We came, we saw, we left with our tails between our legs - but I've never seen anything quite like it

In this article first published earlier this month exclusively for Racing Post Members' Club subscribers, top amateur jockey and assistant trainer at Closutton Patrick Mullins recounts his experience at the Melbourne Cup for Vauban's ultimately unsuccessful venture down under. This has now been made free to read for users of the Racing Post app as our Sunday Read.

Members' Club Ultimate subscribers have access to fantastic features like this and daily insight from our award-winning team of journalists, writers and tipsters.

Racing Post Members' Club is the ultimate racing subscription and you can subscribe with 50% off your first three months with code WELCOME2023. 

By subscribing, you'll unlock exclusive daily emails, premium tips, unlimited access to the digital newspaper and much more. Renews at full price and terms apply.

“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore”
Dorothy, The Wizard of Oz

Saturday

The plane lands with a thump. I’ve just finished the first two Lord of the Rings films, leaving the last one for the return journey. David Mullins, Kieran Stokes and I are downstairs; Paul Byrne is upstairs. It’s a recurring life theme.

We meet up with Willie collecting our baggage, and head out to Werribee to watch Vauban and Absurde do their final piece of fast work. Absurde goes very well, and we think to ourselves that he’s come on for the work in Flemington. But with hindsight, maybe we read that backwards.

It’s Derby day and over 70,000 people are attending and the women are all in black or white.

We arrive halfway through the races and wait around for the barrier draw which is held after the last race. If you draw one of the wider ones, it’s goodnight and good luck there and then essentially. Vauban draws three and Absurde eight. Collective sighs of relief all round.

I meet up with Jack Bruton and Mick McLoughlin, who I went to school with and who are both living in Sydney, and Tom Durcan, who is down purely because he has Vauban backed at 50-1 ante-post. They manage to “borrow” the four-foot-high Vauban sign used for the barrier draw and we bring it out into the city with us. Amazingly, we get to skip a very long queue in the Emerson Nightclub on Chapel Street as the bouncer has backed Vauban for the Cup. He ushers us past four very confused women at the top of the queue and even waives the entry fee.

Needless to say, we don’t return there after the Cup.

Sunday

We’re invited to the Chairman’s Lunch in a marquee by a lake in the Royal Botanic Gardens. Three of us make it but David Mullins is missing in action. Melbourne has him now.

Delta Goodrem appears and starts singing while walking through the tables. The voice of an angel and looking like a queen, she has the whole room captured in the palm of her hand. I look back to say something to Paul, but he has his head buried in his phone and hasn’t even looked up. And that’s why he’s upstairs on the plane, I suppose.

A poet comes up and recites a poem about the Cup – Paul didn’t look up for him either to be fair – before the Phantom Call rounds up proceedings, when the race commentator does a full start-to-finish commentary on the race with all this year’s runners. I ask the man across from me whether he ever gets the result correct? Never, he responds with a chuckle. Rich Ricci leaves the tent to pace outside while it’s on.

Who do you think won the Phantom Call? Yep. Make that never +1.

Monday

David has surfaced today, and we’ve picked up an invite to the Call the Card. We’re only an hour late but no-one seems to mind too much.

Basically, over 1,000 people sit down for lunch at the Crown Casino and there’s four bookmakers standing up. They run through each of the 24 horses, offering prices slightly better than normal on each horse. The place explodes when it comes to Vauban. It’s like a floor on Wall Street. Each table has a spotter and they’re all clamouring to get on. I hear 320,000 split between $4.8 and $5, 230,000 at $4.8, 200,000 at $5…

Stokes somehow manages to get on a microphone, another recurring life theme, and charms the Aussies by complimenting the occasion before saying in his best Irish accent and his shirt hanging out: “There wouldn’t be anything like this allowed back home in Ireland, all the wives and the mothers would be out the front pulling us by our ears, shouting, ‘Lads, will ye come home!” The room cracks up and Stokes has to do five more interviews.

The hype around Vauban is incredible and it dawns on me here how unlikely it is for him to win. He has a super chance certainly, but 4-1 in a 24-runner handicap on the other side of the world? You hope to win, but expect not to. But what can you do except hold on tight, enjoy the ride and hope the dream comes through?

Tuesday

It’s chaos in the Mounting Yard. They don’t let anyone into the parade ring so owners, trainers and jockeys are like Pac-Man trying to find their connections in the small area between the weigh-room and the parade ring. I manage to find Zac Purton by almost stepping on him but we don’t manage to find the Heffernans or Willie.

