A sensational ride combined with an equally sensational training performance, has seen Lee Freedman's Makybe Diva win the Melbourne Cup two years in a row and the mare is now ready to take on the Northern Hemisphere.

Sydney jockey Glen Boss and Makybe Diva won the 2004 version of this great international race in a manner that would have placed her on a pedestal no matter where she was in the world.

Makybe Diva is the only horse to win the Melbourne Cup, Sydney Cup, Melbourne Cup treble, the only mare to complete the Melbourne Cup double and only the fifth horse to have won the Melbourne Cup twice.
The last horse to complete the Sydney and Melbourne Cup double was Carbine in 1890.
The other horses to win the Melbourne Cup twice have been Archer in 1861/2, Peter Pan 1932 and 1934, Rain Lover in 1968/9 and Think Big 1974/5.

This has been a truly historic win.

“She is one of the greatest staying mares to race in Australia,” said Freedman.
“She got a long way back, but Boss had said to me that at the 200m 'I will be too strong',” he said. 

“Having a mare like her and having to actually wait for Cup day, well it is like having a present under the tree and not being able to open it.
“To take over from David (former trainer David Hall) and to have her repeat the performance is an amazing thing.
“I knew I had the right material, it has been a dream.
“I was never confident until she struck the front though.
“I would like to take her overseas,' he added with the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe Lucien Barrière in Paris in mind.

 "Ever since I was a child I wanted to win the Arc," said Freedman.
"It has been a dream for so long and now I have the horse capable of doing just that."

Freedman and his team are a credit to the Australasian racing industry and if all goes well and he takes Makybe Diva to France and she looms up in the long straight at Longchamps, the roar from her home crowd will be heard in Europe.

Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe is run each year on the first Sunday in October over the classic mile and a half distance (2400m).
Each year, thousands of race fans flock to Longchamp from all over the world to witness what is generally considered to be the ultimate test for thoroughbreds.