Melbourne Cup winner Almandin started its journey at Macedon Lodge with Lloyd Williams
ALMANDIN’S journey to winning the Melbourne Cup started far away from Flemington. It began at Macedon Lodge with legendary owner Lloyd Williams.
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SNAKING 12km around the perimeter of Macedon Lodge, a packed dirt track is unprepossessing at first glance.
Immaculately maintained, the undulating circuit is far more than it appears. It is one of many key elements in Lloyd Williams’ phenomenal Melbourne Cup success.
When Almandin slipped and injured a tendon during exercise in 2014, Williams understood two things — the prized German import might never race again and, if he did return, the bush track would become the gelding’s best friend.
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And so it proved as hours and hours of walking through the Mt Macedon gums became the platform for a stunning Cup victory on Tuesday.
“Almandin walked that track countless times,” Williams said. “The tracks around these hills are really important in getting them what I call ‘off-track fit’.
“I’ve got a theory that if you’ve got them fit to a degree, they’re less likely to break down.
“But you cross your fingers every time. No one’s a genius in this game.
“We didn’t know how well he (Almandin) would recover. Only the man above knows those things.
“Tendons take time. Walking helps bone injuries to calcify and recover.
“Lots of people wonder about what we do. They wonder about how we’re doing it and why we’re doing it.
“But it (outstanding results) doesn’t necessarily say we’re right. You’ve always got something to learn. We’ve just got a different regime to others.”
Williams’ horsemanship is based on learning from figures such as Tommy Smith and many others — and the discipline of walking.
“You’ll notice with our horses in the mounting yard, they walk with their heads down,” he said.
“That’s from all the walking and conditioning up here. They’re hand-walked every day for 90 minutes.
“You’re never too old to learn in this game. It’s a very instinctive and human game, racing.
“There’s not just one way of training a horse.
“I grew up in stables and practically everything I knew, T.J. Smith taught me.
“He was probably the most instinctive person I’ve ever known with a horse. T.J. Smith was as good at picking lameness as the great (vet) Percy Sykes was.
“T.J. used to come down to Flemington for the spring carnival and he’d arrive on a Tuesday and by Thursday he’d know everyone else’s horse by looking at them.
“He was an amazing bloke.”
A leviathan property developer who no longer punts, Williams has a set of hard and fast preparation rules.
“My view is that if you’re not ready to run in the Melbourne Cup by Turnbull Stakes day, you don’t try and get ready in the last four weeks,” he said.
Almandin qualified for the Melbourne Cup by winning the The Bart Cummings at the Turnbull meeting on October 2, 30 days before the Cup.
Delighted to keep the Cup in Australian hands, Williams said criticism of European training styles bordered on ignorance.
“This business of saying, ‘The horse has to run in Australia when he comes out here because there’s been 87 horses that have been here since Vintage Crop (in 1993) and not won (the Cup) at their first run here and so they can’t win’, is not right,” he said.
“They could run in the Ascot meeting in June and still come here and win. It depends who trains it and what he’s done with it.
“Heartbreak City ran in the Ebor (in August), he’s got a great turn of foot and he came out and almost won the Cup.
“He’s a smart trainer that fellow (Tony Martin).
“Everyone’s different. Tony Martin trains them one way; Willie Mullins trains them another way; Aidan O’Brien trains them another way.
“Bart (Cummings) was a totally different type of trainer. He would train them up to the event.
“In the Mackinnon, he would give them a hard run and back them up in the Melbourne Cup. That was different.”
Williams relies heavily on his hand-picked staff, including 1991 Cup-winning jockey Steven King, Craig Dinn, Eddie Cassar and Anthony Darmanin and trainer Robert Hickmott.
Despite their contrasting backgrounds, they’ve all been converted to Williams’ aerobic training philosophy.
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“We’ve got good, loyal staff that Rob heads up,” he said.
“You can’t run a business without a good team. I’ve been fortunate that I’ve got a good team.
“It’s not easy in this business because in racing you get a lot of transient people, but we’ve had a fairly stable staff up here for a long while.
“They’ve all been with me for a long time and they understand the way we do things.”
And most of it is done on that ribbon of white dirt, far from the Flemington throng.
Originally published as Melbourne Cup winner Almandin started its journey at Macedon Lodge with Lloyd Williams
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