Seven years ago, Francesca Cumani was completing her finals in French and Spanish at Bristol University and wondering where her degree would take her.
Thanks to her British-based Italian father, racehorse trainer and Melbourne Cup challenger Luca Cumani, Francesca also speaks Italian, and is travelling the world with her impressive linguistic skills and horsemanship.
The 30-year-old’s commitments as a presenter for Channel Seven and the American-based CNN are growing and, when she’s not in front of a camera, Cumani can usually be found on horseback.
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Increasingly, however, her beloved racehorses are being swapped for polo ponies. Her Australian fiancé is the international polo player Rob Archibald, whose home borders Scone Polo Club in New South Wales, where Cumani has been encouraged to become a competitor in the mixed league. The couple, who recently announced their engagement, spent the English summer in Midhurst, Sussex, handily close to Cowdray Park Polo Club. Despite this being three hours’ drive from her family home at British horseracing’s headquarters in Newmarket, Cumani’s work is strictly enmeshed in activities on the turf.
“Normally, I head to Australia after the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe meeting in Paris in early October and come back home via America and the Kentucky Derby [in early May]. While I’m in Australia I’d also be making trips to Dubai and Qatar,’’ she says.
“Australia is starting to feel like home and having an Australian boyfriend helps.”
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This spring, Cumani increases her commitment to Seven’s coverage, working throughout the Caulfield Guineas, Cox Plate, Caulfield and Melbourne cups, alongside her role as host of CNN’s Winning Post program.
“For CNN we try to visit a different major race every month, with as much variety as possible, so I end up in England, Ireland, France, Germany, America, Australia, Japan, Qatar, Dubai, and we even covered the racing on the frozen lake at St Moritz,” she says.
“Sometimes I don’t even know where I live any more but it’s fantastic to have visited all those wonderful places.”
The globetrotting comes at a price for the woman who admits she is never happier than when riding a thoroughbred. Although she is missed in Newmarket, where she was a daily fixture during morning exercise for her father’s string of horses, she hasn’t fully turned her back on racing stables or race-riding.
“While I’ve been in Sussex I’ve been riding out as often as I can for new trainer Olly Stevens,” says Cumani, whose riding career extends to partnering five winners as an amateur, once beating her mother, Sara, in the Ladies Derby at Bath. During the recent Glorious Goodwood meeting in Britain she returned to the saddle for a charity race, the Magnolia Cup, and finished second.
“It’s hard to have a career in racing that allows you contact with the horses and also allows you to make a living unless you’re training,” she says. “What I’m doing now is feasible in that it still allows me time to ride out.
“I love race-riding. It’s a lot of fun. But to be competitive you have to dedicate so much time to it and I just can’t do that any more.”
One way Cumani takes a more hands-on approach to her work is as European representative for Simon O’Donnell’s and Terry Henderson’s OTI Racing syndicate, which includes assessing purchases and liaising with OTI trainers in Europe.
“I’m partly involved at the races for OTI when we have a runner but also on the buying side,” she says. “Quite often I’ll go to ride the horses we’re interested in, which gives me more of a feel for them. I’d previously done some work for OTI in New Zealand and we’re always searching for horses in England, Ireland, France and Germany.”
The closest the Cumani family has come to winning the Melbourne Cup in seven attempts was with OTI Racing’s tough little grey, Bauer, who was beaten a nose by Viewed in 2008. Luca’s post-race quip, that next time he would bring a horse with a longer nose, belied the seriousness of his annual quest to Flemington.
His daughter’s first taste of the Melbourne Cup was as a track rider for Glistening in 2006, and she admits to increasing nervousness on her father’s behalf.
“I get very anxious each year for my dad when the Melbourne Cup comes around. The race does that to you, there’s such a big build-up to it in Australia,’’ she says. “We desperately want to win it. We were very lucky to get so close two years in a row and maybe then we thought it was easy to win, but the standard is going up and up each year. It’s become so much more competitive.”
Cumani has to put employer loyalty aside when it comes to nominating her favourite horse of all time. Bauer once again has to play second fiddle, this time to the stable’s other Melbourne Cup runner-up.
“It has to be Purple Moon,” says the horse’s former regular rider, who knows him as George. “Obviously he was a very good racehorse but he was also such a character. He’s still doing well, winning heaps of prizes in the show ring and giving pleasure to so many people.”
Despite Cumani’s travels, the family is close-knit. Elder brother Matt is assistant trainer to dad, while mum Sara, in her mid-50s, remains one of the yard’s best work riders. With Matt poised to take over the reins at Bedford House Stables in coming years, Francesca will have to look elsewhere if she wishes to take up training, something her father is not keen for her to do.
Francesca might have the final word. “It’s always been in the back of my mind that I’d like to train,’’ she says. “I’ve been lucky to spend so much time with trainers and to have learnt different things from different people. I’d love to be a trainer one day, and in many ways it would make a lot of sense to start in Australia.”
