Watch the video: ‘What the hell just happened?’ Robbie Dolan relives elation of Cup win

Robbie Dolan never grows tired of watching himself win the Melbourne Cup.

“Sometimes you do have to look back and just be proud of what you’ve done because at the end of the day, you know, life’s too short,” he says.

Dolan is sitting in the stands at Flemington Racecourse, a laptop resting on his knees and gazing out over the grass-lined straight that helped make him a household name.

It is a warm spring day, the track’s yellow roses are in full bloom and there is a buzz of activity around the track as mowers clip lawns and delivery vans drop goods in preparation for Cup week.

The jockey is about to play a video of the moment that changed his life – an unlikely victory in the race that stops a nation.

But before he does, the 23-year-old Irishman is proud to say that his upset win on 90-1 outsider Knight’s Choice might have altered the way people viewed him in public, but not the way he treated them back.

“I’m still Robbie Dolan,” he says. “A lot of people might not aspire to be famous or anything, but I do enjoy that side of it.

“I love doing the interviews and the events, and I like when people come up and ask, ‘Oh mate, I’ve had a bet on you, can I get a photo?’ All that stuff. I love all that stuff. I was made for that stuff.

“I think I definitely was probably the right person to win a big race like that.”

Dolan opens the laptop and presses play. He looks at the screen as the last of the 2024 Cup field enters the gates.

“It’s funny because we actually drew barrier six, and I’m pretty sure the stats from barrier six over the last like 50 years have come up with zero winners,” he says.

“On the morning of the race, the horse from barrier five was scratched, so I was actually lucky enough to move down to barrier five, and I looked at the stats over the years, and the horses from barrier five that have won it – I don’t know the exact numbers, but let’s just say they had really good percentage.

“So, I was thinking, ‘We’re on here’.”

Few people on course or sitting in lounge rooms across the country shared his view. Knight’s Choice had just finished fifth in the Bendigo Cup. That’s not the ideal lead-up form.

Dolan’s horse stands out in the jockey’s distinct pink and lime green silks, and is hard to miss in the large field, even on a computer screen dulled by the sun’s glare.

Knight’s Choice jumps well and Dolan begins to commentate as if he is back riding in the race.

“He’s a horse that doesn’t like to be bustled along, so you just have to let him relax and breathe and get in the rhythm,” he says.

“From a nice barrier, I did want to use him a little bit, but I didn’t want to upset him and get him to over-race.”

Dolan is momentarily distracted by a fly buzzing around his face. But after he brushes it away, he returns to the screen.

He reveals that Knight’s Choice is drifting back towards the rear as the field thunders past the grandstands and quickly into the first bend.

Leaders Just Fine, Circle Of Fire and the over-racing Land Legend are bowling along at a decent clip.

“They probably don’t realise how quick they are going,” Dolan says.

“At this stage of the race, everything is just silent. All the jockeys have got their positions. There is no real yelling or hustling and bustling. Everybody is just sort of in a rhythm.

“These are some of the best jockeys in the world in a sense, and they are all there for the same reason, they are all their to win the race.”

The replay flicks to an overhead helicopter shot of the unfolding Cup and Dolan points out Knight’s Choice, sitting three-quarters of the way back in the 23-horse field. Pre-race favourites Buckaroo and Onesmoothoperator are also at least 18 lengths behind the leaders and never to play a part in the finish.

Dolan’s horse has settled well and is enjoying the tempo of the firm track on a hot November day – conditions suited to a galloper trained on the Sunshine Coast by John Symons and Sheila Laxon.

A few anxious jockeys start to creep closer to the front at the 1000m mark of the 3200m race. Knight’s Choice is sixth last. In the next 500 metres, the first wave of runners begin to make their move. They are going too early. Jamie Melham is biding her time on Okita Sushi in fifth.

“I’ve started to sort of click my horse up through his gears, and we’re starting to straighten now as we come down towards the sort of 400m mark,” Dolan says.

“I remember thinking at this stage, I had a wall of horses in front of me, I’m thinking just before this moment, ‘If these horses get out of the way, I’m a chance’. As soon as I thought it, they just moved out of the way.”

It is a telling premonition for a jockey having his first ride in the Melbourne Cup. Until this day, he is better known for his appearance as a contestant on The Voice than he is for his deeds on the track.

Dolan grew up wanting to be a singer and an actor in his home county of Kildare but always found himself being dragged back to the horses because it was in his blood – his dad worked for Irish trainer Dermot Weld and was a jockey in his own right.

“Luckily, I had the right horse under me. He pinned his ears back, he clicked his way through the gaps,” he says as Knight’s Choice and Japanese runner Warp Speed weave their way through a tiring pack.

“I have just gone past Zardozi here, which is a horse that I thought could win the race,” Dolan says as the excitement in his voice begins to rise.

Okita Sushi has found the front 300 metres from the finish line, but Melham’s dream of winning the Cup on the Ciaron Maher import is short-lived as Knight’s Choice and Warp Speed reel her in and flash past.

“I’m hitting the front now,” Dolan says of the defining moment in the race. They are just 50m from the finish.

“I’ve just hit the line and I remember thinking, ‘What the hell just happened? How is this real?’”

Dolan’s moment of ecstatic disbelief is momentarily shaken when Japanese jockey Akira Sugawara, who has fought out a dogged neck-and-neck finish on Warp Speed, asks the Irishman, “Did I win?”

“I remember thinking, ‘I tell you what, buddy, I hope not because I want to win’. And I tell you what, if I had run second I would not be speaking to you guys today,” Dolan says of the sliding door moments between winning and losing.

“I always had a feeling I had won. But I wasn’t sure. When he said that to me, I was thinking, ‘Oh no, maybe I got beat’.

“It was only until after the line, when I saw Bill Slater on the pony, doing the jockey interviews, and I said to him, ‘Did I win?’, and he’s like, ‘Of course you won, you won by half a head’.

“And I’m thinking, ‘Yes, come on, we’ve done it’. And it was just that pure emotion.”

Dolan says he did not hear the crowd or anything around him during the race. He was locked in a zone.

“But as soon as we hit the finish line and I got told I had won the race it was just like, ‘boom’, I could hear everything again – the helicopters going over, I could hear all the crowd.

“It was like a real out-of-body experience. But I tell you what, it would be nice to do it again.”

Dolan rides the Ciaron Maher-trained Royal Supremacy in this year’s Melbourne Cup. They have drawn barrier 21.

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