THE high Australian dollar, extremely generous - by European standards - prizemoney and the status of the Melbourne Cup as the world's premier staying race are all continuing to make the Victorian spring carnival an ever more attractive target for foreign raiders, reports The Age.It says: But, says Racing Victoria's international racing scout Leigh Jordon, European trainers are beginning to cotton on that there are riches other than the Melbourne Cup to plunder Down Under during the spring, with
THE high Australian dollar, extremely generous - by European standards - prizemoney and the status of the Melbourne Cup as the world's premier staying race are all continuing to make the Victorian spring carnival an ever more attractive target for foreign raiders, reports The Age.
It says: But, says Racing Victoria's international racing scout Leigh Jordon, European trainers are beginning to cotton on that there are riches other than the Melbourne Cup to plunder Down Under during the spring, with the $2.5 million Caulfield Cup starting to loom larger in their plans.
Jordon, who yesterday returned from his annual trip to Europe where he spent much of July soliciting high-class entries for Australia's most prestigious races, concedes that the country's weight-for-age championship, the Cox Plate, will always find it difficult to attract high-class international entries. Not because the race, with its $3 million purse, isn't worth winning: it simply falls at the wrong time of the year to attract the best of the overseas brigade as the northern hemisphere championship events, such as England's newly established Champions Day at Ascot and the Breeders' Cup in the US, take place around the same time.
But, says Jordon, his trip to the UK, France and Germany proved productive as a number of trainers are beginning to see the wisdom of targeting a race like the 2400-metre Caulfield Cup as an end in itself, not merely as preparation for the 3200-metre Melbourne Cup.
And Jordon is hopeful that French handler Alain de Royer-Dupre, who saddled Americain to win the 2010 Melbourne Cup, could have two in the race this time, with the former champion (who ran a close-up fourth behind countryman Dunaden last year) accompanied by Reliable Man, who ran fourth (two places ahead of Dunaden) in a hotly contested King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes on Saturday at Ascot. (www.theage.com.au)