Maldivian to win Caulfield Cup

AS a child he lived next door to Bart Cummings, but it took a Victorian horse called Red Hope to make Mark Kavanagh realise he had a similar gift for training.

Great things were brewing at Glenelg back in the mid 1960s.

Bart Cummings had three stables at the seaside Adelaide suburb and none in the east.

Cummings, not yet the Cups King, launched his spectacular Sydney and Melbourne raids from Glenelg.

Those majestic bygone era champions, horses your grandfather and Roy Higgins go misty-eyed over, Galilee, Comic Court and Light Fingers, were then part of the Cummings armoury.

For those of us who drive down Melbourne's Nepean Highway and wonder about the long-gone Mentone racetrack (now a duck pond and an estate), Glenelg in the '60s holds similar wonder.

It's where the Cummings legend hit stride.

They were great days, full of hope and excitement, especially for the little dark-haired kid who lived next door in the simple brick house, with his mum, dad and brother.

His mum used to cook breakfast for the Cummings staff; skinny, eager youths with Brylcreamed hair.

Guy Walter, Leon Corstens, David Edwards and John Wheeler would all sit politely around the breakfast table.

Cummings' stables were halfway between the beach and Morphettville racecourse. Cummings would meet the horses near the jetty, in the row boat.

"I'd row the boat, get out beyond the breakers, watch them work, tow them along, watch their actions under the water," Cummings recalls.

He remembers one Christmas when a hurricane belted through and beached a navy frigate for three months.

Comic Court would trot under its bow every morning.

Cummings remembers porpoises skipping around the boat, horses treading on sting ray spurs, and wide-open spaces now chockers with townhouses.

He vaguely recalls the kid from next door and his mum, the stable cook.

"There were a few young kids at the time but I know the one you're talking about; black hair, got a bit heavy, his mum used to cook for us, I think," Cummings said.

Mark Kavanagh, now surrounded by his own heavy horse armoury, also remembers those Glenelg days, the ones that whetted his appetite.

"You're talking about a kid that was about 12. It was a pretty big deal, those great horses," said Kavanagh, his black hair now speckled with grey.

"Bart used to pack up and head to the spring carnival with these superstars and I lived next door to them. We were pretty poor but it was a good life for a kid."

Kavanagh said he and Cummings kept separate hours.

"I hardly ever saw him. He'd spend a lot of time there in the mornings, but I'd turn up after school and ride the pony," he said.

Walter, Edwards, Wheeler, Corstens and many other hard-working kids employed by Cummings and fed by Kavanagh's mother would go on to forge great careers of their own.

In the 40 or so years since glorious Glenelg, that dark-haired kid learned a lot about life and racing. He knew what it was like to be poor and vowed he and his family would never starve. He would pull every trick in the book, knock a few noses out of joint, to make sure of it.

He learned how to train great horses by cutting his teeth on terrible ones.

Now that kid is going great guns.

This has been Mark Kavanagh's spring.

With Sydney wiped out and most of the Europeans, and all of the Asians, scared off by equine influenza, this carnival had shaped as the most dull and meaningless in memory.

How many times can you reshuffle the same cast, the same horses, trainers and results, and pretend it's not a carousel?

However Kavanagh's team of all-stars, getting stronger each week and threatening to take the spring majors by storm, has created a real buzz.

Despite the number-crunching powers of EI, the fact remains there is no more competitive training centre in the world than Melbourne.

Big-time trainers are banging on about poor returns and unreasonable overheads.

Yet in waltzes this flashily dressed South Australian with a small, lethal team, a black Mercedes, a double-storey penthouse apartment and a salesman's grin.

He's already stolen three Group 1 races -- the Turnbull and Yalumba Stakes, and Toorak Handicap -- and has today's $2.5 million Caulfield Cup at his mercy with the marauding Maldivian.

Next week he could have three runners in the $3 million Cox Plate -- Maldivian, Devil Moon and Divine Madonna.

So who is this ex-country jumps jockey with the slightly zany personality who has taken the spring carnival by storm?

Young Kavanagh eventually out-grew the Cummings stable pony and graduated to proper trackwork, where he had a habit of falling off.

He worked briefly in a menswear store in downtown Adelaide (which might explain his penchant for pin-striped suits and bright ties) before returning to horses.

