It looked a lot like an Australian triumph.

But it wasn't.

A horse prepared by the country's best-known trainer Gai Waterhouse and ridden by one of its most notorious jockeys, Damien Oliver, has won the Melbourne Cup.

But it is a victory almost as English as it could be.

Fiorente, the horse who did all the hard work, began his life in England, as did the second horse and the third.

To complete another foreign domination of Australia's greatest, the fourth home was Irish and the fifth another English runner.

Fiorente's heritage is a bit like the Royal family's.

The son of a German father and an English mother, he was bred in Ireland and began his racing life in the Newmarket stable of Sir Michael Stoute who taught him to run.

Waterhouse bought Fiorente for $1.1 million little more than a year ago and taught him to run her way.

It was the first Melbourne Cup for the English, the first for Waterhouse and Oliver's third.

Fiorente, the $7 favourite, won the $6 million race from Red Cadeaux who was running in it for the third successive year, and Mount Athos.

As much as the Cup proved a success for its largest ever foreign contingent, it was also an international disaster.

As the winners rejoiced, the French runner Verema was laying dead on the track where she had been put down after breaking a leg.

Her connections were too distraught to speak.

For the Australian contingent the flag was flown highest by the only locally-bred horse among the six that Melbourne owner Lloyd Williams sent to the start.

Fawkner, the Caulfield Cup winner came from last to finish sixth, just ahead of another local, Ethiopia.