James Cummings: The Grandson Who Headhunted His Own Apprenticeship
From Bart’s shadow to the Sha Tin spotlight – his first runners arrive in September and James Cummings is ready to write his own chapter.
James Cummings: The Grandson Who Headhunted His Own Apprenticeship
From Bart’s shadow to the Sha Tin spotlight – his first runners arrive in September and James Cummings is ready to write his own chapter.
18 August, 2026IT’S A FASCINATING exercise to sit in front of a television to watch how different parts of the world ring in the new year. You could literally channel-surf for almost an entire day, starting at Auckland, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Dubai, London and then through to New York and Los Angeles, hours and hours of light show spectaculars and frenetic fireworks.
One of the first global cities to celebrate is Sydney with its mesmerising Harbour Bridge, dubbed “The Coathanger” for its ubiquitous presence in the heartbeat of the city, swarmed by a flotilla of boats and rowdy revellers, who envelop its pristine waters. The morning after the night before is one of the only times the city sleeps – even for crusty old horsemen who might have a public holiday race meeting to attend, but little hunger to work a big string before dawn.
Most teenagers wouldn’t think about horses on New Year’s Day, if at all. But most teenagers can’t call their grandfather one of the greatest horse trainers to ever live in Australia, one who nightly current affairs shows would joust to interview because, well, he’s Bart.
“There was a point watching trackwork 26 years ago on New Year’s Day, when no one else is going to trackwork – they’re more interested in watching the midnight fireworks – and I was at trackwork with my grandfather at Randwick,” smiles Hong Kong’s newest trainer James Cummings, the grandson of 12-time Melbourne Cup-winning legend Bart Cummings.
“The steam coming off the gallops, the busyness of the environment – jockeys, work riders, competing horse trainers in the trainers’ hut, someone makes you a hot drink and it’s all happening.
“I’ve always enjoyed that.”
There are people born to be a horse trainer, then there is James Cummings. A fourth-generation Group 1-winning trainer, he learnt from his legendary grandfather Bart, whose famous eyebrows, silvery mane and sharp wit endeared him to a nation who fell in love with the man familiar for walking down the Flemington steps to lead in another Melbourne Cup winner on the first Tuesday in November.
Only sporting royalty can get away with being called by a singular name and still be known the world over: Babe, Jordan, Tiger, Federer, Messi, Ronaldo, Brady, Bolt. Bart was that in Australia. Maybe only Gai came close in horse racing recognition.
You could almost fill a book with his famous one-liners, never a word wasted, never one out of place.
One of Bart’s Melbourne Cup-winning riders, Darren Beadman, stunned the racing world when he said he was going to quit racing to become a pastor. Upon hearing the news, Cummings shot back: “I think you should get a second opinion.”
Then there was the time a health inspector visited his stables and advised he had too many flies on the premises. “Well, how many am I allowed to have?”
We could go on and on.
But it was also what he didn’t say which was just as important, his son Anthony and grandsons James and Edward forced to learn by looking rather than listening. Upon his death in 2015, Anthony Cummings delivered a eulogy during a state funeral at St Mary’s Cathedral in inner Sydney.
“He taught me everything I know, but not everything he knew,” Anthony said.
No one had the chance to learn from Bart more than James, who joined his stable because it seemed like a better fit than a university degree. But it wasn’t before he gained his grandmother Val’s approval.
Bart Cummings’ training tree is an undersold piece of his legacy. He not only trained racehorses, he trained trainers. Apart from his family, he helped nurture the likes of Leon Corstens, John Thompson, John O’Shea, Nigel Blackiston. It was only when Thompson was headhunted to oversee the private operation of doomed mining magnate Nathan Tinkler’s Patinack Farm that Bart needed a replacement.
“Bart didn’t see it coming,” James says.
“He said to John Thompson, ‘well, who’s gonna replace you?’ And John Thompson said, ‘I think your grandson James would do a good job.’
“He smiled and said, ‘I’ll have to run it past Val’. He went home and told my grandmother, and she smiled and saw a little bit of history repeating.”
It certainly was.
“He enjoyed having a grandchild that took interest in what he did, and he had so many grandchildren he couldn’t remember their names, I’m sure of it,” James says. “But he remembered the names of the horses as he walked up the road in his stable.
“I had the presence of mind to realise that Bart wouldn’t be around forever. It’s not really my style to go and headhunt for a job — but if I didn’t headhunt him and say, ‘look, I’d like to come and work for you’, then it might never have happened.
“Looking back, I’m glad I did.”
Even for his own family, Bart was a formidable presence.
In an era when Australian racing was box office in the 1980s and 1990s and even early 2000s, Cummings was as close to horse’s racing No. 1 celebrity as there ever will be. Former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke was moved to describe him as a “great and good Australian”. He was fonder of Bart than any of his frontbench.