Too big to ride on the flat, Kavanagh gravitated to jumps racing, and its hub was Victoria's Western District and the border area of South Australia. Moving to Mt Gambier, he rode over the jumps for 12 years and had 96 winners. He represented Australia three times internationally, won a South Australian Grand National and a Von Doussa Steeplechase, but says he was "only average".

Kavanagh says he's a competitive type and hated being a mere battler. He also hated being a poor provider for his wife and two young sons.

He remembers the empty feeling in his gut one day when his kids got out of the bath shivering, because the family had no proper heating.

Struggling and seeing others struggle even more instilled in Kavanagh a desire to never allow the sport to gobble him up, to beat him.

"There were too many guys at Mt Gambier eating dates off the calendar," he said.

"They were starving, their kids had holes in their shirts, but they were trainers and they were waiting for the good horse to come along. I didn't want that. I always provided well for my wife and kids."

In 1991, when he decided to take up training, Kavanagh pledged he would make a fist of it, no matter what. "If I bit off more than I could chew, I'd chew harder," he said.

Jumps riding taught Kavanagh some crucial horse skills that laid foundations for his next chapter.

"You've got to learn how to read a horse," he said. "Once you learn how to read a horse, and what they really need, you're on your way.

"I had comparisons ---a lot of country and city trainers I used to ride for. I mean there were a lot of things I learned what not to do as a trainer."

Kavanagh believes in image and marketing. He sells himself. If not for being a bit of a song and dance man, full of bravado, he may not have been granted his Flemington stables this January.

When he first set up his training farm near the Mt Gambier racecourse, Kavanagh did it with panache not often seen in the country.

"You set up the best stable and try and attract the best quality Mt Gambier owners, the best bred horses -- present yourself the best, present your wife the best, get the best," he said.

It paid off. Within a couple of years Kavanagh had lured the town's biggest owners. He started working with increasingly better stock, thinking with increasing grandeur.

One day he was offered a talented but stale, narky Victorian horse called Red Hope, who was in need of some paddock training.

"I won lots of good city races with Red Hope and it whetted my appetite. You get that sort of horse, win that sort of money, you think "What the f--- am I doing f---ing around at Penola for?

"I was leading trainer there the first two years and I kept looking at the balance sheet. That horse gave me the confidence to realise, 'Hello, I can go bigger'."

Next, Kavanagh eyed off his old stomping ground. Bart, the open space and the beached frigates had long gone.

He borrowed heavily and purchased Russell Cameron's old stables at Morphettville. He spent $1.2 million turning the run-down stable into a showpiece.

"As soon as it was finished I paid about $700,000 for a heap of yearlings and threw a huge party; a jazz band, dancing girls, the lot. We sold all the horses at the party," he said.

Adelaide is a conservative town. Trainers don't lure clients with dancing girls. Kavanagh was not the most popular man in town.

"We brought a concept to Adelaide that no one else had done and the other trainers didn't like it. They saw I was drawing a lot of business and there wasn't a lot of business in Adelaide to be had," he said.

Kavanagh was on a roll. It took only three years before he realised Adelaide had become his new Mt Gambier. He looked east.

"I decided to move to Melbourne 18 months ago. When I applied for Flemington stables they said the waiting list was a mile long. I would keep hearing that I had no hope, that it wasn't happening," he said.

"I sat down with (track manager) Terry Watson and told him I don't just want a handful of stables, I want the whole shooting match.

"I knew a few Adelaide trainers had had a crack and gone home but I assured him I was the real deal.

"I had to come across as gregarious. I did a little bit of lobbying, explained I had a few horses in my sky rocket that were going somewhere, that I was worthy of it."

Kavanagh was granted 26 boxes and spared no expense. Good horses need good houses, successful trainers must look the part.

"You don't want a Caulfield Cup favourite in a box tied up with string. It's something I picked up along the way," he said.

Kavanagh is not silly enough to believe this magic carpet ride will continue. But he's been poor once, he knows what it's like. He's not going back. He has planned for this lucky moment for 20 years.

"I'm pretty happy, pretty thankful. I sometimes sit up at night and think about how great things are," he said.

"It could have tipped over, I could be working behind a bar. But I've got an eye for detail and I like nice things. I like my family to have nice things. I'm not going backwards now."