If you are going to have a prepost bet on the Melbourne Cup, the time to have it is debatable. You can be a lucky Brian Blackwell and pick something at astronomical odds, and who is to say that BB won’t do it again?
So maybe when the serious odds are posted, around early August, you should step in and have a small investment on anything you fancy at 100 / 1 or more. Even 50 / 1 will do it, as I did with Makybe Diva. But you have to have a better reason than “”just a feeling”. There has to be some reason, some logic, something that suggests to you that a horse is worth a try.
Nothing, I repeat nothing, is worth a try in the Melbourne Cup in the early days unless it is 20/1 or more, and then you would need to be able to argue it with yourself in front of the mirror, and win the argument.
No other race, in my view, is worth a bet at that early stage. Later on, the Caulfield Cup field will start to look reasonably predictable. At that stage, probably the third or fourth week in September, you can get some pretty nice bets. You can of course fall flat on your face.
Things can happen as they did a few years ago when Lady Whatsername slipped her horse into the field. All good luck to her (and she certainly had plenty), but the horse was not qualified and it is as simple as that. If you supported Lisa’s Game (at 100/1), and I know two friends who did, you were entitled to feel very cheesed off.
Especially after one of the most glaring pieces of interference in modern racing history was turned down at the appeal stage. I know one punter who still shakes his head when the subject of that appeal is raised, and I know plenty who still ask why that old horse was ever allowed to start.
Why wait until the end of September for the Caulfield Cup? Frankly, unlike the 3200 metres of the Melbourne Cup, the 2400 metres seems to attract a whole pile of “”wannabes”. They want to be in it, and their connections for some unknown reason push on.
By about the end of September, you can usually toss out 10 or 12 of those that are featuring somewhere in the market. That done, you can sometimes identify one or two which have been overlooked. Perhaps a filly that ran particularly well in an Oaks.
Perhaps a four-year-old mare, or a male which has got under the handicapper’s guard and is either looking as though it can get the distance against the best, or has already shown as a three-year-old that in fact it can do this.
Arctic Scent in 1996 was my last big achievement in this department, and I got 40 / 1 at the very beginning of October. It’s interesting to note that she was trained at the time by Jim Mason, but in all of her preparation she had been trained by Gerald Ryan.
First published August 2005, Practical Punting Magazine