Racing: Cup victory opened doors for Letts

Trelawney Stud owners Cherry and Brent Taylor flank Melbourne Cup winner John Letts. Photo / Supplied

When South Australian jockey John Letts won the 1972 Melbourne Cup on Tasmanian Piping Lane it was pretty much a case of John Who?

By the time he won his second Cup in 1980 on the Robert Sangster-owned Beldale Ball, everyone knew him as Lettsy.

The name has stuck and even today as he acts as the official mounted Channel 7 interviewer of winning Melbourne Cup jockeys out on the famous Flemington track on his beloved Banjo, it's Lettsy.

Yesterday at Cambridge's Trelawney Stud, the former top rider from Adelaide proved he was one of the great raconteurs, entertaining guests celebrating the official visit by the 2010 Emirates Melbourne Cup, with representatives from Racing Victoria and the Victoria Racing Club.

The Melbourne Cup is steeped in history so remarkable in excitement, controversy, bitter disappointment and ecstasy that its record through its 149-year reign as one of the world's great races reads like fiction.

But it's fact. The great race is not only one of the world's biggest outdoor parties, it is part of Australian heritage.

Letts told the fabulous tale of how he should have been, but wasn't, on Rain Lover when he won the Melbourne Cup in 1968 and again the following year.

Letts' lifetime dream had been simply to have a ride in the Cup. Winning it was something he didn't even allow himself to think about.

Eight days before the 1973 Cup, he got a call to ride Piping Lane. He had still never been out of his native South Australia and wondered which one of his mates had been drinking enough to make the dodgy call.

Finally, he works out the call is for real and gets himself to Melbourne.

Against the odds, he finds Flemington, but when he is ready to get on Piping Lane in the birdcage there is no sign of trainer George Hanlon, who had four horses in the race, or the owner.

He'd never before seen Flemington, Piping Lane, George Hanlon or the owner.

When he asked the young strapper whether he was meant to ride Piping Lane forward or back, she replied: "I don't know, but you'd better ride him properly."

Letts decided to follow champion jockey Roy Higgins on the current champ Gunsynd, but the grey missed away and he was on his own.

To condense, Letts found himself running second with 120m to go just behind the New Zealand mare Magnifique.

"I remember saying 'fall over you bitch' and she did."

Legends are made with Melbourne Cup wins and even if John Letts hadn't followed up with Beldale Ball, he would have forever been in the book of legends.

"You know, I liken it to a jockey sitting in a room of, say, 10 doors, and when you win feature races maybe one door opens.

"You win a Melbourne Cup, they all open."

Which is a beautiful backdrop to the A$6 million running of the Emirates Melbourne Cup on November 2.

Sheila Laxon was back in the town she made her home after arriving from England before moving on to Australia after winning the 2001 Melbourne Cup with Ethereal.

She told her story of becoming the first woman to officially win the Cup, even though in literal terms she was the second.

In 1938, another New Zealander, Granny McDonald, trained Catalogue to win the Melbourne Cup, but in those days women could not be licensed to train in Victoria and Catalogue appeared in Australia under the name of McDonald's husband, top jumps jockey Alan McDonald. It took nothing away from the thrill the English horsewoman felt in winning the Cup she thought rain on the day might scuttle.

Trelawney was the place to hold yesterday's function - it has been the birthplace of seven Melbourne Cup winners: Hiraji in 1947, Foxami 1949, Macdougal 1959, Hi Jinx 1960, Polo Prince 1964, Galilee 1966 and Silver Knight in 1971.

Polo Prince's jockey Ron Taylor told yesterday's gathering of his memories of 1964.

Trelawney hosts Brent and Cherry Taylor pledged their dedication to make it eight Melbourne Cups.