Bart Cummings AM

James Bartholomew (Bart) Cummings OAM (1927-2015) was Australia's most successful thoroughbred racehorse trainer. Dubbed the 'Cups King', Cummings trained a record eleven Melbourne Cup winners, winning the Cup twelve times; Light Fingers gave Cummings his first Melbourne Cup in 1965 and Viewed his twelfth in 2008, while Think Big won the race twice, in 1974 and 1975. Son of leading Adelaide trainer, Jim Cummings, Bart was asthmatic and was advised to stay away from horses and their dusty environment, but was inexorably drawn to the stables and was strapper to his father's Melbourne Cup winner Comic Court in 1950. Granted his training licence in 1953, he bought his first yearling in 1958 and won his first feature race, the South Australian Derby, in the same year. Originally based at Glenelg in South Australia, Cummings opened a stable complex at Flemington in Melbourne in 1968. Leilani Lodge was launched at Randwick in 1975 and became central to his enterprise; his grandson, James Alexander Cummings - son of his trainer son, Anthony - began working there as a stablehand at the age of thirteen, became the stables' foreman at 21, gained his trainer's licence at 25, and entered into a formal training partnership with his grandfather in 2013. Bart Cummings was ABC Sportsman of the year in 1975 and inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1991. Renowned for his sagacity and wit, the man who said his horses were his friends died at his property, Princes Farm, near Castlereagh NSW at the age of 87.