Melbourne Cup is Damian Lane’s own sweep stakes
Damian Lane has a shot at adding the Melbourne Cup to this year’s Golden Slipper, Caulfield Cup and Cox Plate triumphs.
Damian Lane can’t speak Japanese. That’s OK. Neither can his horse.
The jockey on the cusp of history in the Melbourne Cup is sitting in the back of a shiny car as it waits to get out of the blocks on Bourke Street, take off along Swanston Street, move past the animal rights activists screaming their nup to the Cup near the Flinders Street Station before dropping him off at Federation Square.
On a day of persistent rain, it’s an interesting preparation for a race that has so much riding on it, sitting in the cold and wet for a couple of hours. But assuming he hasn’t caught pneumonia in the process, Lane will be chasing an unprecedented calendar-year Grand Slam at Flemington this afternoon.
“It’s incredible to be in this position. It’s a whirlwind. I cannot believe it but I can believe it, if that makes sense,” he said ahead of his shot at adding the Melbourne Cup to this year’s Golden Slipper, Caulfield Cup and Cox Plate triumphs.
Only seven jockeys have won the four majors in their entire careers, let alone done a Rod Laver by cleaning them up in a single season. Having pushed trainer Hisashi Shimizu to put Mer De Glace in the Caulfield Cup, he said the Melbourne Cup would be the $8 million carrot on top. Sitting next to Lane during the waterlogged street parade — Swanston St was a Soft 7— Shimizu said: “I believe in the horse. I believe in the jockey.”
No one was sounding the horns and blowing the trumpets when Lane arrived in Japan on a two-month contract this year. The 25-year-old won more stakes races than any visiting jockey had done in a two-month swing while lining up Shimizu’s “beast” of a horse for the Cup. Shimizu was only able to speak through a translator on Monday but he kept patting Lane on the back, laughing, giving a thumbs-up. Success was success in anyone’s language.
Lane showed himself to be a shy and unassuming young fella.
Prince of Arran hoop Michael Walker said his preferred celebration for winning the Cup had been to get on the first plane to Las Vegas for a pool party, but Lane said he was not naturally inclined to anything so extravagant.
Shimizu’s translator, just quietly, said the West Australian was “the life of the party” when he was in the mood, but Mer De Glace said sayonara to Cup favouritism when wet weather softened up the Flemington track. The Chris Waller-trained, Kerrin McEvoy-ridden Finche became the punters’ pal and yet Lane oozed a quiet confidence bred from having been through this sort of preliminary at the Golden Slipper, and at the Caulfield Cup, and at the Cox Plate, and coming up trumps in the lot of them.
He kept poking the Japanese trainer in the ribs every time someone asked him whether Mer De Glace would go the 3200m distance. “I can’t speak a word of Japanese but they’re very forgiving over there with people who don’t speak their language,” Lane said. “We’re probably not as forgiving of someone in that situation.
“I have a manager who speaks both languages and he translates all the time, before races and at trackwork as well, to make sure the right message clearly gets across. It was a very different way to be working and living in Japan for a couple of months there. It was fascinating and all a bit surreal.”
Asked about the grand slam, Lane said: “It’s all sort of happened so quickly in the last few weeks that it hasn’t sunk in. That’s a good thing. I don’t want to think about that too much because my only job is to try to ride a good Melbourne Cup. To give the horse the best chance I can.
“It’s been a truly amazing few weeks to win the Caulfield Cup and the Cox Plate and of course, it’s been a great year in Japan as well. To cap it off with a Melbourne Cup would be a dream. I’m really confident I’m on the right horse and that he will run it out.”
Lane grew up in Bunbury, 180km south of Perth. “Being raised as a racing fan, I always knew the Melbourne Cup was the pinnacle,” he said. “It’s something I always watched and loved and wanted to be a part of. It would be unbelievable to have a Melbourne Cup on the mantelpiece.
“The majors thing, that doesn’t worry me because it’s not something that’s going to affect the outcome of the race. I’ve got to ride the same way. The horse has to run well, if it’s going to run well. He has great stamina and he’s drawn the right gate, but he hasn’t performed well on soft tracks in the past. But I know I’m riding a live chance.”
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