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Voyages of discovery by racing's Columbus have created rich legacy

Alan Sweetman on the legendary globetrotting Irish trainer

Dermot Weld: groundbreaking success with Vintage Crop in the 1993 Melbourne Cup
Dermot Weld: groundbreaking success with Vintage Crop in the 1993 Melbourne CupCredit: Patrick McCann

The infamous tag-line of the advertisement that launched Guinness Light in 1979 was “they said it couldn’t be done”. The low-calorie version of Ireland’s most iconic export was an utter flop. As Dublin’s bar-stool wits soon proclaimed: “They said it couldn’t be done . . . and they were right!”

At the time of the failed Guinness Light campaign Dermot Weld was seven years into a training career that has taken much of its inspiration from the ambition to achieve targets often placed in the “couldn’t be done” category. In 1990 he became the first and only European-based trainer to win a leg of the US Triple Crown when saddling Go And Go to a stunning victory in the Belmont Stakes.

Then, in 1993 Weld achieved one of the greatest single training feats in racing history when Vintage Crop captured the Melbourne Cup, the prelude to a new era in which the most popular horserace run in the southern hemisphere evolved from local carnival into an occasion of major international significance.

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