the first with Americain in 2010<\/a>.<\/p>\n\u201cI was also fortunate enough to be invited in with Lloyd and Nick Williams in Rekindling (2017) and Twilight Payment (2020), which has been a great ride,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Ryan\u2019s love of the sport blossomed as a boy.<\/p>\n
He would sneak into the Bendigo races at about the same age as the primary school kids of Nagambie who broke out of class on Monday to catch a glimpse of the Cup.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone used to tune in on the first Tuesday of November,\u201d Ryan said of his childhood.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe listened on the radio, and my Dad would have a punt and my mother would put 50 cents on back then, and being Irish, third generation, you always had an interest in horses.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was ambitious to win a Bendigo Cup, let alone ever thinking I would have a horse to run in the Melbourne Cup, let alone win one.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said that joy, of sharing those victories with family and friends, kept him going back for more.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, you have that first drink of wine and you get the taste for it,\u201d Ryan said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou always are hopeful that a yearling or the unbroken yearling in the paddock is going to be the one. Or the one you buy from overseas could win it.\u201d<\/p>\n
That \u201cone\u201d from overseas arrived in Australia in 2010 \u2013 a French-bred stallion plucked out of America for $200,000.<\/p>\n
![\"Americain](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/e23966ee720b5ab9e9cd1b0c3d3a14a99ddd4021.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Americain wins the 2010 Melbourne Cup for jockey Gerald Mosse and trainer Alain de Royer-Dupr\u00e9.Credit: Photo: Pat Scala<\/p>\n
\u201cI had this guy that lived in Ireland, he was a bloodstock agent, and he had looked around for years for different horses and broodmares and he rang up and said, \u2018I\u2019ve got this horse, I think he can win the Melbourne Cup. He\u2019s in America\u2019,\u201d Ryan said.<\/p>\n
The horse in America had been floundering on the hot dog-shaped circuits of the US, but flourished when he returned to the bigger tracks of Europe and later made the trip to Australia under the care of trainer Alain de Royer-Dupre.<\/p>\n
He won the Geelong Cup as a lead-in race and then thundered home out wide down a rain-soaked Flemington straight, streaming past favourite So You Think, to deliver Ryan, his wife Val and their friends Kevin and Colleen Bamford a famous victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had the Middle Park Hotel at the time and we celebrated there and it was passed around the bar and people were drinking out of it and taking photographs. It certainly was pretty special,\u201d Ryan said.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s Melbourne Cup nominations were released on September 2, and while mega-stables Chris Waller and Ciaron Maher train a third of the 120 nominations, two horses in the fight are part-owned by Ryan.<\/p>\n
He has again joined forces with Lloyd and Nick Williams, who sourced accomplished stayers Adelaide River and Changingoftheguard from Ireland.<\/p>\n
Changingoftheguard has already landed an early spring blow, winning the listed 2400-metre City Tattersalls Club Cup at Randwick on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cLloyd\u2019s the best judge and he\u2019s got the best connections around the world,\u201d Ryan said of the seven-time Melbourne Cup-winning owner.<\/p>\n
So can Ryan take his tally to four?<\/p>\n
\u201cI always say, \u2018focus on the process and the results will look after themselves\u2019,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to enjoy it because there\u2019s no guarantee that one, they stay sound, or two, they get to the race.\u201d<\/p>\n
Neither does he worry about the cost.<\/p>\n
\u201cPut it this way, I don\u2019t think I am in front after winning three of them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
While Ryan expected to soon start sharing one of his own Cups around Nagambie in the lead-up to the spring carnival, there was another trophy he still dreamed of celebrating.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully, St Kilda can win a grand final next year or the year after. They are heading that way,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I can then take a premiership cup to lunch with Eddie and hopefully, he might get a Melbourne Cup winner.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The nation-crossing Cup tour rolled through the picturesque lakeside town \u2013 shared with locals, school children and businesses…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[3004,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-123484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-racing","tag-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/7d816e8beaf337bb52420181c56c69935aa56761.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Gerry](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/6c10c5c44d79a1a38a4188a475f1f3b33283256a.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n