GERRY Harvey, Australia's biggest racehorse owner and one of the largest breeders in Australasia, maintains that a Melbourne Cup winner bred and trained in Australia is as far off as ever, reports The Age.It says: Harvey, 73, the architect behind the Harvey Norman chain, believes that Australia hasn't got the breeding stock to produce a classic stayer and trainers have not got the ability to make a horse into a Melbourne Cup contender.''They won't like me saying it, but trainers in Australia don

GERRY Harvey, Australia's biggest racehorse owner and one of the largest breeders in Australasia, maintains that a Melbourne Cup winner bred and trained in Australia is as far off as ever, reports The Age.

It says: Harvey, 73, the architect behind the Harvey Norman chain, believes that Australia hasn't got the breeding stock to produce a classic stayer and trainers have not got the ability to make a horse into a Melbourne Cup contender.

''They won't like me saying it, but trainers in Australia don't really know how to prepare a stayer. Perhaps one or two can, but overall we are just a sprinting-driven nation,'' he said.

''Put it this way. We are the best in the world at getting great horses under 1400 metres and the worst in the world at getting them past 2000 metres.''

He said it was a commercial reality for his operation to look past 2010 Melbourne Cup winner Americain as a stallion prospect.

''We looked at Americain - a Melbourne Cup winner - as a possible stallion, but the harder we looked, it seemed that no one in Australasia would send him a mare so we dropped off him,'' he said.

''And then we had Galileo come to Australia and what did we do with him? We pushed and pushed his offspring and he was a complete failure and yet a successful sire in Europe. That's got to be telling you something.'' (www.theage.com.au)