Dunaden’s 2011 Melbourne Cup triumph: Christophe Lemaire’s moment of disbelief

The French jockey was riding in Japan when trainer Mikel Delzangles called to ask if he could partner Dunaden in the two-mile Flemington feature. His answer was immediate.

“I said of course.”

Before the race, Lemaire was grateful for the guidance of John Marshall, who walked the Flemington track with him and shared valuable advice on how to ride the famous course.

It proved invaluable. In a finish that would go down in history, Dunaden edged out Red Cadeaux by a nose, producing the closest Melbourne Cup result since photo-finish technology was introduced in 1946.

The race took three minutes and 20 seconds to run, but judges needed more than five minutes to confirm the winner.

Lemaire, meanwhile, was still trying to work out what had happened.

As he returned to the parade ring, he heard spectators shouting that the result had gone his way. Unsure whether to believe them, he asked the question every jockey dreams of asking after a Melbourne Cup.

“Am I the winner? Am I the winner?”

When the realisation finally hit, the emotion was overwhelming.

“Oh my gosh, I did it, I did it,” he recalls.

For Lemaire, the victory was about far more than a perfectly timed move. He credits the people who trusted him, the horses he rode and the team behind every success.

“As I used to say, you know, it’s a teamwork,” he says.

Trained by Delzangles and owned by Sheikh Fahad Al Thani, Dunaden completed the Geelong Cup–Melbourne Cup double before returning in 2012 to win the Caulfield Cup.

Now, with Lemaire set to return to Flemington aboard Japanese stayer Stinger Glass, the memories of 2011 carry renewed significance.

Fifteen years on, the jockey who once celebrated by asking if he had won is chasing another chapter in his remarkable Melbourne Cup story.