There are many measures of a person's influence in their chosen career, especially when that career is as a horse trainer. There is the amount of winners trained, the amount of trophies gained and the amount of stallions made to name just three.
But the most significant is the same standard that a farmer applies to the management of his or her land. Did I leave it in a better place than I found it?
The Australian thoroughbred industry has been gifted with several enormously influential trainers over the past 70 years. TJ Smith, Colin Hayes and Bart Cummings were born within 11 years of each other and represented a golden era of horsemen who became statesmen of the industry. Indeed if there was a Mt Rushmore of Australian racing, these three men would be first to have their images cast in stone.
"TJ Smith, Colin Hayes and Bart Cummings... represented a golden era of horsemen who became statesmen of the industry." - Bren O'Brien
Either of that trio would be a deserved subject of an article discussing the most influential trainer. Smith and Hayes were not only outstanding trainers but created dynasties which are still enormously influential to this day through Smith's daughter Gai Waterhouse and Hayes' broader family, headlined by current Lindsay Park head trainer David Hayes.
But when it comes to measuring the wider influence of a trainer, not just on the industry, but on the broader public consciousness about thoroughbred racing, it’s hard to go past James Bartholomew Cummings.
Bart Cummings (left)
Not only was Cummings a champion trainer, he became an icon upon which the wider public could anchor their understanding of the sport for 50 years. His demeanour, both charismatic and elusive, intelligent, yet sometimes blunt, funny but honest, mirrored a post-War era where Australia moved culturally out of the overt influence of Britain. Everything about Bart was quintessentially Australian and his dominance of Australia's most iconic race made him a hero to every battling punter.
"Everything about Bart was quintessentially Australian and his dominance of Australia's most iconic race made him a hero." - Bren O'Brien
No trainer in Australian racing history has had the same relationship with a race as Cummings did with the Melbourne Cup. The trainer and the great race fed off each other. The more successful Cummings' grew with each Melbourne Cup win, the more successful the race would be in the mind of the public. Across 43 years, he won the race 12 times and on five occasions filled the quinella.
The nature of the race and the trainer seemed perfectly matched. The Cup is not a race easily won. It requires a level of planning, cunning if you will, to get the right horse to the race with the right weight at the right time. Every year, Cummings would pit his wits against those of the handicapper and with an expert eye, an innate understanding of what it takes to make a stayer and a dash of luck, it would be a battle he would often win on the first Tuesday in November.
And that's why the public came to hold him in such high regard. Cummings held those characteristics most admired by that generation of Australians. He was smart, shrewd, funny and best of all, he was a winner.
One race, one man
The level of public engagement with the Melbourne Cup is arguably like nothing else racing has in the world. The nation has stopped on the first Tuesday in November for over 150 years and for a significant chunk of that time, the wider public associated one name with that moment.
As a measure of his broader influence, in 1974, he was awarded the ABC Sportsman Of The Year, while in 1982, he was made a member of the Order Of Australia. He also appeared on stamps and he was named on a list of the top 100 National Living Treasures.
He was of course so much more than just a trainer of Melbourne Cup winners. He trained the winners of 33 Derbys, 24 Oaks, seven Caulfield Cups, five Cox Plates, 13 Australian Cups, 11 Mackinnon S., eight Newmarket Handicaps and four Golden Slippers. He trained champion racehorses by the dozen.
Hallowed Crown trained in partnership with his grandson James was Bart's final Group 1 winner
All in all, he trained 268 Group 1 winners, starting out with Stormy Passage (Sun Storm {GB}) in the 1958 South Australian Derby and ending with Hallowed Crown's (Street Sense {USA}) win in the 2015 Randwick Guineas in partnership with his grandson James.
The family legacy
That moment in time, where he and James trained in partnership, may well be viewed as the most significant intergenerational dynastic handover in Australian racing history. The ultimate master was handing over his skills to the heir apparent, who now himself looms as one of the most influential figures in the Australian industry.
As head trainer of global giant Godolphin in Australia, James Cummings is making a huge impact having already notched over 100 stakes winners in the role in just two and a half years. With all the knowledge and skill gained from working with his grandfather and the support and capital of one of the world's best resourced equine organisations, it is frightening to think what he may be able to achieve. And every milestone will only enhance the legacy and influence of his grandfather.
Racing... in many ways, it is still a family business
Racing may have become a multi-million dollar industry, but in many ways, it is still a family business. Bart himself learned the caper from his own father back in his youth in Glenelg, a suburb of Adelaide.
His introspective character, often masked by his quick wit, was said to be built from an early near-death experience when he almost drowned at 11 years of age. While the straw and chaff impacted on his asthma, he turned to stable life after brief dalliances as a grape-picker and working in a menswear store.
