Jockey Mark Zahra rides Gold Trip to win 2022 Melbourne Cup at Flemington Racecourse. Photo: photosport
After 20 years of trying, Willie Mullins will hope to join the Irish contingent of Melbourne Cup-winning trainers when favourite Vauban runs in the $A8 million ($NZ8.7 million) handicap at Flemington Racecourse on Tuesday.
Since preparing Holy Orders in his first Melbourne Cup foray in 2003, Mullins has come close to winning Australia's most prestigious race, with Max Dynamite pipped by rank outsider Prince of Penzance in 2015 and third behind Rekindling in 2017.
With six-year-old gelding Vauban, master trainer Mullins may have the ideal horse to win the taxing, two-mile handicap.
Vauban won the Copper Horse Handicap over 2800 metres by seven-and-a-half lengths at Royal Ascot in June to top the Melbourne Cup betting markets and backed it up with victory in the Ballyroan Stakes at Naas in August.
The Melbourne Cup in the mounting yard on Melbourne Cup Day at Flemington Racecourse in Melbourne, in 2015. Photo: AAP
Having first found success over jumps, Vauban's fruitful switch to flat racing was made with the Melbourne Cup in mind.
"He's the best chance we've ever had and will ever have," Mullins said of Vauban, rated a 7/2 chance by bookmakers on Monday.
Carrying 55kg, 3.5kg less than the top weight, Vauban has also drawn a favourable barrier (3) and will ride under English jockey Ryan Moore, a Melbourne Cup winner in 2014 on Protectionist.
Favourites have tended to disappoint on Cup day. The last to win was Fiorente 10 years ago.
Mullins, however, is unfazed.
"At one time I used to hate having favourites because it brings pressure, but now I don't," he said.
"I'd rather have the favourite than an outsider."
Known locally as "the race that stops the nation," Melbourne Cup glory long eluded horses trained outside Australia and New Zealand.
That changed when Vintage Crop, prepared by Irish trainer Dermot Weld, broke through in 1993 to put the race on the global map.
It has since become easier to win for horses crossing hemispheres, with Japanese, French, English and German stayers joining other Ireland-trained entrants in finding success in the last two decades.
Photo: AFP
Mullins has another runner in the 24-strong field for the Cup's 163rd running.
Absurde, a 9/1 chance, was the distant runner-up to Vauban at Royal Ascot and will ride under champion Hong Kong-based jockey Zac Purton, who steered Max Dynamite to third in the 2017 Melbourne Cup.
Gold Trip, last year's winner by a length-and-a-half from Emissary, will bid to become the first back-to-back champion since the great mare Makybe Diva claimed a hat-trick of Melbourne Cups from 2003-05.
At 6/1, Gold Trip is third favourite in betting after finishing third in the recent Caulfield Cup, a 2400 metres handicap often seen as a Melbourne Cup form guide.
But it will be tougher going for the locally trained stallion which will haul the top weight of 58.5kg, a kilo heavier than last year.
Mark Zahra, who rode Gold Trip to victory, will instead look for a second Cup win on Without A Fight, rated second favourite after winning the Caulfield Cup.
Veteran local jockey Damien Oliver, a three-times winner, had planned for Tuesday to be his 32nd and final Cup run on outside chance Alenquer but he faces a nervous wait to see if the horse will be passed fit.
Stewards on Monday found Alenquer was displaying soreness from a bruise in its near fore foot and may scratch the horse after another examination early on Tuesday.
- Reuters