Bart Cummings: Spry glasses ONE of Bart Cummings' favourite proverbs - and there are several - is that training horses is like being a detective. "He's always double and triple checking," says James Cummings, his 25-year-old grandson and co-trainer. He's still checking up on us all. As the years go by, the more Clouseau-like skills are required if you are to track the whereabouts and well-being of the man owning the most identifiable eyebrows in the country. Bart Cummings with his latest Cup winner Viewed in 2008. Photo: Vince Caligiuri Will he be at Flemington on Derby day? Don't know. Will it take the appearance of his eight-year-old warrior, Precedence, fighting to qualify for the Cup, to ensure his appearance on Tuesday? And what of Bart's health? A frail and brittle tuxedoed man was helped to the stage at last month's Australian Horse of the Year awards in Melbourne. The rare public appearance snapped everyone back to reality. Cummings celebrates after a win with Rogan Josh in 1999. Gone were the iconic aviator sunglasses and healthy silver mane. They have been replaced with large, black frames on account of his failing eyesight. So when you track down Cummings on Friday morning, as he boards a plane in Sydney on his way to Melbourne, the first question is simple and respectful. Will horse racing's equivalent of Bradman be healthy enough to be trackside, as he prepares to possibly go into bat for the final time? Mr Cummings, are you OK? Cummings after Saintly won in 1996. "Mate," he says, pausing for effect, "I'm 86." You can almost hear him laughing on the inside. For the record, he turns 86 on November 14. "I'm OK," he continues. I've just got sore eyes, that's my problem. For an 86-year-old, I'm not too bad. I'm great. No problem ... Now what else can I help you with? Cummings with great jockey Roy Higgins after winning his third Cup in a row, with Redhead, in 1967. Photo: Fairfax Archive If his body is failing him it's evident that his mind and legendary wit are not, and that's something worth holding on to as the time approaches when the Melbourne Cup will come and go without Bart. That sounds weird. A Cup without Bart. It's like scotch without ice. A pie without sauce. A stable without flies. How many flies am I allowed to have? Bart deadpanned decades ago to a health inspector, who observed there were so many of them in his stables. The line never tires, no matter how many times you hear it. Long shot: Bart Cummings. The flies will have far less salubrious surroundings after the Spring Carnival, when Cummings closes his Saintly Place stables in Ascot Vale, in one of the streets that run behind Flemington's main grandstand. The boxes that have housed giants of racing such as Think Big, Leilani, So You Think and, of course, Saintly, will be demolished to make way for 62 units. Right now, it is the home of Precedence - the "gentleman of the stable" - and he represents Cummings' diminishing prospects of having a Cup runner. "He's getting old," says long-time stable foreman Reg Fleming. Nothing lasts forever. It's the sad reality of life. He's talking about the boss here, not Precedence. After Viewed scored a major upset in the 2008 Melbourne Cup, Fleming was asked in the mounting yard to sum up the trainer's ability. "There's Bradman and there's Bart," Fleming says. In the twilight of Cummings' career, it is a comparison made with greater frequency, but it's a comparison that makes the man himself squirm. "Well, I hope he [Fleming] is a good judge," Cummings says. I don't like commenting on that. He's not the only one who has said it, but I don't like talking about that one. Then this: "I wasn't bad at cricket, but I wasn't as good as Bradman." It is eight years ago, and somehow you have fluked your way into the Crystal Club lounge, on Level 33 of Crown Towers. It is the day before the Melbourne Cup, and high society and captains of industry natter away as they quaff expensive champagne. James and then wife Erica Packer are there. Lady Sonia McMahon, too. Then Bart enters the room. He's dressed in immaculate blue pinstripe suit, pink shirt and a light blue tie knotted in a double Windsor so thick it looks like a football. The room falls silent. "Look, there's Bart," coos someone from the back of the room. Cummings might be able to stop a room of the country's richest people dead in its well-heeled tracks, but his influence does not extend so far that the Victorian Racing Club will bend its rules to allow him a Cup runner on Tuesday. The VRC committee has the discretion to exclude runners, not include them. At 29th in the order of entry, Team Cummings needs five horses to drop out. Much depends on the outcome of Saturday's Mackinnon and Lexus stakes. It's touch and go. "I don't know if it's my place to have a discussion with the VRC about it," says James Cummings. I tell you one thing: Bart wouldn't be scared to if it came to it. I'm sure he would be happy to show a bit of cheek and ask if they could not do anything. [Precedence] is a Moonee Valley Cup winner. He's not without a hope. Having announced a training partnership in August, following four years of James working as Bart's Sydney foreman, the spring represents a clear changing of the guard in the Cummings dynasty. There is plenty of talk in the industry that Bart hasn't been in charge for years. It's typical of the uncertainty and mystery surrounding him. "We