MELBOURNE : After 20 years of trying, Willie Mullins will hope to join the Irish contingent of Melbourne Cup-winning trainers when favourite Vauban runs in the A$8 million ($5.2 million) handicap at Flemington Racecourse on Tuesday.
Since preparing Holy Orders in his first Melbourne Cup foray in 2003, Mullins has come close to winning Australia's most prestigious race, with Max Dynamite pipped by rank outsider Prince of Penzance in 2015 and third behind Rekindling in 2017.
With six-year-old gelding Vauban, master trainer Mullins may have the ideal horse to win the taxing, two-mile handicap.
Vauban won the Copper Horse Handicap over 2,800 metres by seven-and-a-half lengths at Royal Ascot in June to top the Melbourne Cup betting markets and backed it up with victory in the Ballyroan Stakes at Naas in August.
Having first found success over jumps, Vauban's fruitful switch to flat racing was made with the Melbourne Cup in mind.
"He's the best chance we've ever had and will ever have," Mullins said of Vauban, rated a 7/2 chance by bookmakers on Monday.
Carrying 55kg, 3.5kg less than the top weight, Vauban has also drawn a favourable barrier (3) and will ride under English jockey Ryan Moore, a Melbourne Cup winner in 2014 on Protectionist.
Favourites have tended to disappoint on Cup day. The last to win was Fiorente 10 years ago.
Mullins, however, is unfazed.
"At one time I used to hate having favourites because it brings pressure, but now I don't," he said.
"I'd rather have the favourite than an outsider."
Known locally as "the race that stops the nation," Melbourne Cup glory long eluded horses trained outside Australia and New Zealand.
That changed when Vintage Crop, prepared by Irish trainer Dermot Weld, broke through in 1993 to put
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