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Factbox - Profile of 'Cups King' Bart Cummings

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Factbox on Australia's most successful horse trainer Bart Cummings, who died on Sunday aged 87. EARLY LIFE * Born James Bartholomew Cummings in Adelaide on Nov. 14, 1927 into a horse racing family, the son of acclaimed trainer Jim. * Worked for his father as a strapper, helping him prepare Comic Court for the 1950 Melbourne Cup with the stallion, carrying 59kgs, winning the 3,200m handicap race by three lengths in an Australasian record of three minutes, 19.5 seconds. * Obtained his trainer's licence in 1953 and set up his own stables. * Achieved his first Group One victory with Stormy Passage in the 1958 South Australia Derby. MELBOURNE CUP * Entered his first horse, Asian Court, in the Melbourne Cup in 1958, though it finished a distant 12th to winner Baystone. * Has a breakout year in 1965, entering three runners in the Melbourne Cup with Light Fingers taking the race ahead of stablemate Ziema. * Won the 1966 Melbourne Cup with Galilee and the 1967 race with Red Handed, though he did not win it again until 1974 when gelding Think Big ran down stablemate, and favourite, Leilani in the last 50 metres. * Think Big, which was part-owned by Malaysia's first Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman, also won the race in 1975. * Won the Melbourne Cup twice more in the 1970s with Gold and Black (1977) and Hyperno (1979) but did not win the race at all in the 1980s. * Produced successive winners again in 1990 (Kingston Rule)and 1991 (Let's Elope). * Won twice more in the 1990s with Saintly (1996) then Rogan Josh (1999), which had also won the McKinnon Stakes just three days beforehand. * Cummings' 12th and final victory in the Melbourne Cup came in 2008 with Viewed, a 41-1 outsider ridden by Blake Shinn, pipping the Luca Camani-trained Bauer in a photo finish. * No other trainer has won the race more than seven times. OTHER ACHIEVEMENTS * Horses trained by Cummings also won the VRC Oaks nine times, Caulfield Cup seven times, the Cox Plate five, and Golden Slipper four times. * He trained 268 Group One winners and won nearly 7,000 races in total. * Was awarded the Order of Australia in 1982 for service to the horse racing industry. * Inducted into the Sport Australia Hall of Fame in 1991 and was the inaugural inductee into the Australian Horse Racing Hall of Fame in 2001. * Carried the torch for the 2000 Sydney Olympics down the straight at Flemington raceway. * Was nicknamed the "Cups King" for his success in the Melbourne Cup. * Upgraded to a legend of Australian horse racing by the sport's Hall of Fame in 2008. * Entered a training partnership with grandson James in 2013 and combined for two Group One victories before his death on Sunday after several months of ill health. (Compiled by Greg Stutchbury; Editing by John O'Brien)