Melbourne Cup 2022: Gold Trip thunders home to win Australia’s ‘race that stops the nation’
Gold Trip #GoldTrip
Gold Trip, a 20-1 shot trained in partnership by Ciaron Maher and British-born David Eustace who went to Australia and never came back, won the Lexus Melbourne Cup at Flemington in Australia in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
The training partnership, which had five of the 22 runners in the race, also had the third with the fast-finishing mare High Emocean, a 40-1 shot. They were split by another big-priced runner, Emissary, a 25-1 shot.
James Ferguson’s Deauville Legend, the 17-5 favourite and one of two British runners in this year’s race, finished a creditable fourth having looked the winner turning in but ultimately failed to quite see out the two-mile trip having raced a little keenly. The other British runner, Without A Fight, was caught a bit wide from his draw early and was prominent early but faded to finish 13th of the 22 runners.
Gold Trip, the top weight who was trained in France until a year ago and finished fourth to Sottsass in the 2020 Prix de L’Arc de Triomphe, demonstrated his wellbeing in Australia when finishing second to Highclere’s Durston in the Caulfield Cup in mid-October. Durston was not allowed to run in the Cup by the vets after a scan.
The training partnership was winning the Cup for the first time as was jockey Mark Zahra. A year ago he might have ridden the winner Verry Elleegant but was banned at the time.
Eustace, 31, who was brought up in Newmarket where his father James trained and his brother Harry now trains, moved to Australia to further his education with Peter Moody and Peter Snowden but ended up joining Maher, a former jump jockey, who invited him to become a partner in the business a few years ago.
“I can’t believe it,” said Eustace. “I’m a bit overcome. To do it with Ciaron, I’m so grateful to be training with him, it’s an honour to be doing that. We’ve a great team to get five here and we were gutted when he got beat in the Caulfield Cup.
“Having been brought up in Newmarket the Melbourne Cup came to me later in life but since I’ve been here you want to contest these races and win them.”
His mother and father stayed up all night while his brother Harry, who now holds the licence in Newmarket, got up just for the race on Sky Racing. “It’s massive, very exciting,” said Harry. “It was hard keeping track of five of them but Gold Trip was always the most favoured of them so I had an eye on him all the way. He was the best horse in the race.”
Zahra, 40, an established and popular senior jockey on the Victoria racing circuit, missed the race last year while serving a three-month ban for Covid regulation breaches.
“In the last 50 yards I was thinking I’m going to win this but it went on forever,” he said. “I thought I was a bit far back but the plan was not to be too close and as they jammed up I was travelling so good. With this horse when you go, you go.
“I felt terrible last year. I was drinking my way out of it. My wife was telling me not to drink so much but I asked what I was supposed to do? Twelve months on, here we are.”
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