FEATURE STORY
IT ALL BEGAN WITH DULCIFY BY ANDREW LEMON
How the Australian Cup became a champion race.
Dulcify. Are you old enough to remember when he set the racing world on fire with his brilliance in the year the Australian Cup first became a weight-for-age contest at Flemington? It was more than four decades ago, but for those who saw the young horse in action, the memories remain fresh. As a feature on the national racing calendar, the Australian Cup at Flemington is much more ancient than that. It has been part of our autumn since 1863, just eighteen months after the inaugural Melbourne Cup. The first winner, Barwon, was one of the best of his day, and the race has many greats on its honour roll. They include early Melbourne Cup winners Tim Whiffler, Nimblefoot, Warrior and Malua. The Australian Cup began life as a long-distance handicap of around 2¼miles (3620 metres). That was a crowd-pleasing formula but did not always mean that the best horse won. One hundred years later, as locally-bred stayers seemed fewer, the distance was dramatically shortened (to 1¾ miles 1963 and then 1¼ miles in 1964, adjusted to 2000 metres from 1973). Then in 1979, the Victoria Racing Club made the bold move to change the conditions to a weight-for-age championship, doubling prize money to $101,000. Over the next forty years the Australian Cup became a theatre of drama featuring some of the greatest equine champions of our time. Dulcify was precocious, a phenomenon, a horse with the potential to match Carbine or Phar Lap. We will never know what heights he might have reached. A freak accident during the running of the 1979 Melbourne Cup cost him his life at the age of only four. He already had 10 wins to his name, 8 at Group level. The 1979 Australian Cup was the second in that sequence.
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