It is the day after the 2005 Caulfield Cup, and Freedman is in a grave dug on the hill, underneath the oak trees on brother Anthony's property on the Mornington Peninsula. He is ensuring Mummify is standing up and facing east towards the sun, just like the great American Indian warrior horses from centuries past. The great grey sprinter Schillaci rests in a grave a few feet away.

The day before, part-owner John O'Neill thinks his horse has clinched the Caulfield Cup in the shadows of the post despite carrying a big weight. Instead, he has finished third.

Seconds later, it is clear the horse is in trouble with a leg injury. Nobody knows how bad. Freedman sprints out onto the course proper, where jockey Danny Nikolic delivers the devastating news.

"They're going to put him down," he tells Freedman. "No, they're not," Freedman insists angrily. "The first person who goes near that horse, I'll belt."

"I will too," promises Nikolic, enthusiastically.

Instead of suffering the indignity of being euthanised before a heaving crowd and a live television audience, Mummify is taken to the nearby vet hospital and given painkillers to numb the broken leg.

"He's finished," Freedman is advised. When others have gone home, he is still there, right by his horse's side.

After the grave is dug the next day, Freedman cannot bear to watch as the dirt is shovelled in.

"So I sat and had a beer on my own," he recalls. "When they buried him, we took our cans of beer up, Johnny said a few words, we had a bit of a blub and we reminisced about the horse.

"People see the glitz and think trainers are ruthless, multi-millionaires and all this rubbish. We all love the horses. That's why we do it. The money, if it comes, is nice. But we don't do it for the money because there are a lot of times when there is no money.

"All of us, with few exceptions, are just people who love working with horses."

Freedman won the Melbourne Cup and created history with Makybe Diva that year, but stablemate Mummify wouldn't have been far away. He was controversially scratched on the morning of the race in 2003, and then struggled inthe bog at Flemington the following year.

In many respects, the end of Mummify shows why Freedman stunned the racing world in 2011 when he announced his retirement, why he took a three-year sabbatical, why he came back, why he went into partnership with Anthony, and why he has a live chance with Our Ivanhowe for the race he has won five times – more than any other living trainer after Bart Cummings passed away earlier this year.

"People might wonder why he took a few years off," says O'Neill, a long-time friend, backer and also part-owner of Our Ivanhowe.

"But when you have the intensity that Lee has shown, for 40years, you need a break. With Mummify, I have never seen him so upset. He had identified and styled the horse, he had built up its confidence. He treats his horses like they are his kids."

When you meet Freedman at his Flemington stables, and he leans back on his chair and crosses his feet up on his desk, he does not seem to have a care in the world.

It is in stark contrast to a memorable column for Melbourne's Herald-Sun in 2013, when he revealed how burnt out he was. "You never say never, and who knows I might one day hang out my shingle again, but it's not on my radar," he wrote, suggesting he would never return to full-time training.

Indeed, ask around the track what typifies Freedman and the words "workaholic", "intense" and "never missed a day of working with horses in his life" come flying back at you.

More than one person reports that he could celebrate a win until 2am but will front the stables two hours later, no matter what. The horse always comes first.

Simply suggest the unrelenting nature of the horse business meant he would flame out at some stage, he candidly says this: "It was the catalyst for a lot of problems. I was trying to run a massive business. We had 300 horses at one stage. I had a marriage breakdown. Battled the bottle and depression. It was getting too much for me, so I needed to take a chill."

It is a decade and one day since Makybe Diva won her third Melbourne Cup. That was Freedman's fifth. But it was his first with Tawriffic in 1989 that changed everything. That year, he watched his rock-star galloper Super Impose hit the lead 200m from the finishing post, and Freedman dared to dream.  "Oh my God," he said to nobody. "He's going to win the Melbourne Cup."

Then another horse came "hurtling down the outside".

"What the bloody hell's that?" he asked one of his brothers. "It's the other one."

The other one was Tawriffic at 33-1. Super Impose came second, completing a Freedman quinella.

"Tawriffic was never a brilliant horse," Freedman says. "He was just an out-and-out dour stayer. After the Mackinnon on the Saturday, I started to actually believe that he could do something on Tuesday. I went into the race believing – probably one of the few people who did – that this horse could be in the frame. That race changed the stable's image in a lot of people's eyes. It was a defining moment."

The Freedman brothers – Lee, Anthony, Richard, Michael – dumped racing etiquette on its arse after that.

They won at Sandown early on and stunned the sprinkling of reporters when they produced business cards. With the exception of Tommy Smith, who knew the cheapest form of advertising came through the newspaper, they sought the attention when other trainers turned the other way.

Without trying, the Freedman brothers made racing cool for an emerging generation of fans. At the front was Lee, who always had a strong sunglasses game. He made Wayfarers fashionable again, although a sponsorship was ultimately struck with Bolle instead of Ray-Bans. "I was really disappointed – Ray-Bans never came to the party," he laughs. "They figured there were bigger stars wearing their sunglasses than me! We projected a cool image, with three-piece suits and sunnies. In that era, it resonated."

After the Cup of 1989, the phone rang hot with cashed-up owners wanting the Freedmans to prepare their horses. Like the Freedmans themselves, the thoroughbreds became rock stars. Super Impose. Doriemus. Subzero. Mahogany. Naturalism. Schillaci ...

"We were blessed," Freedman says. "One night, I had a mate over for dinner. He went for a walk in the backyard and came back shaking his head. He said: 'Do you know there's seven group 1 horses in that little stable out the back'?"

But the ebb and flow of the business over the next two decades took its toll, wore him down.

"They were heady days," he says. "Then, I was that driven and it really rubbed people the wrong way. It was good for my business. But when you get into a situation when you get so many of those good horses it's a rush – and the rush must come to an end. Then you have to deal with the comedown. When you are in a public business – training racehorses or a politician or a rock star – that period comes to an end and it's how you deal with it afterwards. It all revolved around me."

He laughs. "And rightfully so, I suppose."

After his three years away from the Freedman operation, during which he consulted to Melbourne Cup obsessive Lloyd Williams and prominent New Zealander Sir Peter Vela, the itch returned.

"Everyone says: 'You went to the Melbourne Cup last year and you got the bug back'," Freedman says. "I didn't actually. I started thinking about it in the winter. I was having a great time, spending a lot of money and travelling about. I didn't want to keep doing this all the time. So I just floated the idea with Anthony about giving him a hand. He wanted a partnership."

Soon after his return, O'Neill approached some owners who previously had horses with the stable – including Doriemus part-owner Rod "Butcher" Russell – and told them they had to help finda Melbourne Cup horse for Freedman. They found German import Our Ivanhowe, who was reportedly bought for $3 million, although Freedman deflects questions about the price. "I don't know what they paid for him and what he cost is of no interest to me," he says. "But this is the race we've had in mind all along."

When Freedman took the horse to Adelaide in May, and he finished midfield at Morphettville in his first Australian start, he was not concerned. "He's going good," he assured the owners. "Let's keep our eye on the prize."

The horse's third behind Mongolian Khan and Trip To Paris in the Caulfield Cup suggested he needed more fitness. "It's taken a long time to get that real fitness into him," he says. "In the last two weeks, that's really come along. His fitness is there now."

The horse is ready. So is Freedman. You glance at the pair of Wayfarers sitting on his cluttered desk.

"I got them back," he smiles. "And my mojo."