Gold Trip claims the 2022 Melbourne Cup

AN old-fashioned approach has given a new-age racing partnership its finest moment with top-weight Gold Trip winning the Melbourne Cup.

In a triumph for spring perseverance, Gold Trip defeated Emissary and stablemate High Emocean in Australia’s greatest race.

Gold Trip made light of his 57.5-kilogram under jockey Mark Zahra, revelling in the soft ground to provide Ballarat co-trainers Ciaron Maher and David Eustace with a Melbourne Cup breakthrough.

Maher and Eustace are renowned for employing a sports science slant to their training methods, using data and technology to fine-tune a team of thoroughbreds that is spread across multiple Victorian stables, and a satellite operation in Sydney.

The training partnership had five runners in the race.

“They’re the best trainers of stayers,” Zahra said.

“That’s one thing I had confidence in, their training. Because I was quite vocal, I didn’t think he’d get the distance.”

In the end, Gold Trip’s victory was built more on home-straight courage than any analytics. Of all the Melbourne Cup runners, none has been as busy during the spring as Gold Trip.

It is rare for the modern-day thoroughbred to contest the Caulfield Cup, Cox Plate and Melbourne Cup in one campaign.

But in a throwback to another era, Gold Trip went agonisingly close to winning the Caulfield Cup before taking his place against the elite in the Cox Plate and finishing unplaced.

“This horse is quite dicey and he’s done a fantastic job. And to run in three of the big ones and have him present in the Cup like that was fantastic,” Maher said.

Gold Trip delivered for only the second win of his career and his first in Australia.

-WARWICK BARR