 87, James is chasing racing excellence on the only Tuesday that matters at Flemington.

Not only as the first trainer to win the great race for Godolphin with highly rated four-year-old and fourth-favourite Avilius, but with the methods — and the crazy brilliance — of Australia’s “Cups King”.

Each morning, the 30-year-old who leads the Australian arm of the global horseracing powerhouse Godolphin — one of the most prestigious jobs in world racing — rises at 3am.

James Cummings has done an excellent job in charge of Godolphin’s Australian operation. Picture: Michael Klein

He kisses wife Monica and their two children Adeline, 3, and Harvey, 1 on the cheek, stops for a coffee and an apple turnover at a cafe near the family’s Matraville home, in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, and drives 45 minutes to Warwick Farm for track work.

No longer using a fax machine to clock the morning splits of his runners, James and his team use iPads and training software to oversee as many as 200 horses in work. He talks strategy and tactics with track work riders, receives stewards' reports and phone calls from vets.

He’s polished, precise in his work and often so proud to promote the Godolphin team that his online videos need winding up from the stable’s digital team.

Within the racing fraternity, James Cummings is the closest thing to the heir to the throne of racing’s King.

His elevation and the ensuing pressure as a fourth-generation trainer has been handled better than what most do the famous Randwick rise.

From a 13-year-old stable hand for his father and Group 1-winning trainer Anthony, to foreman and fax machine correspondent to his grandfather, to multiple Group 1 winner for Godolphin, first with Alizee in the Flight Stakes and most recently with Hartnell in the Epsom.

And now, the big one, Avilius and the Melbourne Cup.

James Cummings will bank on Avilius to give him his first Melbourne Cup on Tuesday. Picture: AAP

“To put it like that, no I would never have dreamt that I would fast track my way to this opportunity to be working with these guys and be training Sheik Mohammed’s horses,’’ James said. “But, you know, every opportunity, every moment that came along I was just head down, grab it with both hands and do my best with it.’’

This Tuesday marks the 10-year anniversary since Viewed gave Cummings his 12th and final Melbourne Cup.

It was also the moment that changed James’s life.

“I was 20 and it was the day I realised I wanted to be only one place — in the pressure-cooker as a racehorse trainer,’’ James said.

James had been working on a breeding farm in the Hunter Valley as a stablehand in 2008.

“It was a little bit of everything, at one stage they had me nailing fences up,’’ James said.

“But I was just throwing myself into it. I was just trying to learn as fast as I could.

“I got the opportunity to go down there for the Spring Carnival, despite working on the farm at the time. I was lucky to be let off the leash. I was in Melbourne and I was able to fully appreciate what that day meant.

Bart Cummings with Viwed after winning the 2008 Melbourne Cup.

“It gave me the biggest reality check and woke me up to know that my real passion was not breeding horses or working on a farm, I wanted to be in the mix.’’

And 10 years later, here is — in the mix on Cup day with Avilius, for the famous blue silks of Godolphin.

Using the handwritten notes, whispers and grunts of his famous grandfather, James said Avilius was primed to run out a powerful 3200m after finishing fourth to Winx in the Cox Plate over 2000m.

“Weight for age is extremely good form, when you switch back to a handicap,’’ James said.

“With the Cox Plate lung-burner, he was able to come out of in really good order.

“I wanted a perfect, uninterrupted preparation, to be right for the grand final and he’s had that.

“We’ve put the right amount of work in.’’

Just as Bart would’ve wanted.

Originally published as How Viewed’s Melbourne Cup win inspired James Cummings to chase his own Cup dream as a trainer