Makybe Diva (foaled 21 March 1999) is a champion Australian Thoroughbred racehorse who is the only horse to win three Melbourne Cups and the only mare to win it more than once. She achieved the feat in 2003, 2004, and 2005. She also won the 2005 Cox Plate. She was the highest stakes-earner in Australian history, winning more than A$ 14 million. She is by Desert King (a winner of the Irish Derby and Irish 2,000 Guineas) out of Tugela by Riverman (USA). Tugela was also the dam of the Australian stakes-winners, Musket and Valkyrie Diva. Makybe Diva is owned by South Australian tuna fisherman Tony Šantić, who named her after five of his employees - Maureen, Kylie, Belinda, Diane, and Vanessa - by taking the first two letters from each of their names. Background Tony Šantić's bloodstock agent John Foote purchased Tugela in foal to Desert King for 60,000 guineas at the December 1998 Tattersall's Sale. As normally happens with Santic's British-purchased horses, she was taken to Dick Fowlston's Britton House Stud in Somerset to board before being sent on to Australia. Tugela gave birth to a filly at five minutes past midnight on 21 March 1999. The filly was offered for sale at the 1999 Tatts Newmarket foal sale, but did not make the reserve. Named Makybe Diva, the filly remained at Britton House Stud until August 2000, when she and Tugela were shipped to Australia. Racing career 2002: Three-Year-Old Season Originally trained by David Hall, Makybe Diva made her racetrack debut in late July 2002, as a three-year-old, in a maiden at Benalla, Victoria, and finished fourth. 2002/2003: Four-Year-Old Season In her next start two weeks later - and now classed as a four-year-old - Makybe Diva began a six-race winning sequence in a maiden at Wangaratta, which culminated in stakes wins, three months later, in the Werribee Cup (2,000 m) and the Queen Elizabeth Stakes (2,500 m). The last win was significant in that it qualified the mare for the following year's Melbourne Cup, and allowed her trainer to give her a light autumn campaign, which consisted of just two starts in relatively short races. Makybe Diva's early career was unusual in that she was unable to contest any major races against horses of her own age, such as the VRC Oaks, because she was foaled in the U.K. to the Northern Hemisphere breeding calendar. This