But it's also a little bit about perseverance. About family. About friends. About dreams. About respect. Trying to earn it. Over and over and over again. And then maybe still not getting it.

"I'm lucky I've got a horse like him, but I'm also very respectful that I've got a good horse," shrugs Sydney concreter Mark Carusi, the breeder and part-owner of $3 million Doncaster Mile favourite and three-time group 1 winner Le Romain.

"You've got to respect the fact you can race a good horse. I can sit here saying, 'I'm a genius because I bred him, how good am I going?' But we're not like that. I never get involved with the trainer or hassle [trainer] Kris [Lees], I just respect I've got a horse like [Le Romain]."

But how many people really respect the unfashionable horse - with perhaps even more unfashionable owners - which keeps making making fools of many?

Sales companies didn't want him and Carusi, with his brother Tony, told an interested buyer one day Le Romain, then unraced, was theirs for just $40,000. The buyer only had $20,000.

Add a couple of zeroes - yep, $2 million - and that was the last offer for Le Romain and counting. And the Carusis still didn't bite.

"What he's done for us now ... we couldn't sell him," Tony says. "We're living the dream. It's crazy how good he's turned out to be. But it can be annoying he doesn't get the credit."

It won't matter to the siblings should Le Romain cement his name in Randwick mile history. Or their electrician classroom buddies Tony Agius and Tony Labbozzetta. Or another concreter, Lou Nicaj. Ditto cake shop king Pino Serratore. And even Steve and Sara Livaja, who once decked out their one-year-old in Le Romain's colours at the races. They're all along for the ride.

And all will probably walk out of the Theatre of the Horse minutes before the Doncaster with the horse everyone needs to beat.

But to understand what it means to have Le Romain in a Doncaster, you have to understand where the Carusis have come from. Not so much they waited near on 20 years in between city winners until Le Romain arrived, but everything in between. It's always the journey, never the destination.

"We've had 10 or 15 horses in the last 10 years - a couple we bred, a couple we bought - but we had so much bad luck," Tony says. "Horses would break down.

"All the guys that have stuck with us including Tony and Steve ... I don't know how they did. It's incredible they stuck with us. It's amazing this has happened."

It took another dose of bad luck with a smart mare they had with close friend and trainer Erwin Takacs for the wheels to be put in place for the good luck to start. The horse broke down at her first start in 2008 and the Carusis, not wanting to see their $90,000 investment go to waste, turned their hand to breeding.

Lolapalooza would throw them two very handy racehorses, the second of which is Le Romain's stablemate Beretta. But she hasn't had a live foal since him.

Le Romain was the product of the Carusis wanting to expand their broodmare band at a Darley reduction sale. They dipped into their pockets and the budget broke at $30,000. They didn't know if they would come home with anything. Luckily they only had to pay $18,000 for Mignard, a modest Hawkesbury maiden winner from 11 starts.

Her first foal looked promising, but suffered a fatal injury in a trial before she raced. The second one was nothing to write home about. Her third foal? Bingo. Not that any auction house wanted to know about him at the time.

"When Le Romain was a yearling we tried to get him into a sale and they turned him down," Tony says.

"Laurie [McCarthy] from Greta West [Stud] looks after our horses and Laurie had four or five going to the Premier [sale] and they accepted three of his horses and turned ours down. Laurie rang up and said, 'did he get accepted? He was better than my three put together'."

The father of Black Caviar's rider Luke Nolen, Vin, does a little bit of breaking in. Le Romain came across his radar.

Echoing McCarthy's sentiments, he told the Carusis they were going to have fun with the horse. A world-weary Mark told him he had heard that before. "But you haven't f---ing heard it from me before," Vin barked.

He had seen a few in his time.

As the Carusis prepared to ship Le Romain to the stables of Takacs, the trainer had what was believed to be an accident while trying to swim one of his horses at a Kembla Grange pool. He died seven months later. The brothers were devastated. Least of all, they needed to find another trainer.

They had raced former stakes winner Troon with Newcastle-based Lees' late father Max and thought it would be ideal if his son could now manage their small band of horses.

"Kris doesn't give much away," Tony says. "His father was the same. Even with us you get on the phone with him and he'll give you 10 words, but we know what he's like. There's a 20-year friendship there. And he knows exactly where the horse is."

Which just happens to be a favourite for one of the biggest races on the Australian calendar, the "fifth major" if you like. If you haven't been a Waterhouse or Waller it's been pretty hard to get your name on the Donny honour roll of late.

But a couple of concreters are on the brink of changing that. And they have much preferred a hand of poker rather than prancing around a sales complex in the days before the biggest race of their lives.

"Ninety-nine per cent of it is luck," Mark says. "This horse has come through with no major injuries and it's been 16 starts and he's won three group 1s. All going well Saturday will be four.

"And we might only breed four or five a year, but we are now one of the big boys."

To which his brother just smiles.

"And don't worry, we love taking on the big boys."