A Gilded Age Trivia Quiz

Answer:

Cummings worked in Adelaide as a strapper for his father's stable, obtained his trainer's license in 1953 and trained his first "Group 1" winner in 1958. That was a horse named Stormy Passage who'd won the SAJC Derby. In his 62 year career as a trainer, Cummings trained horses that would win for him 268 Group 1 races.

However, it was at the Flemington Racecourse on the first Tuesday in November, and the running of the Melbourne Cup, where Bart became a legend of the sport. The Melbourne Cup is a grueling event that is run over 3,200 metres (two miles) and for a horse to even qualify for the event is a testament, not just to its ability, but also that of its trainer. As stated in the introduction, Cummings has won this event twelve times and, remarkably, he's quinellaed (placed first and second) in it on five occasions. To put that into some sort of perspective, as at the completion of the 2024 race, which represented the 164th running of the event, the next best effort is five wins. That was achieved by Etienne de Mestre between 1861 and 1878, and Lee Freedman, between 1989 and 2005. Compared to these great trainers, who are also Hall of Fame inductees, Cummings stands as a giant of the Cup.

Whilst he has won the race twelve times, he'd only used eleven horses. This is due to Think Big winning the event twice, in 1974 and 1975. The five times he produced the quinella in the race were:
- 1965 Light Fingers (winner), Ziema (second)
- 1966 Galilee (winner), Light Fingers (second)
- 1974 Think Big (winner), Leilani (second)
- 1975 Think Big (winner), Holiday Wagon (second)
- 1991 Let's Elope (winner), Shiva's Revenge (second)

Bart Cummings' methodology in generating Melbourne Cup winners was a simple one; buy an imposing yearling that had a high class pedigree when it came to racing at distances of 2,000 metres or more. With a bit of luck the horse would be handsome to look at, though, this didn't matter to the man labelled the "Cups King". If the earlier mentioned qualities were there, it would not be uncommon for Bart to overlook deficiencies of conformation that the horse may have had. One of the great stories of Bart's career occurred at the Trentham Yearling Sales in 1964. Bart had paid out 3,500 guineas for a colt that was out of the British stallion Alcimedes, with the dam being the New Zealand mare Galston. The key things for Cummings were the athleticism that the horse displayed and the fact that Galston's half-sister, Sometime, had won the 1963 Caulfield Cup. Cummings was prepared to overlook the fact that the horse was, basically, pigeon-toed. Bart's' main rival, and another Australian horse training legend, Tommy Smith, laughed at his purchase, remarking that he'd bought "a cripple". That horse would be christened Galilee and, two years later, would become the first horse in history to win the Melbourne, Sydney and Caulfield Cups in the same season. As of the time of writing, he still remains the only horse to have achieved this.

Cummings, for many years, would declare that Galilee was the best horse he'd ever trained and comparisons, by him, with other horses did not arrive until Saintly, another of his Melbourne Cup winners, and one that Cummings had bred himself.

Cummings was inducted into the Australian Sporting Hall of Fame in 1991 and was elevated to Legend status in 2008.