The Melbourne Cup doesn't beat Frankie Dettori 16 times in a row?

Well, it does. It has.

Just like the tennis player Vitas Gerulaitis, who needed 17 matches to beat American ace Jimmy Connors, Dettori was supposed to jump on to the biggest tank in Lloyd Williams' Melbourne Cup artillery and crush that pesky little monkey once and for all.

But the only star jump Dettori will take pleasure in will be the one when he lobs off the plane at Heathrow. He couldn't get out of the country quickly enough.

Like the year before owing to his adventurous ride on Wicklow Brave, Dettori saw more blades of Flemington grass than most other jockeys. Almandin was wide early, wide middle and wandering late. Perhaps he was the victim of a sticky gate, perhaps not.

"I was stuck three wide, but the horse was flat," Dettori said. "He never carried me today, he raced like a flat horse."

The long-time Cup favourite, displaced by Marmelo 24 hours before the race, finished 12th and about the same amount of lengths from the Williams-owned Rekindling. The curse lives on.

Approached by a couple of reporters before he left Flemington, Dettori said: "We will return."

Then he turned his back and walked away before another question could be fired at him. Melbourne's nightlife was far more appealing than a second question.

It contrasted with his mood half an hour earlier, jovially chatting with Williams as he emerged from the jockeys' room. A cavalcade of the owner's jockeys - six in total - each greeted their boss before the race he obsesses over.

The eventual winning rider Corey Brown got only a pat on the back and barely a word of advice. Talking had been done.

Williams' son Nick quipped to Dettori: "Didn't have something better to do?"

Dettori, 46, could have thought of a thousand things soon after the race.

If not breaking the hearts of thousands of Almandin backers across the country wasn't enough, Dettori conspired to deal the biggest blow to the fairytale horse of the race, Single Gaze's rider Kathy O'Hara complaining of being shortened up by Almandin in the opening stages of the race. Single Gaze never recovered.

Chief steward Terry Bailey later claimed he was "satisfied" Dettori's actions didn't deserve punishment, the rider quickly scurrying up to the plush VRC boxes where the rock star treatment awaited.

It was in contrast to two years ago when Dettori's desperation to win a Melbourne Cup had half his rival jockeys fuming. He walked over to the quick-witted Jim Cassidy, himself never short of a line and due to retire two days later, and joked he almost "killed him in his last Melbourne Cup ride".

Stewards didn't see the funny side, writing Dettori a $20,000 fine and telling him to cool his heels for a month. Michelle Payne and Prince Of Penzance were the only combination to beat home Dettori, the anti-hero to a nation's instant darling.

American UK-based banker Rich Ricci was upstairs in a lavish private suite after the race. He owned the Dettori-ridden Max Dynamite.

Ricci didn't know what to think, but he questioned whether the ride could have been better. Dettori leapt into Ricci's arms, then smiled.

"You can't stay mad at Frankie for long," Ricci shrugged this week.

Try telling that to Australian punters, who flocked late in the piece to plonk serious money on a back-to-back Cup winner.

And so to 2018, where it will be 25 years since the race that stops the nation changed forever when Irish raider Vintage Crop became the first international horse to win the Melbourne Cup.

And also the first time Dettori rode in the great race. He's still not off the mark.

Clock's ticking.

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