Obituary Bart Cummings globalised Australian horse racing, even though he didn't like all the consequences, writes Fiona Carruthers.
The irony would not have been lost on Bart. The King of Cups passed away only hours after the official start of Victoria's 2015 spring racing season - marked each year by the first group 1 race of spring, the Memsie Stakes at Caulfield.
With prizemoney totalling more than $58.7 million spread over 64 days of premium racing, the Victorian spring racing carnival's clear headline race is the Melbourne Cup, the richest handicap in the world - worth $6.2 million this year, with $3.6 million of that going to the winner of the gruelling 3200-metre race - the race Cummings won an unprecedented 12 times.
Before his death at Princes Farm, on Sydney's north-western outskirts in the early hours of Sunday, Cummings and grandson James were working towards ensuring their 10-year-old New Zealand-bred gelding, Precedence, qualified to run this year in what will be the horse's fifth Melbourne Cup. 
"Hopefully that will still happen," says racing media personality Caroline Searcy. "This is a dynasty that's by no means over."
With the running of the 155th Melbourne Cup looming on   November 3, the industry is plagued by more than its usual controversies at this time of year. A number of high-profile trainers - including Black Caviar's trainer Peter Moody, Melbourne Cup-winning trainer Mark Kavanagh and Danny O'Brien - continue to fight doping allegations after some of their horses returned samples containing cobalt over the permitted threshold.
The ongoing TV wars over vision rights continue. And the industry is fighting to stave off mining taking over huge chunks of the nation's thoroughbred nursery, NSW's Hunter Valley.
Now, the industry has to deal with the death of the man who came to define the elusive glory of the Melbourne Cup on the world stage. Cummings also was no stranger to controversy in his long career. In racing's finest tradition, he dealt with doping allegations, faced near financial ruin, and a very public falling out with his horse trainer son, Anthony.
"It wasn't always easy, but he won everything," says Les Carlyon, the Melbourne-based writer and author of The Master: A Personal Portrait of Bart Cummings. "He won staying races, he won Golden Slipper sprints for two-year-olds; he won more Newmarket Handicaps - a six furlong sprint - than he did Melbourne Cups. He won 13 Australian Cups. And the list goes on."
Much like the race he dominated since his first win with Light Fingers in 1965, Cummings will be best remembered for his staying power across six decades.
"With Bart, the Melbourne Cup becomes not about a horse, but a man, simply because he won 12," says Carlyon.
Victoria Racing Club chairman Michael Burn hailed Cummings's record as "peerless". "Most trainers dream of winning a group 1 race; Bart won 268," he says. "At Flemington alone he registered an astonishing 83 group 1 victories."
The boy from Adelaide, born in 1927 to father Jim, who was also a racehorse trainer, had his first taste of "the race that stops a nation" when he attended the Cup in 1950, aged 23, as strapper to the winner, Comic Court, trained by Jim.
By the time the first foreign raider was successful in the Cup - in the form of Irish horse Vintage Crop - Cummings had won nine Cups - with Light Fingers in 1965, Galilee (1966), Red Handed (1967), Think Big (1974 and 75), Gold and Black (1977), Hyperno (1979), Kingston Rule (1990) and New Zealand mare Let's Elope (1991).
By the early 1990s, when the Melbourne Cup was lagging and spectator numbers were down, Cummings was as philosophical as anyone that the race needed something new.
His staggering dominance of the race, his loud suits, brash manner and rapier wit - not to mention the big bets that handicap races attract from punters like his mate and financial backer Tan Chin Nam - helped put the race on the world stage.
Ever the wheeler and dealer with the eye on the main chance, Cummings was, however, cagey about the arrival of the so-called "foreign raiders", wary they would take over a great Australian tradition that should be the domain of local horses given it is limited to just 24 runners each year.
When Vintage Crop landed in Melbourne three weeks before the 1993 Cup, Cummings snorted: "they might as well run it at [Royal] Ascot." He decreed the gangly chestnut stayer that had just won the coveted Irish St Leger could not possibly travel halfway around the world, acclimatise and win the toughest 3200-metre flat race in the world. Vintage Crop proved the King wrong.
After that Cummings and other trainers campaigned for the VRC to invite just a handful of select international runners each year, much in the same way Australian horses must be invited to race in the Japan Cup. The campaign eventually fizzled out and last year half the field were foreign horses flown into Australia specifically for the Melbourne Cup.
"I think it was Bart being Bart in that he always liked to tease and provoke," Carlyon reflects. "At one stage, he thought the foreign horses might really take it over - then he realised later, no they wouldn't."
Carlyon points out that "in the end, he proved it didn't matter because he beat them with Saintly" in 1996, a horse bred and owned by Cummings and Tan Chin Nam. "There were some prominent internationals in that Cup, including the Irish horse Oscar Schindler," says Carlyon.
Cummings won again in 1999 with the rags to riches horse, Rogan Josh. And in 2008, Viewed won by a breath, over foreign raider Bauer, trained by the great Luca Cumani. "Bart got quite excited about the foreigners," says Carlyon. "He knew it was good for the race - good for business. And he liked that, in the end, he beat them."
Last year, the online racing journal bloodstock.com.au announced a few days out from the 154th running of the Melbourne Cup that "the build-up to the Melbourne Cup is complete with the arrival of Bart Cummings in town for Australia's biggest race".
This year, come Tuesday,   November 3, the Melbourne Cup's greatest shining light will be on the track in spirit.
Bart Cummings, 87, is survived by his wife Valmae, children Margaret, Sharon, Anthony and Anne Marie, along with 14 grandchildren, including Anthony's son James, who was in partnership with his grandfather - and one grandchild, James's daughter.
Their mare, Sultry Feeling, won at Rosehill in Sydney on Saturday.
Cummings died early on Sunday morning, surrounded by his family at Princes Farm.