Knight’s Choice’s 2024 Melbourne Cup win is a Queensland fairytale 163 years in the making

So often mocked on the national stage when its horses go south and don’t fire, Queensland put its big boy pants like never before as Knight’s Choice stunned the world as a $91 Melbourne Cup longshot.

Jockey Robbie Dolan celebrates with his family and trainers Sheila Laxon and John Symons after Knight's Choice's Melbourne Cup victory.

It was the Queensland racing fairytale 163 years in the making.

So often mocked on the national stage when its horses go south and don’t fire, Queensland put its big boy pants like never before as Knight’s Choice stunned the world as a $91 Melbourne Cup longshot.

This was as good as a Maroons State Of Origin Victory.

The horse who cost just $85,000 became the first Queensland-trained Melbourne Cup winner in Cup history which dates back to Archer’s win in 1861.

The Melbourne Cup miracle might have been made in the Sunshine State but it was a global effort.

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Irish-born jockey Robbie Dolan has a double life as a singer, featuring on The Voice in 2022 and even crooning at big race days, but this was the magic moment when his rich racing pedigree shone through.

Dolan had the most relaxed Melbourne Cup preparation of all-time, with his father Bobby jetting in from Ireland and making a surprise visit Down Under.

Bobby, a former jockey who spent almost three decades working for legendary two-time Melbourne Cup winning trainer Dermot Weld, left his son speechless when he knocked on his front door.

Robbie Dolan received a huge surprise when his father jetted in to watch him ride in the Melbourne Cup.https://t.co/GktYTqYKgj

— Racenet (@RacenetTweets) November 4, 2024

Soon they were on the golf course, watching the last round of the Queensland PGA Championship won by Phoenix Campbell at Nudgee on Sunday.

The father and son duo shared a couple of beers as they watched the golf, with Dolan freeing his mind in the days before his first Melbourne Cup ride.

Dolan’s win was massive news in the small town in Ireland from which he hails. The Dolan family home is situated just down the road from famous racetrack The Curragh.

• What the jockeys said: 2024 Melbourne Cup

But Dolan’s Cup victory was also a headline act in America, where Robbie’s older brother Barry is a trainer in Florida.

Dolan’s two-year-old Maisie daughter – who was born 15 weeks premature and spent 110 days in a neonatal intensive care unit before finally being allowed home – was a special part of the victory.

Maisie loves nothing more than watching The Wiggles at home on television, but surely now they take second place behind replays of Dad winning the Melbourne Cup.

‘If only I was a Wiggle’

Robbie Dolan has a Caulfield Cup ride on a 200/1 longshot, but a miracle victory would pale into insignificance compared with what his Wiggles-obsessed daughter has already overcome in her short life. 👇https://t.co/NWQ4NOkrrN

— Racenet (@RacenetTweets) October 15, 2024

While Dolan’s win was a fairytale, so too was the extraordinary triumph of Sunshine Coast trainer Sheila Laxon and her training partner John Symons.

Laxon quipped before the race that she wanted to retain her perfect record in the Melbourne Cup, having famously scored the 2001 edition with the mighty Ethereal.

Few took her seriously.

With Chris Waller unleashing a five-pronged attack, Irish maestro Willie Mullins having two of the favourites, Ciaron Maher boasting a powerhouse team and the majority of runners bred in the northern hemisphere, most punters thought Knight’s Choice would be making up the numbers.

How wrong they were.

Previously, the closest Queensland may have come to claiming a Melbourne Cup winner was in 1943 when Dark Felt was born and bred on the Darling Downs before being trained to Cup glory by Victorian Ray Webster.

• Knight’s Choice wins 2024 Melbourne Cup

History-maker Knight’s Choice hardly comes from a regal background.

He was bred in the small NSW town of Walcha, population of less than 3000, out of a mare than the breeders paid $1000 for in an online sale.

As a young horse, the owners of Knight’s Choice famously knocked back a $2.3m offer to sell in a monster gamble when the horse had achieved relatively little at the time.

So often in the sport of kings, these types of gambles fall flat.

But this was one for the true believers.

With just 28 horses in work, the feat of Laxon and Symons to have Knight’s Choice in the Melbourne Cup was remarkable and especially seeing as the galloper was one of just three yearlings the stable purchased in 2020.

Let’s not forget they could have had two runners, with Mission Of Love scratched by Racing Victoria’s vets last week in a decision which devastated the trainers.

• 2024 Melbourne Cup finishing order

Laxon always had big dreams with Knight’s Choice and at one stage people were chuckling to themselves when she wanted to aim for last year’s Cox Plate.

But who is laughing now after a mighty Melbourne Cup triumph?

“I will tell you, at the time when owners knocked back the offer, I thought they might need to win a Melbourne Cup to verify the decision to knock back the big money,” Laxon said in the Cup lead-up.

“I hope that can now happen.

“And then people will say, wow, that was a wise decision not to sell.

“How high do you aim?

“You go right to the top and work backwards from there I suppose.”

The Knight’s Choice crew was celebrating hard last night.

Welsh-born Laxon and Irishman Dolan once preferred European beverages, but both are now as Queensland as XXXX beer and Bundaberg Rum.

Originally published as Knight’s Choice’s 2024 Melbourne Cup win is a Queensland fairytale 163 years in the making