By definition, that's most of us.

There's only one Melbourne Cup winner, one election winner, one dux of the class, one beauty queen, one successful job candidate, one big lottery winner.

Losing is something you had better get used to, because you'll be doing an awful lot of it in your life.

Many very successful people stress that losing has been a prerequisite to their success.

So, one way or another, losing is very important.

I drew my inspiration in Melbourne Cup week from two people, a jockey and a boxer.

First the boxer.

There's a bloke in England who has just hung up his gloves after a career as a loser that takes some beating.

Peter Buckley, 39, called it quits as a human punch-bag after racking up 256 defeats in 300 professional fights.

Buckley hadn't won for five years - 88 straight fights.

His value lay in being cannon fodder for rising stars.

In all, 42 future world, European, British and Commonwealth champions beat him on the way to taking titles.

He had, ahem, Buckley's chance.

But given that he repeatedly passed medical tests, authorities were powerless to revoke his licence.

Buckley was a wild kid, always in trouble with the police, which helps explain his otherwise hilarious comment: ``Boxing has been good to me over the years.''

Now for the jockey.

Les Boots claimed to be the worst jumps jockey in the world.

He had 39 rides and fell off 40 times - in one race he fell off, caught the horse and remounted, only to fall off again at the next fence.

He rode for 18 years in Adelaide, and reckoned he spent 12 of them in hospital.

Les broke just about every bone in his body.

Bookies would post 100/1 odds for every mount, no matter what the horse's form.

``Once the South Australian Jockey Club was going to bar me from riding because I was putting too big a strain on their Workers Compensation Fund,'' Les said in a hilarious interview with the great caller Bert Bryant in 1987.