WHEN the legend that was 1993 Melbourne Cup winner Vintage Crop died in 2014, one Australian media outlet labelled him “The horse that changed the Cup forever.”

It was headline news in Australia then, as of course it was when Dermot Weld's stayer became the first overseas winner of the Cup in 1993. That was Weld breaking hemisphere-sized boundaries when he sent the Michael Smurfit-owned stayer down under, where he ran out an impressive winner for Mick Kinane at Flemington. The win was hailed as another beautiful chapter in the “race that stops a nation”, and another beautiful chapter came nine years later, courtesy of Weld and Smurfit again.