Lloyd Williams flies the flag for "us" as he takes on the world in Melbourne Cup

SWEEP GENERATOR: FOR this Melbourne Cup, and perhaps from this time forward, Lloyd Williams is not just representing himself.

With six runners, five of them imported and one last year's winner, owner Lloyd Williams is the great obstacle to European

FOR this Melbourne Cup, and perhaps from this time forward, Lloyd Williams is not just representing himself.

Williams is not the type to drape himself in national flags, yet the elusive Melbourne businessman and horse enthusiast is representing "us'' today.

That's if "us'' and "them'' is still a legitimate Melbourne Cup story. It may have evolved beyond that.

But in this international Cup era, Williams is the modern version of the Aussie battler; the heavily-armed billionaire trying to preserve the last skerrick of Aussie "ownership'' of the great race.

Lloyd Williams, border guard.

With six runners, five of them imported and one last year's winner, Williams is the great obstacle to European-trained dominance.

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A year ago, after the raiders filled the first seven places in 2011, Williams fended off not the raiders but Gai Waterhouse.

Waterhouse, as quintessential an Australian as Dame Edna, and often similarly dressed, shapes as the other great local hope.

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She'd barely set eyes on Fiorente last year when the import ran out of his skin to beat all but Green Moon.

Gai Waterhouse in excited mood at her Flemington stables as she gets another chance to win the Melbourne Cup. Picture: Mark Evans

Waterhouse has made winning this Cup more an obsession than a mere mission.

Waterhouse has been queen of Sydney racing for two decades yet has been more an exotic visitor to Melbourne than a training force.

She has been meticulous in trying to win this Cup with Fiorente when in other years she might have hammered a horse like him through the Sydney spring and tried to hold him together for Melbourne.

For this mission, Sydney's racetracks were used only for between-races prep gallops. For Fiorente, the Cup campaign has been launched from Melbourne, the epicentre.

With Gai and Lloyd there is history.

Williams knows a great deal about training horses and most of what he learnt came from Waterhouse's late father, the immortal T.J. Smith.

The Gai Waterhouse-trained Fiorente is cleaned after a swim by Roger Neville. Picture: AP

Williams and Smith were great mates. Most in racing and business revere Williams but Williams revered Smith.

Williams also admires and adores Smith's daughter.

"If I can't win, I hope Gai does,'' Williams said on Sunday.

In some ways Williams and Waterhouse are a Cup team; Williams with half a dozen runners, Waterhouse with two and a foot in two camps.

Fiorente, like all raiders who come here and stay, is now one of ours and he is a legitimate Cup favourite.

Fiorente had a tough run in the Cox Plate and some bookies reckon that might be a negative. Gai, like T.J, prefers toughness over delicacy. She'd have regarded that Cox Plate "gut-buster'' as the perfect Cup trial.

Tres Blue is in Waterhouse's name but has never entered her stable.

But this Werribee-based raider will become a Waterhouse success story, her first Melbourne Cup, if he can fend off Williams and the Werribee throng today.

This is the greatest Cup ever; greatest because it has a short "tail''.

Rarely can half the field win these days because, under a compressed weight scale, the cream has had a tendency to ride to the top.

Yet there are probably 15 winning chances today.

Oddly enough it's the best horse who probably faces the greatest challenge.

Dunaden, whose humble history makes him a European Takeover Target or Polanski, has won a Melbourne Cup and a Caulfield Cup yet is a $35 outsider.

Green Moon won last year yet is also a $35 chance.

Williams, the local hero, reckons his only home-bred runner, Caulfield Cup winner Fawkner, may be the pick of his six.

But when you have an army, like Williams, it's the strength of the collective that counts most, although Williams bristled when it was suggested his army might act as a gang.

Trainer Ed Dunlop is captured on camera during the 2013 Melbourne Cup parade. Picture: Getty Images

"Bad manners,'' Williams said of Ed Dunlop's quip about the army maybe bending the rules.

Tall Englishman Dunlop sought clarification yesterday, saying "it was nothing personal, or wasn't meant to be anyway''.

"I drew barrier 23 and was frustrated and saw this battalion of Williams runners draw so well. It just looked daunting,'' he said.

Dunlop, trainer of Red Cadeaux, the 2001 runner-up by a pixel who Dunlop says can't win "the toughest Cup I've seen'', offered a simple hope for a most interesting Melbourne Cup.

"You know what? Let's hope for an honest pace and may the best horse win,'' he said.