It's time to add three more Kiwis to that list - James McDonald, Chris Waller and Verry Elleegant.

That is to say the world's best jockey, the all-conquering trainer, and an incredible, Melbourne Cup-winning mare who is now fully deserving of conversational company with Winx and Black Caviar.

Let's start with the six-year-old mare, who pulled away from boom Queensland horse Incentivise on Tuesday to win our greatest race by four lengths.

She's a cantankerous, dark brown, equine superstar, supposedly difficult to train but supremely talented.

At the jump on Tuesday, she was a $16 shot, en route to her 10^th Group 1 win. With the benefit of hindsight, just let that price sink in for a moment.

The knockers said she'd had her heart broken by Incentivise in the Turnbull Stakes two runs back, and she must be exhausted after another gutbuster in the Cox Plate.

But this was a horse who maybe had an off day in the Turnbull, who finished a length off superstars State Of Rest and Anamoe in a thrilling Cox Plate, and who also won last year's Caulfield Cup before running seventh in the 2020 Melbourne Cup.

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Twelve months on she gave Incentivise ($2.90) windburn down that Flemington straight and she did it with 57kg on her back. That just a kilogram less than what Makybe Diva carried in winning her third-straight Melbourne Cup in 2005. These are records that will perhaps never be broken.

Waller had his star mare trained to the minute. The man who arrived in Australia from New Zealand 22 years ago, with no money and just two horses in work, has become the leading figure of his generation.

He'd won just about everything, and enjoyed the ride of a lifetime with Winx last decade, but the Melbourne Cup remained his seemingly impossible dream. Until Tuesday.

Yes, there were less imports than normal this year due to the COVID pandemic. But even if the best stayers from the northern hemisphere were along for the ride, Verry Elleegant still would have won that race.

The 48-year-old now has 129 Group 1 wins to his name. The record is 246, held jointly by Tommy Smith and Bart Cummings.

If Waller stays in the game, he could well claim that record as his own by the time he's 60.

Which leads us to the third point of our Melbourne Cup triangle, who had also been missing a Melbourne Cup trophy until Verry Elleegant came along.

That was McDonald's 57^th Group 1 win, and at this rate he'll storm past the record 126 mark held by George Moore and Damien Oliver before he's 40. He's ridden eight winners already in three days of the Flemington carnival, and may well hit double figures with a book of eight rides to come on Saturday, including steers aboard Nature Strip and Zaaki.

McDonald is particularly excited to reunite with Nature Strip, three weeks after steering him to glory in the $15m Tab Everest at Randwick. For all the prestige of Tuesday's Melbourne Cup, that Everest ride has been McDonald's most lucrative to date.

Jockeys usually receive a five per cent sling for a winning ride, which works out to be roughly $310,000 in an Everest.

Combine that with his three Group 1 winning rides this spring, and that's a pocket topping $600,000 already for just a few months' work. His best may yet still be ahead of him.

The best thing about McDonald's success is what he's doing for the image of racing. He's playing a major role in attracting the next generation of racegoers to the track.

When he serenaded the limited Randwick crowd with Sweet Caroline after winning the Everest, most of those who sang back to him were his age or even younger.

It's been a spring carnival like no other, boasting an Everest for the ages, a Caulfield Cup win by Incentivise which was the best we've seen since Might And Power, the dramatic raceday Cox Plate scratching of Zaaki, and the unsuccessful protest in the same race.

But the Kiwis took the biggest spoils of all on Tuesday. Right, then, who wants some pavlova?

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