adelaide

A few days after the running of the Caulfield Cup, my mate Graeme was still down in the dumps. All week he had been thinking that the Japanese stayer, Delta Blue, having won over four million and recognised by the Australian handicapper as the best horse in the race, deserved more than the insulting odds of 150/1. He kept quiet about it until Saturday afternoon in the pub when he put $30 each way on it and constructed a trifecta with a mate. Two selections each, Box Four for a full unit, $12 each. Graeme chose Delta Blue and Activation and his mate threw in Aqua d’Amore and Tawqeet. “What’s Tawqeet’s number?” he asked as he filled in the ticket. “Eight.”They watched their horses finish in the first four and the rest is… sour history. Graeme presented his ticket for a nil collect. Tawqeet’s number was nine. The trifecta paid $27,000 but not to them. They had the first four, too, which paid over $300,000 but not to them. He collected $900 for his place bet but that felt like pin money.I had a big watch and some of my cash on the other Japanese stayer, Pop Rock, which ran wide, didn’t handle the last turn well, was 11th at the 400 metre mark and came home at the same speed as the winner. Tawqeet ducked inside, being ridden for luck, which appeared in the form of a less-than-adequate gap four or five strides before the finish. Pop Rock stayed outside, but its gaps closed at the end, to finish a creditable 1.4 lengths seventh.It was a brilliant Caulfield Cup, dominated for much of the race by the Freedman trio who were the first horses beaten and by Gai Waterhouse’s Aqua d’Amore who was third from the 800 metre mark. Gai would have been devastated to miss out on her first significant Melbourne prize by a lousy long neck. There were strong finishes by Activation, 7th at the turn and 0.7 lengths from the winner and Dizelle 13th at the turn and 1.6 lengths from the winner.This spring already belongs to David Hayes. His horses have won over four million so far this season including the Winning Edge, the Thousand Guineas, the Caulfield Cup and, of course, last Saturday’s Cox Plate where, in its last race, Fields of Omagh moved from Good Horse to Champion stature. The announcement of the horse’s retirement in the winning circle was reminiscent of scenes at Flemington last year when Makybe Diva, by winning its third Melbourne Cup in a row, shifted from Champion to Legend in the call and was retired before the jockey dismounted. As then, everybody wept at Caulfield.Last week, my lightweight roughie, Irazu, needed to win the Geelong Cup in order to overcome the ballot conditions in the Melbourne Cup. From barrier 16, the little thing couldn’t find the fence and, at the last turn, had already run its race. It will struggle to make the Cup but we will watch it in 2007. The New Zealand Mandela broke early for a good two-length win and has set up a good double-omen bet with Nuclear Free on Cup Day for the lefties. This is the third horse in the world to be called Mandela. There was an Australian and German Mandela. None of them have any two-mile form.The Geelong Cup threw up the fast finishing Vanquished as one to watch. As a 7yo finishing in the first five 26 times from 34 starts and with 10,000 metres under its belt this preparation, I’d almost want to pick it at 50kg in the Cup, except that it hasn’t run beyond 2400 metres. On A Jeune came 5.6 lengths sixth in the Geelong Cup and was unsighted in the race. Second to Makybe Diva last year, the 6yo gelding has drifted to 17/1 in the Melbourne Cup and has had a miserable year, racing around 57-60kg. On Tuesday, it drops to 53kg and won’t know itself. On a Jeune has done the hard 10,000 metres this spring and stays in contention. I write a week away from Cup Day and the field won’t be finalised until two or three days after we print. This Saturday’s Mackinnon and Saab Quality were once rated as key races in the Melbourne Cup preparation but only the desperate trainers these days give their jockeys instructions to win these races at any cost.Hayes always fancied his imported Tawqeet more for the Flemington Cup than the Caulfield Cup. He has everything going for him at the moment. Tawqeet deserves to be favourite and will be in my trifecta. There is no reason why Hayes shouldn’t take the grand sweep this year for only the third time in history. But the best race in the world is always full of intrigue. Tawqeet was ridden for luck in the Caulfield Cup and the Metropolitan and made full