Why limiting foreign fleet would only harm our Cup hopes

If the Melbourne Cup is being overrun with internationals then how many is too many? Should we set a limit? The answer is no.

There are 11 international starters in today’s Melbourne Cup. Never have more foreign credentialed horses contested the handicap that is said to stop but mostly pauses a fair piece of the nation. Twice before has the race attracted 11 so we cannot quite yet say these foreign bodies are a dime a dozen.

But the global aspirants are building their numbers and honing their strategies. They are now as much a part of the Melbourne Cup theatre as sweeps, sore feet and thunderous heads the following day.

All of which underlines the feat of the Lloyd Williams stable to have six of the 23 runners. One of the half-dozen is Almandin, defending his title won by a wobbling whisker last year from Heartbreak City. Now eight, he will carry 56.5kg, start from barrier 14 and Frankie Dettori is the jockey, which all but guarantees a rollicking ride. Williams has won the Cup five times before. Win the race again today and he will have won twice as many cups as hat-trick mare Makybe Diva. That is some boast.

When Vintage Crop was the first international winner in 1993 Australia’s mystical trainer Bart Cummings warned that these foreigners would squeeze the locals out of the contest for their own traditional and revered race and its saddlebag of money. Since then the Cup has been won by five international horses. Media Puzzle (like Vintage Crop trained by Irishman Dermot Weld who was as happy go lucky as a gravedigger) won in 2002; Delta Blues from Japan four years later; French-trained Americain and Dunaden won back-to-back Cups in 2010-11, and in 2014 Protectionist won it for Germany.

Bart Cummings, who died two years ago, trained 12 Cup winners, a feat that requires a stronger word than record. His droll humour would find a one-liner to capture the irony of his grandson, James, now training the world famous Godolphin team in Australia. A win with Hartnell, third last year, would give Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum his first Cup in more than 15 years of trying.

If the Melbourne Cup is being overrun with international runners then how many is too many? Should we set a limit? And what would it be? In that case you could also ask how many starters should one owner or trainer have? Is the six from the Williams team too many? What would be an appropriate limit for a man who buys and owns for one reason only — to win the Cup.

The Cup’s main international recruiter is Leigh Jordan who was initially charged to attract foreign entries to a handicap race that had lost its aura. Australian and New Zealand breeders were giving us sloggers and plodders. Tough fighters who loved a battle over distance so long as the combat was conducted at a waddle.

The Australian’s breeding expert Tony Arrold wrote yesterday: “Racing Victoria and host club the Victoria Racing Club will be inclined to feel all warm and fuzzy that Melbourne will have world racing attention tomorrow — and hats off to what has been a Group I promotion to internationalise the event. But the facts are that the race that stops a nation brings international shame to the Australian thoroughbred breeding industry.” Arrold then pointed out that only three of 37 Australian-bred horses from an original 140 entries made it into the 23 of today’s Cup. It is one thing to dress up the Cup as an international race but it must have tangible benefits for the local industry. Obviously Arrold is sceptical.

The chief executive of Racing Victoria is Giles Thompson. He knows he must both flirt with foreign entries but stay true to the locals. It is a fine balance.

Last week he told The Australian the balance at the moment was workable, acknowledging that too many “unknown” horses might not enthuse punters to back their hunches.

He told the paper’s racing expert, Brendan Cormick: “There is a balance. You don’t want the whole Cup to be purely international. You want local interest,” Thompson said.

“The idea is the internationals come down to take on the locals on their own patch. I don’t know what the right number is and I suspect it depends on the strength of the internationals what the right number is.

“To have it (the Cup) proudly on your mantelpiece, as an Australian, I suspect you want to have beaten a few of these internationals.”

Thompson appears up for the challenge set by Arrold: “It is really important for us to have strong staying talent in the state and we’ll continue to strive to make sure that we do. Prizemoney is the key one: all Saturday metro races carry $120,000 this year,” the chief executive said. “And also the challenge is to work out how do we get the program set to make it an easier and more viable pathway for stayers as well.

“So every angle of the racing operations and the program is to be reviewed. There is no silver bullet on this. It’s about making sure the most important race of the year, the Melbourne Cup, isn’t just on its own. It is the grand final of racing for stayers.”

Yet the most important issue is not addressed. That is Australian racing would encourage mediocrity by limiting the number of international horses in our Cup. Keeping good horses out of the Cup to squeeze in Arrold’s donkeys only hurts the race and the industry. If you want to tout the Cup as the toughest test over 3200m in the world then the best, both willing and able, must compete.

Think of the lot of tennis in the late 1980s. Only one or two locals could hit the ball over the net and only mediocre overseas players came to play the Australian Open on the grass of Kooyong.

A swap to the new Melbourne Park with its hard surface has slowly drawn the very best players back to win what is once again a legitimate grand slam tournament. While the Australian talent has been slow to develop after all but collapsing because of complacency and incompetence we finish 2017 with a male and female player in the world’s top 20. And Pat Rafter, Lleyton Hewitt and Sam Stosur have won grand slam events.

Had we not decided to take the world head-on, the likes of the Williams sisters, Graf, Navratilova, Federer, Nadal, Murray and Djokovic would have been irregular visitors and the game itself moribund.