AN outpouring of homage swept across Australia and other parts of the world with the passing of the doyen of Australian racehorse training, Bart Cummings aged 87.

The news was delivered by his son Anthony via twitter early on Sunday morning: “Dad died peacefully in his sleep early this morning, surrounded by his family. He lived a full life.” Succinct - in true Cummings style.

With a touch of grace, Cummings having celebrated his 61st wedding anniversary with Valmae on Friday, trained his final winner Sultry Feeling, in the sixth at Rosehill on Saturday in partnership with his grandson James. And posthumously on Sunday at Wyong, Bart and James had a double alongside son Anthony, James’ father, who also trained a double.

Far from succinct however was Cummings’ prodigious training record; nearly 7,000 winners, 268 Group 1 winners, his first in 1958, featuring 12 Melbourne Cups, seven Caulfield Cups, five Cox Plates, four Golden Slippers, 13 Australian Cups, eight Newmarket Handicaps, 32 Derbies and 24 Oaks.

He trained nine Australian Champion Racehorses of the Year, an award introduced in 1969 and was an inaugural inductee of the Australian Racing Hall of Fame.

His passing heralds the end of an era where Bart alongside Tommy Smith and Colin Hayes were the giants that dominated Australian racing in the late 20th century.

Born on November 14th 1927, James Bartholomew Cummings was brought up in Adelaide where his father Jim had settled to train horses from his Glenelg stables.

Despite being diagnosed with asthma and advised to stay away from horses and chaff if he wanted to alleviate the symptoms, a young Bart Cummings never deviated from a racing path.

The great Comic Court was trained by Jim, and with Bart as his groom, the trio won the 1950 Melbourne Cup establishing a highwater mark that Cummings would revisit a dozen more times. Bart began training out of his father’s stable in 1953, training his first winner Wells in 1955.

In 1958 he won his first Group 1 and saddled his first Melbourne Cup runner. Despite winning nearly every major race in Australia Cummings earnt himself the moniker the ‘Cups King’.

Over a period of 56 years Bart had 89 Cup runners, winning his first Melbourne Cup in 1965 and his last in 2008. On five occasions he quinelled that race. His is a record permanently out of reach, a concern not of Cummings. “I don’t keep records,” he once said. “That may sound strange but I never look back, I only look ahead. You can’t dwell on the past. Racing goes on and you have to go with it.”

Very much a quiet man, an introvert to an outsider, he was famed for his dry wit and feared for his ability to prepare a horse for a specific race. As long-time stable track rider Joe Agresta once observed: “If you think you know Bart, you don’t know Bart.” It echoes a sentiment his son Anthony once reflected on after a big-race win: “Dad taught me everything I know, unfortunately he didn’t teach me everything he knows.”

As a young lad working around the family stable at Flemington in the 1970s, it was always the Cummings horses in their distinctive green and gold horizontal striped cloth rugs that walked down from the hill, onto the course and had a good pick of grass in the afternoons. There was never a sense of rush about their team, typical of the Cummings style. “Patience is the cheapest thing in racing and least used,” he once said.

A lifelong learner, Cummings’ put a strong emphasis on listening. “Valmae says I love horses more than I love people because horse don’t answer back,” he says in the book Bart, My Life. “But they do answer back, in their own language, and my eyes and ears are open to what they are saying. They are continually sending us messages. The ability to listen – to horses, and to humans, is something I learnt from my father.”

His like will never be seen on a racecourse again yet his methods were never so intangible that others cannot still learn from today. “Happiness. A horse has to be happy,” said Bart, saying as much about his philosophy as seven words could.

BART CUMMINGS

ACHIEVEMENTS

MELBOURNE CUPS

BART CUMMINGS’

STRIKE RATE IN

THE MELBOURNE CUP

HIGHEST-RATED BART

CUMMINGS TRAINED

HORSES, BY TIMEFORM