Vauban returns as The Everest turns The Cup upside down

Peak racing season has arrived. The Everest on Saturday. The Melbourne Cup on the first Tuesday in November. Which race is Australia’s greatest?

The Willie Mullins-trained Irish stayer Vauban enjoys a roll in the sand during a trackwork session at Werribee on Monday. Picture: Getty Images

Vauban is back in Australia for the first time since flopping at last year’s Melbourne Cup, when he started favourite but only just finished before sunset. He was having a fine old time rolling in the dirt at Werribee on Monday … or perhaps the Irish stayer was trying to find a hole to crawl into at the memory of his famous failure.

Vauban was the $5.50 favourite at Flemington. The big fella carried the hard-earned of a large chunk of Australians. He went down without a whimper, finishing a distant 14th behind Without A Fight, but he’s returned for another shot at the first Tuesday in November.

The France-born, Ireland-trained gelding spent a little time upside down – the position Australian racing presently finds itself in.

The tummy-tickling question is this. Is the Melbourne Cup still Australia’s biggest horse race? It’s part of the national fabric. From Phar Lap to Bart Cummings to Makybe Diva to Damien Oliver to Michelle and Stevie Payne, the Cup has built unrivalled tradition since Archer trundled home in 1861.

But the $20m The Everest in Sydney, the richest turf race in the world, has hit the scene like disco moving in on rock ‘n’ roll in the 1970s.

In excess of 45,000 spectators will boogie on over to Royal Randwick for the eighth running of the event on Saturday. Which race is bigger? Throw a blanket over them. Photo finish.

Peak racing season has arrived, which is why elite internationals such as Vauban are arriving at Werribee’s quarantine station. Travelling foreman David Casey said Vauban was having a tougher lead-up to the Cup after last year’s disaster. Vauban is the Cup’s $9 second favourite behind Jan Brueghel – the four-year-old Irish stallion, not the 17th-century Flemish painter.

“With Vauban, we went a bit of a different route this year,” Casey said. “He had to qualify last year … once we got him qualified, we just wanted to make sure we’d get him here. It ended up being a long time between runs. We’ve run him more often this year and hopefully sent him down here a lot fitter. It obviously didn’t work last year so we thought we’d try something different this year.”