Cup winners vow to keep the party going

Victory in the Melbourne Cup is just dawning on the Queensland owners of the winner Vow And Declare, but they are happy to go along with the ride.

THE Queensland crew of Melbourne Cup winner Vow And Declare kept the party going yesterday, happily posing for photos with curious onlookers keen to have their photo taken with one of the most famous pieces of silverware in Australian sport.

Gympie State High School Principal Anthony Lanskey and his two boys Lachlan and Ben, and his uncle Paul Lanskey (who bred Vow And Declare before selling shares to family and friends) and his sons Tom and Joe, joined trainer Danny O’Brien and fellow owners Bob Leitch and Kort Goodman in a day after luncheon in Melbourne yesterday.

“It’s still really sinking in to be honest,” Anthony said. “It was great to sit there at lunch and the number of people who just wanted to come up and have a photo with the Cup I don’t think the impact has dawned on us.”

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The Lanskey family celebrate their Melbourne Cup win in St Kilda. Picture: Mark Stewart

The party started at a hotel in South Melbourne on Tuesday night, where the crowd spilt out onto the footpath as numbers swelled.

“It was long. It was great. The pub couldn’t fit us all in,” Lanskey said.

The party goers were joined by a surprise guest during celebrations in St Kilda yesterday afternoon.

Bryan Martin called the Melbourne Cup 29 times but it’s a fair bet to say he will recall Tuesday’s Cup more readily than most – even though he wasn’t behind the microphone.

Martin posted on Twitter on Tuesday two all up bets he had through Caulfield Cup winner Mer De Glace and Cox Plate winner Lys Gracieux. Had either Master Of Reality or Prince Of Arran beaten Vow And Declare, Martin would have colleted $280,000 in winnings.

Trainer Danny O'Brien with his family and Melbourne Cup winner Vow and Declare. Picture: Mark Evans/Getty Images

Given how close that pair came to winning, it ranks as one of the all time hard luck punting stories.

“We asked Brian if he wanted to hold the Cup,” Lanskey said. “He told us at the same time the day before he certainly didn’t, but ‘I might today.’

“We just told him ‘someone has to come second Brian!’

“Brian has been a Melbourne Cup ambassador for a long time, but amazingly said this was the first time he had held the Cup without gloves on.”

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The owners have ‘vowed and declared’ to take the Cup to all of their home towns to show off the spoils of victory.

Lanskey said Mossman, where he grew up in and where his late father was a GP, had trouble paying out on the Cup winner such was the support coming out of the town.