Vintage Crop won sixteen races in Ireland and England between 1992 and 1995, but his fame rested on his unique achievement in 1993 when he became the first overseas horse to win the Melbourne Cup. The conventional wisdom was that it was impossible for a Northern hemisphere horse to make the long trip to Australia and be in any condition to compete at Melbourne. Vintage Crop, which had suffered every vicissitude possible in terms of injury and frustrated preparation earlier in his career, proved the conventional wisdom wrong. And just to show that it was no fluke, Dermot Weld repeated the trick in 2002 when he won the Melbourne Cup with Media Puzzle.

The Racing Post has rated the victory of Vintage Crop at Melbourne as the single greatest training feat in the entire history of horse racing. This is the story of how it was done, by the man who did it.