use of it when it came. Luck has a habit of favouring the brave but abandoning the true. Favourites win the Melbourne Cup less than a quarter of the time. There are other horses. Gerard Whately, on the ABC’s Offsiders on Sunday morning, has a credible theory about the raiders versus the imports. “They’ve sent 55 raiders over the years to our big race and only two of them have placed,” he says. “They parachute in, we pamper them, they fail and we never hear of them again. But the imports learn the local customs of frequent high speed and tight racing and the punters warm to them.” Whately dismisses Yeats as a chance. Won’t even place, he says. He warms to horses like Tawqeet that have become acclimatised to the Australian way of racing.It’s important not to be spooked by the high rating European raiders but this year, I can’t leave out the two Japanese horses in spite of Eye Popper’s 40/1 second in the Caulfield Cup last year and its subsequent flop in the Melbourne Cup. Every horse is allowed one bad race. The 6yo Delta Blues won a 3000 metre race third up in 2004 after a 120-day spell and a 3,600m race second-up in 2005 after a 315-day spell. This year it will be attempting to win a 3,200m race secondup after a 174-day spell. Pop Rock, who has only won $2 million, is untried beyond 2600m and may be more of a risk. I liked its Caulfield Cup effort and I’m prepared to see what it can do at the roomier Flemington. Yeats won a Group One 4024m race at Ascot first up after a 242-day spell and may be the world’s best stayer, but I’m prepared to leave it out selection. Like all of the raiders, it may well be good enough to place. If humans take a long time to recover from that shocking flight from Europe, horses being much bigger, require much longer to recover. On the other hand, the Japanese horses fly here within their own time zone. In every Melbourne Cup field, there is always a swag of promising horses that are untried at the two miles.. Graeme Rogerson has two of the best this year, two five year olds – Activation and Zipping – who have both had superb lead-ups to this race. Of the two, I favour Activation with its less-than-one-length finish in its last three 2400m starts, twice behind Tawqeet. I’m passing on Vanquished, Our Smoking Joe and Mandela but I won’t leave them out of the trifecta. The Melbourne Cup has a high attrition rate. There are only four horses still in the 50 declarers which ran last year: On a Jeune (1.1 lengths 2nd in 2005 and 9 lengths 11th in 2004), Dizelle (6.7 lengths 11th in 2005), Demerger (7.8 lengths 13th) and Dizelle (6.7 lengths 11th). You have to respect any horse’s ability to survive a two-mile campaign and then back up for another go. You know that their trainers wouldn’t subject them to another campaign if they thought the horse wasn’t suitable. Others who have completed the distance include the 2005 Sydney Cup winner Mahtoum, the 2006 Brisbane Cup winner Art Success, the 2004 Adelaide Cup winner Pantani and the 2005 Adelaide Cup winner Demerger.The 2006 Adelaide Cup winner, Exalted Time, was 15 lengths last to Mandela in the Geelong Cup which shows how irrelevant the Adelaide Cup has become after the poorly-advised state government agreed to shift the Adelaide carnival from autumn to summer this year, when the best stayers in the nation were not ready to race two miles. In one stupid move, more than 100 years of racing culture was given the flick. The Adelaide Cup has already been reduced to Group Two status and, in 2007, if Hayes has his way, it will be become a 2000 or 2500 metre race to lead up to the Sydney Cup a few weeks later. Bart Cummings has complained bitterly in the past that staying races are gradually being eroded in Australia and he is right. SA should be ashamed of itself for allowing its Adelaide Cup to be downgraded. Crunch time. Six to win – On a Jeune, Tawqeet, Delta Blues, Pop Rock, Activation, Demerger, in that order. Another six to come second – Yeats, Railings, Zipping, Art Success, Mahtoum – and the field to come third. That’s a half-unit $1452 trifecta. It was never going to be easy this year, without Makybe Diva in the mix.I normally alert readers to a David Hayes special on Cup Day at Morphettville, something at high odds calculated to give well-oiled connections in the tents a thrill for the day as they sip their champagne. This year, you’d be wise to back every single Hayes runner in Adelaide and Melbourne. He’s won nearly everything else so far this season.