KEY POINTS:
Jamie Osborne is a horse trainer in the English mould.
Articulate, well spoken, the sort of young man who might have stepped from the pages of Horse and Hound.
He has gentrified clients, a nodding acquaintance of minor royals and you guess his conversation isn't usually littered with heartfelt expletives.
But Osborne is trying to win the Melbourne Cup, and that can test the decorum of a saint.
When Osborne, who is also an ex-jump jockey, saddles up his big, grey stallion Geordieland in Tuesday's race it will be his final act in an adventure that has tested the trainer's nerve more severely than the steeplechase fences he confronted from the saddle.
Osborne's Melbourne Cup quest began last April during lunch with an owner who wanted to move on from the modestly-priced yearlings he'd been buying and get a horse that could have a crack at something better - like a Melbourne Cup.
"I told him the only way to do that is to buy a ready made horse," Osborne said.
"He said 'how much', I said 'a lot'.
"Then he said: 'The one thing I'd love to do is have a runner in the Melbourne Cup'."
Osborne advised him he was shooting rather higher than his budget might allow.
But the owner insisted and the trainer began the search for a horse to bring to Australia.
"I basically scoured Europe. I started from Hurricane Run and worked down," he said.
"When you took out the ones that wouldn't stay, the ones that couldn't be bought, the ones that were going to be too expensive, this one stuck out."
Osborne found Geordieland in France and after giving him a test ride, he decided he was the right type.
"He was a horse you could see improving. The trainer that he came from was tough on him," he said.
After a few offers flew back and forth across the English Channel an offer was made and accepted.
But that was where the trouble began.
On the day the money was to be transferred, Osborne's client changed his mind and no longer wanted the horse.
"By this point I've absolutely convinced myself that this horse was a great buy and he's very suitable to come and do this job," Osborne said.
"I thought 'what do I do now', it was a significant amount of money."
Faced with the choice of ringing the French owner and telling them the deal was off or asking for time to pay, Osborne chose the latter.
"Then I set about trying to chop him up," he said.
Within three days he had convinced one of his long-standing owners, Martin Myers, to buy one of Geordieland's legs, had sold another to Tony Taylor, an expat Englishman living in Bermuda.
He had also gone against one of his personal rules and bought a leg himself and had convinced the French owner to keep a leg.
Things began looking up, but not for long.
Osborne had the horse at his Lambourn stable, but the original owner refused to release its passport, meaning it couldn't race.
"It didn't matter at first, but I wanted to run in the Goodwood Cup and this Frenchman was being difficult," he said.
The only thing for it was to buy the difficult Frenchman out and get full control of the horse.
So Osborne had to again try the hard-sell.
"I punted this horse around Europe and people would look at his form and tell me I was out of my mind."
Eventually he convinced Myers to increase his share to two legs and Geordieland was free to make his debut for Osborne in the Goodwood Cup where his opposition included the champion Irish stayer Yeats.
Geordieland was underdone, but he still justified all of Osborne's confidence by finishing second to Yeats - and before the numbers went up, the trainer's phone started ringing.
"All the people I'd punted him to were on the phone before he'd even pulled up saying 'I'll have that leg'," he said.
Myers, who had shown as much faith as Osborne, and was at his side after the race, had some advice.
"Martin said 'tell them to get lost, I'm having it'."
With that, and a cosy fourth placing in one of England's most competitive handicaps at his only other start for Osborne, they were on their way to the Melbourne Cup.
Geordieland arrived in Melbourne three weeks ago and hasn't missed a beat since. The horse has worked well, eaten well and has been injury free.
And the asset that Osborne believes will be his most valuable has set him apart even from the high-flying Yeats. "Where we got lucky in buying this horse is his brain. He's very sane."
For Australian punters, however, there is a question mark.
Geordieland is to be ridden by Frankie Dettori whose Melbourne Cup efforts, while interesting, haven't endeared him locally.
Dettori rode Geordieland when he was second to Yeats at Goodwood and again when fourth in the Ebor at York.
And both he and Osborne believe they can beat Yeats, who has also shone since coming to Melbourne.
"I wouldn't have brought him if I thought we had no chance of beating Yeats," Osborne said. "We need all the stars to collide, but we could surprise him. You'd have to say that when Yeats won the Ascot Gold Cup he looked awesome. But he's a horse, he's only a horse."
The dream may have begun somewhere else, but Osborne has adopted it with enthusiasm. "I've talked myself into this horse," he said.
By Tuesday night he might also have talked himself into a Melbourne Cup.
New Zealand TAB fixed-odds markets.-
Melbourne Cup, A$5 million, opn hcp, 3200m (run at Flemington on Tuesday):
$5 Tawqeet; $5.50 Yeats; $7.50 Pop Rock; $11 Delta Blues; $13 Zipping; $14 Our Smoking Joe; $15 Dizelle, Railings, Activation; $17 Mandela, On A Jeune, Geordieland; $20 Kerry O'Reilly; $25 Art Success; $30 Glistening, Headturner, Vanquished; $35 Sphenophyta; $40 Grand Zulu, Soulacroix, Wunderwood, Zabeat; $50 Magic Instinct, Purde, Imperial Stride; $80 Dolphin Jo, Jagger, Defining, Maybe Better; $100 Demerger, Dracs Back, Mahtoum, Ice Chariot, Loanhead, Accumulate, Pantani; $150 Aznavour, Roanoke, Land 'n Stars; $200 Sarrera, Cefalu, Irazu, Genebel; $300 Lord Erin, On The Up, Force Nine, Short Pause, Special Scene, Count Ricardo; $400 Ista Kareem.
- AAP
