Mark Du Plessis reflects on growing up in Zimbabwe as he prepares to ride in sixth Melbourne Cup

Mark Du Plessis grew up a long way from Melbourne, in Zimbabwe, but the Queensland-based jockey will have his sixth Melbourne Cup ride next Tuesday.

It’s a long way from the sweltering banks of the world’s largest artificial lake and reservoir in Zimbabwe, where jockey Mark Du Plessis grew up, to the lush, green Flemington straight.

But that’s been the journey for the now Queensland-based jockey who has already ridden in five Melbourne Cups and is poised to have a crack at a sixth on Tuesday.

Du Plessis has been booked for Kiwi stayer Trust In You, a $201 chance who was on the periphery of the Cup field but is now set to line up thanks to the attrition rate above him in the ballot order.

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Du Plessis, 49, comes from off the beaten track to be a Melbourne Cup jockey.

He was born in Harare, the Zimbabwe capital, and grew up on the banks of Lake Kariba, about 370km north of Harare.

Zimbabwe has faced plenty of strife, including wars and having thousands of white farmers forced from their land, often violently, between 2000 and 2001 under a controversial land reform program launched by former President Robert Mugabe.

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Du Plessis had left Zimbabwe for New Zealand by the time of the land seizures and he is quick to point out he had a wonderful childhood growing up in Zimbabwe.

But he does remember some trouble when he was a little kid.

“During a war when I was young, my Dad was in the Air Force and Mum was working in a bank,” Du Plessis said.

Mark Du Plessis will be riding in his sixth Melbourne Cup. Picture: Grant Peters/Trackside Photography

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“I remember during the war when I was about three or four, my Mum took my sister and I under the bed just for protection against bombings.

“But growing up in Zimbabwe for me, it was mostly a great place to live.

“At the time it was the bread basket of Africa, a very wealthy farming country.

“I pretty much grew up in the bush and I had a childhood that many would dream of.

“Neither side of my family were involved in horse racing.

“I always loved animals and motorbikes and I couldn’t race motorbikes because they were too expensive.

“When I went to high school, the parents of one of my mates had racehorses and I went to the races one day and I said this looks pretty good.

“It was adrenaline filled, which I liked, so I sat on my first racehorse age of 16 and got double barrelled in the head.”

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The young Du Plessis won apprentice and senior jockey titles in Zimbabwe and left for New Zealand in 1998 – getting out of the country before trouble really erupted.

“I was riding for a wealthy owner in Zimbabwe and he said to me that I had won premierships and he thought it was time for me to look elsewhere,” Du Plessis said.

“He said, ‘don’t look in Africa, because the sh-t is about to hit the fan’.

“So I headed to New Zealand where everything was so different, it was like taking out another apprenticeship.

“I knew when I landed in New Zealand that I wasn’t going back.

“Inflation in Zimbabwe had already started to go really bad and given some of the things that happened, I was lucky to get out of there.”

Trust In You, trained by Kiwis Bruce Wallace and Grant Cooksley, finished fourth behind another Melbourne Cup contender Land Legend in the Group 1 Metropolitan (2400m), at Randwick on October 5.

The trainers had asked Du Plessis to ride on that occasion, but he was already committed to riding Chris Waller’s galloper First Light which finished seventh.

“They rang me again and said do you want to ride this horse in the Melbourne Cup, I said ‘of course I do’,” De Plessis said.

Originally published as Mark Du Plessis reflects on growing up in Zimbabwe as he prepares to ride in sixth Melbourne Cup