The jockeys finally squeeze out into the parade ring and mount their horses. Absurde looks well but Vauban isn’t as on his toes as he can be. He looks a little hairy even, which he didn’t on Saturday morning.

They are saying the track is more a “soft five” than the reported “good four”. I wipe the sweat off my forehand with the back of my hand. It’s over 30 degrees. A soft five? Right you are.

I bump into Ruby and we try to find a good vantage point as they go down to the start. After pushing, shoving and pulling ourselves to different unsuccessful locations we manage to get into the Committee Room above the weigh-room, not exactly with the correct badge but I’ve so many hanging off me the security man was probably overwhelmed.

We find Willie and the crew. There’s a rumour that Absurde has gone AWOL on his way to the start. Ruby and I rob two high chairs from the bar inside to kneel on so we can see half a big screen in between the sea of hats and heads in front of us.

We see Absurde being loaded, talked back to the start eventually it seems, and then after a millisecond of a hush, the gates crash open, 23 horses thunder forward and 85,000 people cheer the beginning of the 163rd Melbourne Cup.

As they flash by the stands, Vauban looks to have a perfect position about fifth down the rail, with Absurde slightly behind him but running a little keen.

For a second, maybe two, as the field swing round the home turn, hope swells but it’s too early to cheer and then, in the click of your fingers, the dream dies. Absurde fades to finish seventh but Vauban stutters over the line like a car when it runs out of diesel. Kaput. Nada. Zilcho. Sigh.

Without A Fight wins the 2023 Melbourne CupCredit: Quinn Rooney

Willie and I shoulder our way through the Mounting Yard throng and into the parade ring. We miss Zac but find Ryan, who can offer no excuses except thinking we were too close to the hot pace. Despite this, I’ve never seen him talk as much post-race. Everyone shows their disappointment in different ways.

With hindsight, we did get our tactics wrong as the first six dropped in. But we had a plan; it just turned out to be the wrong one on the day. The tactics were enough to explain Absurde fading as he did, but not to the extent Vauban did.

Was it the heat? Did we come out too early? Did we work him too hard? Should we have had a prep run? Impossible to say for certain but certainly food for thought. Maybe he just ran bad? That’s ok when it’s Thurles, less so when it’s Melbourne. Willie Morrissey says to me over a drink later that you either win or you learn. Well, we’re doing an awful lot of learning out here, I mutter back at him.

We take the train from the racecourse back into Flinders Station in the middle of the city. We get talking to a group of Dutch girls doing PhDs out here, giving out about old fellas at the races asking them to come for dinner. We change tack and ask them to come for a drink. They do. But then they leave after one. A bit like the Cup, we may have got our tactics wrong. Or maybe it was the heat?

We end up in a late bar that just happens to have Mark Zahra’s party. Frankie Dettori spots us and invites us in behind the rope, which he didn’t have to do. “I feel too good to retire,” he says bashfully. If I was him, I wouldn’t retire either.

Ciaron Maher is there too, and all he wants to talk about is Cheltenham and jump racing. He says he’ll get me a ride in the Grand Annual at Warrnambool next May. Clearly, he hasn’t been reading my Pardubicka chronicles. I tell him I’d be over in a heartbeat.

The flight back is long. Going back is always longer than getting there, isn’t it? It really is a different world down there. But what a world it is. I’ve yet to see a show quite like the Melbourne Cup. The hype, the build-up, the suspense and the fun. It’s incredible and Australia should be very proud of what they’ve created and kept.

I’m riding in Clonmel the day I land. Snap back to reality, and Kansas. We came. We saw. We went home with our tails between our legs.

But we’ll be back.

More Sunday Reads:

Adele Mulrennan: 'My heart was pounding and my mouth was dry - I was so nervous' 

'He has an innate instinct to see things differently' - exploring Willie Mullins, the unorthodox visionary who revolutionised jump racing 

Harry Cobden: 'I came home that night and half thought, right, I've had enough of this - but that's a coward's thing to do' 

Davy Russell: I used to go home to bed and sleep for an hour after riding out - that's time I should have been using to upskill 

The Front Runner is our unmissable email newsletter available exclusively to Members' Club Ultimate subscribers. Chris Cook, a four-time Racing Reporter of the Year award winner, provides his take on the day's biggest stories and tips for the upcoming racing every morning from Monday to Friday. Not a Members' Club Ultimate subscriber? Click here to join today and also receive our Ultimate Daily emails plus our full range of fantastic website and newspaper content.