“To say he was an intimidating figure is probably somewhat of an understatement,” says Edward, who has his own two-state training operation in Australia.
“More personally, when I went to work for him as his driver, I was falling over myself considering I was meeting him on such intimidating terms – and it turned me into a bumbling fool and someone that quickly earned his ire. It wasn’t until I made the decision that I had to treat him just like any one of my friends and relax that we started to get on quite well.
“I had gone to work for him after having a blue with Dad. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do but spending that time with him solidified that. More than I could have ever expected, he really encouraged me. There was even a time when Dad said to me, ‘I don’t know what you’ve said to him, but he rates you very highly’.”
Dad is Anthony Cummings, one of Bart’s and Val’s five children.
“You were there learning things before you thought you were learning,” says Anthony of his own experience. “I got taken to New Zealand when I was 14 and it was the first time I looked at horses critically.
“I started to work out what balance was, what worked and what didn’t. I tried to understand the history of any horse, where they’d come from and what they’d been through.
“He bothered to go and educate himself that way. He went from one end of a farm to the other and met the people to understand the horse. That level of intensity and determination was very unusual at the time, still is to a large part. Once you’ve been through that, you understand what you’re looking at.
“The two boys picked it up and went with it.”
Bart’s Australian training legacy, particularly his dominance of the Melbourne Cup, the race that stops the nation, will never be matched. With stayers, he seemed to understand better than anyone what made them tick.
But he also holds a significant piece of history in training a Sha Tin winner: Catalan Opening in the 1997 Hong Kong Bowl. Bart was always an admirer of Hong Kong racing, a lover of their devotion to the horse and intensity of the environment where the margins were small and stakes big.
It seemed inevitable that James, the clean-cut training blueblood who prepared his first Group 1 winner in his mid-20s while in partnership with his ailing grandfather, would one day end up in Hong Kong, even if the circumstances have been unique.
Having been appointed as Godolphin’s head Australian trainer at 29, James spent eight successful years as Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s private conditioner until the global racing giant ripped up the blueprint last year to pursue a public model. Their horses are now spread around several Australian yards, including training goliaths Chris Waller and Ciaron Maher.
Cummings moved quickly, striking an agreement to join the Jockey Club’s roster for the 2026-27 season. He has spent almost a year away from actively training, instead watching and learning how the Hong Kong system tilts. He will have his first runners in September.
“You don’t need me to tell you, but he’s a clever fella,” Anthony says. “He’s been over there and looked at what works and has a feel for what doesn’t. It looked like it would be a bit of a handicap to stand down for half-a-season, but I’d say it’s been a fair bit of a help to him. He’s been able to look at the situation from a different angle. I think he will do very well.”
There’s an intensity about James and thirst for knowledge which has never dimmed. He’s aware of history, but not beholden to it. To understand what it takes in the cutthroat Hong Kong bubble, Cummings has sought counsel from three training legends: John Size, Caspar Fownes and David Hayes. Each has a method markedly different to the other.
Cummings is already trying to adjust to the nuances. In Australia, he says, it’s a problem if a trainer ends up owning too many horses and can’t sell them. In Hong Kong, a trainer can’t own any.
“There are serious physical and operational constraints about how to run your business in Hong Kong, and that’s one of them,” he says. “I found that really interesting.
“So, I’d say the core philosophy of the way I like to train – my style won’t be that different – but I’ll be prepared to be open-minded and change where I need to change. I’ve learnt things already, only in the last little while, about what will be important differences here. Not to go into details, but there are things you’ve got to adjust.”
Cummings has already started recruiting horses for the all-important opening months of the new season. As of mid-August, he has 40 of the maximum 70 horses a Hong Kong trainer can have at any one time. More will follow, selling the dream to owners just like his grandfather used to sell suits in a tailor store.
“Funny how you develop skills in different ways, but his ability to sell a yearling was probably born in selling silk,” Cummings says.
So, what does he expect from a first Hong Kong season? From the teen who wanted to be at the track on the first day of the year, he’s now counting down to day one on a destination he was always meant to be.
“It’s a long process,” he says. “You’ve got to be patient. I shouldn’t be telling you, but I sense that you’ve just got to really retain composure in an intense season and play the long game – because it’s not about just season one. My success or failure won’t be dictated just by season one.
“A lot of the time, many experienced people in Hong Kong would observe that your second and third seasons are a greater indicator of your potential as a future trainer here in Hong Kong. Which is fascinating, and I can see the logic behind that wisdom.
“And yet, in contradiction to that – to be successful in Hong Kong, you must start well. I don’t have to have all the runners in September, but when I start my runners, they’ve got to start well.”
And if they start as early as Cummings did alongside Bart on New Year’s Day while the rest of the city slept, then there will be no looking back. ∎
