Winners

Tomorrow is the $3 million W.S. Cox Plate run at Moonee Valley in Melbourne, Victoria. A difficulty with considering the chances in this race is how one might 'line up' the form of foreign horses - that is, horses from overseas, including from the Northern Hemisphere - with the form of the local horses competing in the race.

The public wins! Daryl Braithwaite returns by
poplar demand to sing at the Cox Plate tomorrow

This year, the foreign horses' form is what is called 'unexposed,' which is a way of saying they haven't done much or any racing here in Australia. And even though the Cox Plate is a race for only the best horses at their peak ages for racing at Weight-For-Age, and even though the horses from overseas racing tomorrow are the best horses in their regions, the reality of horse racing is that you might get one crop in a particular year for the particular hemisphere (Northern/Southern) that are all outstanding and so the best indeed represent exceedingly good horses, or you may get a year in which all the horses are just average and in this case 'the best' for that year only means the one or ones better than the others of that year.

And so, it may be that the foreign horses are ten lengths better than the best local horses - or, it may mean they are ten lengths less good - and we will not know until after the race is over tomorrow. So I will not be making any predictions this year.

The Cox is a race for middle distance, classic, race horses. Horses that can 'get' a derby distance of 2400 metres, or a very very strong 2000 metres (a mile and a quarter). The Cox itself is over 2040 metres, but they are strongly contested metres all the way!

The situation, however, of assessing Northern versus Southern Hemisphere horses with regard to the fast sprinters, is totally different. It is quite clear that the Southern Hemisphere horses over the last two or even three years are head and shoulders above the Northern Hemisphere horses, and this year in particular, the group of peak age horses (3+ to say 5) is outstanding across the board.

Chautauqua winning the Manikato Stakes
at the night meeting at Moonee Valley this evening

And this makes the horse I told you about late last year - Chautauqua - a very special horse indeed. In fact, he has not lost a race since I confirmed here, my early view that I considered he was a very good horse, and tonight, he displayed, in the words of one Melbourne Racing journalist: 'a mind-blowing performance that demolished a field of other very good horses...'

And you should wonder how I could have picked out this horse especially to showcase in this blog well before he demonstrated his dominant abilities on the track.

Let's keep that a mystery for a while. 

I will make one open observation though, about a specific difference between Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere horse racing, namely that I view many if not most Northern Hemisphere owners and trainers as both brutal and cynical towards their horses, and especially since most of the Winter tracks in England in particular are easily cut up and present tripping hazards with large, raised, sods all over the final furlongs, the agricultural manner in which the horses are intentionally ridden leaves a lot to be desired as far as a true 'Sport of Kings' goes. Kings don't need money so badly.

Australian and New Zealand horses are not 'soft' horses by implication, though. Far from it. 

The Cox is a genuinely 'big-money' type of race, with the breeding value of well-performing runners increasing by millions afterwards. And so, one expectation I have for tomorrow, is the possibility of a 'horse war' brought on by the overseas runners. I expect it to be a rough race. Horses that don't perform well will not go down in my estimation - and horses that do perform well can be viewed as genuinely 'robust' for your future breeding book notes...