We recently recapped another fantastic Melbourne Cup Carnival, topped off by Without A Fight’s brilliant win. With 2023’s Cup been and gone, we’re looking at where our winning Melbourne Cup horses have come from in their prep as well as taking a peek at 2024’s very early favourites.
Top Preps for Cup Horses
We’d like to think there is at least some similarity in how Melbourne Cup runners are prepped. The only trouble of course is that there are a number of top lead-up races heading to Flemington.
Of the last ten winners, two took in the Herbert Power shortly before the Melbourne Cup. There could be a trend scenario here however, as both Protectionist (2014) and Prince Of Penzance (2015) were some time ago.
As if to highlight the trend aspect, unless of course it’s simple coincidence, another race was highted recently. No Melbourne Cup winner had taken in the Turnbull for quite some time. That is until Vow And Declare was fourth in the race in 2019 before winning the Cup.
Very shortly after (2021), Verry Elleegant also took fourth in the Turnbull before scoring at Flemington via the Cox Plate.
Crossing over with that nugget of info is the importance of the Cox Plate. The best weight-for-age race around, it supplied not only Verry Elleegant in 2021 but also Gold Trip in 2022.
Though Gold Trip was well beaten in the Cox Plate, he was second before that in the Caulfield Cup. That race also produced this year’s champ Without A Fight. The trend aspect of lead-up races therefore is fascinating, but not very helpful to us.
The fact that the Cox Plate, run over a little more than 2000 metres, and the Caulfield Cup run over 2400 metres are now the top recent preps is vital info however when you combine it with breeding trends.
Melbourne Cup Winning Pedigrees
Over the last ten years, Cup-winning pedigrees have changed. Monsun, a middle-distance horse and good sire of stayers, was responsible for winners in 2014 and 2016. In 2015 and 2017, winning sires were Pentire and High Chaparral, also good stayers. Since then, everything has changed.
2018 winner Cross Counter was the first of three Cup winners for Teofilo in six years. Twilight Payment (2020) and Without A Fight having since added to the list. Teofilo was an outstanding youngster in Europe who never raced beyond 1400m.
Outstrip (Gold Trip, 2022) was a miler while Vow And Declare’s sire (2019) was even quicker. Declaration Of War was a miler who could stay 2000m, and was out of a mare by a sprinter.
Those with speedier breeding are certainly doing well. This may well mean continuing to look at the Cox Plate and Caulfield Cup, even the losing horses.
Early favourites for next year include Soulcombe ($15), Without A Fight ($21), First Immortal ($26), Middle Earth ($26), Zardozi ($26) and Just Fine ($34).