Cummings' relationship with the Melbourne Cup began in 1950, when he strapped the winner Comic Court (Powerscourt) for his father Jim. Having gained his own trainer's licence in 1953, he had his first runner in the great race in 1958 when Asian Court, appropriately a son of Comic Court, ran 12th.
Adversity builds character
The Cummings story is certainly not without both adversity and controversy. In 1961, he was hit with a 12-month disqualification by South Australian racing officials over the incredible reversal of form of Cilldara in a race at Morphettville. Cummings had applied blinkers to the horse just weeks after they had been cleared as legal for trainers to use and the horse won having been backed from 33-1 to 7-2. The stewards threw the book at him.
Bart Cummings when So You Think (NZ) won the Cox Plate
His father Jim came out of retirement to fill his shoes, while Bart travelled to New Zealand to source the filly which would give him his first Melbourne Cup in 1965, Light Fingers (NZ) (Le Filou {Fr}). New Zealand became a rich mine for future staying stars and his 1966 Melbourne Cup winner Galilee (NZ) (Archimedes {GB}) and 1967 Cup winner Red Handed (NZ) (Le Filou {Fr}) were also both purchased across the Tasman.
Cummings' greatest on-track partnership
Think Big (NZ) (Sobig {NZ}) was another NZ-bred stayer and won back-to-back Cups in 1974 and 1975 but was most significant for Cummings as the foundation of his most enduring friendship with an owner, Dato Tan Chin Nam.
The Malaysian businessman and chess aficionado and the Australian horse trainer made an interesting duo and their relationship 'ranged from rocky to radiant' according to Dato.
But they would celebrate victory in Australia's greatest race together on four separate occasions, with Saintly (Sky Chase {NZ}) in 1996 and then Viewed (Scenic {Ire}) in 2008 adding to Think Big's back-to-back wins.
Saintly
Most significantly for Cummings, when he faced the likelihood of bankruptcy after the collapse of his Cups King syndicate in 1988, it was Dato Tan Chin Nam who helped him out of trouble by buying the family's Princes Farm from him.
Cummings, who at that point had won six Melbourne Cups, including the successes of Gold And Black (NZ) (In The Purple {Fr}) in 1977 and Hyperno (NZ) (Rangong {GB}) in 1979, got back to doing what he knew best. He won the 1990 Cup with Kingston Rule (USA) (Secretariat {USA}) for the Haines family and then the 1991 Caulfield and Melbourne Cups with the great mare Let’s Elope (NZ) (Nassipour {USA}).
Saintly completed the G1 Cox Plate and Melbourne Cup double in 1996, something done by just four other horses in history and then in 1999, Cummings masterminded perhaps his greatest underdog success story.
Rogan Josh (Old Spice) was a consistent 7-year-old stayer owned by Darwin schoolteacher Wendy Green. She approached Cummings to pilot Rogan Josh's Melbourne Cup campaign. Bart had him spot on for Flemington, engineering an upset win the G1 Mackinnon S. and then three days later backing up to see off Godolphin's Central Park (Ire) (In The Wings {GB}) in the great race.
Cummings' 12th win came a week short of his 81st birthday, and he and Dato Tan Chin Nam made quite the sight celebrating Viewed's win 33 years after they first shared the success of Think Big.
Bart the influential
While Cummings' successes extended far and wide, it was those Tuesdays in November that made him a national icon. He inspired countless people to become involved with racing through those victories.
His own family legacy continued initially through his son Anthony, a winner of 20 Group 1 races in his own right, a record he continues to build on as well as Anthony's sons, the aforementioned James, and Edward.
Edward, Anthony, and James Cummings (left to right)
The race named in his honour, run on Turnbull S. Day in early October, is now a ballot-free qualifier for the race he made his own, while there is a statue of Bart at Flemington, firming up his legacy.
The Bart Cummings Medal is awarded by Racing NSW each year for the most outstanding performer among trainers and jockeys.
When Cummings passed away in late August 2015, he was afforded a state funeral. Father Adrian Meaney noted at that service.
"Bart had a whimsical sense of humour and he never seemed to take himself too seriously." - Father Adrian Meaney
"Bart had a whimsical sense of humour and he never seemed to take himself too seriously. His associates recognised that he was able to honestly face complex issues with patience. He possessed an innate ability to understand horses as well as those immediately associated with horses. Fortunately, his legacy is in safe hands as members of his family, with his blessing, have already stepped into his shoes."
In that regard and in so many others, his influence is almost immeasurable. The industry he found as an asthmatic teenager in Adelaide and the one he left as the Cups King are barely recognisable from one another and Cummings played a significantly role in that. It was a world immensely improved by his custodianship.