talk very frequently," says James, who called Bart before and after Precedence's win in the Moonee Valley Cup on Cox Plate day. His mind is still very sharp. Asked if his grandfather remains hands-on, James says: "I don't think Bart's saddled up a horse for 30 years. His saying is, 'Why have a dog and bark, too?"' Fleming laughs when you suggest Bart merely lends his name to the operation. "Well, he phoned me eight times yesterday and six times today," he says. I thought, 'It must be Melbourne Cup time.' He's still having his input. The younger Cummings bristles when you ask him what his grandfather has taught him in the past four years. Have you got a few weeks? I can take you through it. He pays a lot of attention to detail. He prefers to do today what he can do tomorrow. He's as strict on knowing your powers of observation are at their best. He equally prickles when you ask if he will have the same obsession with the Cup as his grandfather. "The Melbourne Cup is his legacy, but you ask any trainer: there's another 51 weeks of the year," James says. You've got to live and prove you are still relevant. It's a game that's got pressures that are more than one week of the year. I must admit, having said that, it is the best week in Australian racing. But you can't ignore the necessities of the business. We're always on the look-out for the next Cup winner, but also horses that are stallions, two-year olds and milers. Any top horse. On the morning of the 1965 Melbourne Cup, Bart Cummings didn't know if he would race Light Fingers. She had been favourite for the Caulfield Cup that spring, but scratched because of a shoulder muscle tear. She raced in the Mackinnon, but the run was terrible. Cummings sat with her rider, Roy Higgins, in the jockeys' room for half an hour and discussed whether she should run. Legendary vet Percy Sykes was adamant she should be turned out to the paddock. In the following days, the lightly built mare gradually improved. On Cup morning, Bart looked at Sykes, then looked at Higgins. "Your call," he told the jockey. "Let's run her," he said. Light Fingers won the first of Cummings' 12 Melbourne Cups that afternoon, beating stablemate Ziema. "Bart had backed Ziema," Higgins recalls. But Bart worked on that girl [Light Fingers], on a daily basis, on an hourly basis, to get her right. The confidence we had in one another ... That to me proved his genius. He overruled the vet. Higgins had only known Cummings for a year at that stage. On reflection, he could see then what makes him special still. "I started to realise, at that early stage, what a perfectionist he was," Higgins says. He was a man of very few words. A very astute listener. He would want to hear your opinion ahead of his. He'd be listening intently, taking it all in. I often had the feeling he had no idea what I was talking about. One of his great sayings, 'The cheapest thing in racing is patience, and nobody uses it.' He nearly drove you mad with patience. Fleming came into Cummings' inner sanctum decades later, and when you ask him about the boss's defining attribute, he echoes Higgins, almost to the word. "Patience," he says. He's always told me that patience costs nothing. And commonsense. Use commonsense in everything in life, and you'll get through OK. Horse training is no different. He doesn't say much, but when he does he listens. Fleming joined Cummings' Flemington operation 18 years ago, just as Saintly arrived. Bart had lost almost everything after his Cups King Syndication scheme had failed in the late 1980s, and he needed wealthy Malaysian property tycoon Dato Tan Chin Nam to rescue him. Then, in 1996, Saintly won the Cox Plate and Melbourne Cup and that changed everything. "He was down and out," Fleming says. Since then, we've won three Melbourne Cups, four Cox Plates, four Mackinnons, three Australian Cups ... As it stands, with the final Cup field to be released after the Derby Day meeting, Cummings is looking not so much for a winner as a starter. Fleming insists Precedence is "a better horse than Rogan Josh," which won the Cup for the stable in 1999. If the horse does sneak into the 24-horse field, you can bet Bart will be there at Flemington on Tuesday. "I won't if I don't have a runner," Bart says. Precedence is better now than he's been in the past. His current form is very good. I'm hoping for the best. We all are. Despite the mythical image that conjures, of a wearied Bart Cummings holding aloft the Cup for the 13th and possibly final time, it isn't necessary for him to assure his place in Australian sporting history. "I've read his book, I've read books on him by other people," James says. They're times for reflection and times to have great admiration. But when I work for him and with him, it's about what's around the corner. I've been honoured and privileged to learn from him for the last four years, but there's not much time for reflection. There's too much pressure. There isn't a lot of time for thinking about Bradman. We're busy thinking about the next winner. His grandfather isn't looking back, either. On this day last year, he was approached in the Flemington enclosure and asked if could ever envisage the day when he might retire. He was genuinely stunned at the question. "I won't be seeing anything when I'm six-foot under, will I?" the master trainer said. Would I ever think about retiring? I wouldn't think so, no.