Glimpse into what it is like at the after parties of Melbourne Cup winners

LUKE Henderson always said he wouldn’t touch the Melbourne Cup until it was his. The Gold Coast real estate agent got that opportunity in 2013 and he has opened up about the wild celebrations that followed.

LUKE Henderson always said he wouldn’t touch the Melbourne Cup until it was his.

The Gold Coast real estate agent got that opportunity in 2013 when the Gai Waterhouse-trained Fiorente won.

Henderson has opened up about the wild celebrations that followed, his promise to bring the Cup back to his home city and how he ended up in the lobby of his Melbourne Hotel holding the trophy following a fire alarm in the early hours of the next morning.

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“I had the opportunity to touch the Cup with white gloves in previous years when it was on tour in different places where I came across it,” Henderson said.

“I always said to myself I’m not going to touch it until it’s mine. No white gloves, I wasn’t interested.

“If I never won it then I’d never touch it. When we won it the first thing I wanted to do was get my hands on it. I grabbed it and didn’t have to worry about the white gloves and I was kissing it.

“Gai booked us a restaurant to celebrate that night and the Cup was being pushed around the crowd. I filled it up with beer and drank from it.

Luke (right) and brother David Henderson won the Melbourne Cup in 2013 with Fiorente. Picture: Tim Marsden

“We went from there to a club at the Crown Casino. I then went back a bar, ordered a nice top shelf whiskey on the rocks and had one or two of those to reflect.

“I went back to the hotel next door and as soon as I got ready for bed the fire alarm went off.

“I was out of my suit by then and had to quickly get changed, grabbed the wife and kids and the Cup and went down the 20-odd flights of stairs.

“It was daylight by the time they let us back in and I wasn’t going to sleep by then. The phone started ringing with radio and television stations wanting to do interviews.

“We went through to about 11pm that night and then got up again the next day for Oaks Day.”

Henderson had vowed to bring the Cup back to the Gold Coast during the celebrations and true to his word, he brought it up and set up a function at Mermaid Beach Surf Club.

He invited around 30 friends but word got out and hundreds turned up to catch a glimpse of the Cup.

Luke Henderson, Gai Waterhouse, David Henderson, Rhonda Henderson and John Henderson with the Melbourne Cup at the Fiorente Melbourne Cup after party at The French Brasserie in 2013.

“It flew home with us on the flight from Melbourne and the next night we sent a few texts around to some people we knew,” Henderson said.

“We probably sent it to about 30 people saying come down and hold the Cup but we ended up getting hundreds which was good.

“We put the beers on and I remember at the time Robbie McEwen, who had won a Green jersey at the Tour de France, was there and it was like Christmas for him.

“There were all these people who had done amazing things in sport and they wanted to get their hands on the Cup.

“We weren’t precious with it. We just said hold it, fill it with beer, do whatever you want with it.

“After a while it was like ‘where is the cup?’.

“It was on a seat or under a table somewhere.”

Henderson and brother David owned Melbourne Cup runners Descarado (DNF, 2010), Tullamore (14th, 2011) and Fiorente (second, 2012 and first, 2013) while they joined forced with their other brother Andrew to buy into another Cup runner Excess Knowledge (seventh, 2015 and 16th, 2016).