Racing Diary: Weld solves the Puzzle in style

Dermot Weld is an amazing man for he isn't satisfied just being the first person to do something once-he wants to do it twice and he emphasised that by sending out Media Puzzle to win the Melbourne Cup.

It was back in 1993 that he became the first European trainer to win Australia's greatest horse race when Vintage Crop - a horse he handled so skillfully from his stable at The Curragh which is situated next door to Ireland's premier racecourse flew to the other side of the world and beat the best down under.

They said it couldn't be done just like they had said a few years earlier when he sent a horse called Go and Go to the USA to win the Belmont Stakes,the final leg of the American Triple Crown.

No Irish horse had ever done that before but Dermot who had trained as a vet at Belmont when a young man had always harboured a dream of winning one of the Triple Crown races. With that dream now a reality he set his horizons even wider and Vintage Crop's victory in the Melbourne Cup is now racing history.

I well remember visiting him in his stable just a few month's after that win and although he tried to tell me he was too modest to watch a video replay. It was deep into the night when we emerged from his lovely house having watched the win again and again and again. Now 9 years on and he's done it again and you know he told me he would do it fully 14 months ago.Media Puzzle had just finished 4th in the 2001 St Leger.

And when I asked him about his thoughts about the horse he told me he was going to aim him at the 2002 Melbourne Cup. I didn't think anything more about it indeed to be perfectly honest I had actually forgotten what he told me but these words came ringing back after Media Puzzle's sensational victory. Make no mistake this was a training performance of magnanimous proportions for he had laid out the horse for the race for over a year and then inaudibly pulled it off despite the fact the race was on the other side of the world! The Aussies are difficult to beat in any sport but to beat them on their home turf is incredible and we must all salute the master!

Aiden O'Brien may have been making the racing headlines in Ireland over the passed few years but Dermot Weld has trained more winners than anyone else in the Emerald Isle and his record is unbeatable. I don't know if the Irish give knighthoods like we do in England but if they do they should give one immediately to this shy almost retiring but gibed and incredibly shrewd man who is the number one in the world at his profession and I rather like the sound of Sir Dermot Weld.

Media Puzzle's victory was also very poignant in the fact that winning jockey Damien Oliver was winning the race less than a week after his brother Jason had been killed whilst riding in a race. Words cannot describe his feelings or his emotions as he flashed passed the post but the sport of racing does have a habit of tugging at the heart strings.

Tough big macho Aussie men were crying openly and it reminded me of Bob Champion's victory in the 1981 Grand National.Bob hadn't lost a member of his family like Damien had but he had come back from his death bed and beaten cancer before riding Aldaniti to victory in the world's greatest steeplechase.

His win was a great boost for cancer sufferers around the world as he showed you can beat adversity and since then has helped raise over $20,000,000 for the Bob Champion Cancer Trust.

He rang me earlier this week just a few hours after Damian Oliver's win down under and he was on his way to the Bob Champion Hospital in South London to get his yearly check up. Although he would never admit it I could tell he was still nervous about the check up despite the fact it is now over 20 years since he beat the killer disease.

Thankfully the doctors gave him a clean bill of health and he will hopefully be with us for many years to come but to this day I often wonder what went through his mind on that never to be forgotten day in the spring of 1981. Damien Oliver must have experienced something like that on Tuesday and in a different way so must Dermot Weld.

I applaud them for they are real heroes.