Can a Horse Carry Fifty Nine Kilos and Win a Melbourne Cup?

Recorded October 2025 for My $1,000,000 Melbourne Cup Bet. Any figures mentioned are from that time.

Every Melbourne Cup we end up at the same argument. One horse is clearly the best horse in the race on figures, but he is up near the top of the weights while the horses around him are carrying seven or eight kilos less. Al Rifa is that horse. On my numbers he is the best in the race by a long way. The question is whether 59 kilos on a firm Australian track cancels that out over the last 150 metres.

The figures say he is well clear

He ran second in the Eclipse, which is a top class 2,000 metre race. He won the Curragh Cup with 62 kilos and he was strong through the line in the Irish St Leger with 61 and a half. He looked like he wanted to go another lap. So he is actually dropping three kilos here, even allowing for the different weight limits in those races. On pure figures I have him six lengths better than the second best horse in the field. He comes here with better ratings than Rekindling and Twilight Payment. In the Curragh he ran a faster time than those horses. Only four horses have broken three minutes in the Irish St Leger since 2000, and two of them were Vinnie Roe and Brown Panther, neither of whom won a Cup here. He has travelled too, running third in Saudi Arabia behind a very good Japanese horse. Mark Zahra is on, and Joseph O'Brien knows how to prepare one for this.

Why a good 2,000 metre horse often makes the best stayer

This is the part people underrate. The horses that go on and win Melbourne Cups are usually the ones who have been competitive at middle distance first. Cox Plate types. They have that turn of foot and then they get up in trip and keep it. Al Rifa has that profile. He was competitive over 2,000 metres as an older horse, and after the Irish St Leger it looks like the 3,200 will not be a problem. Compare that to a horse like Vauban, who is a dead set stayer, out of hurdle races. A stayer will run the trip out. He just does not have the same gear change at the end of it.

The weight is still the real problem

Adam's argument is the one I keep coming back to. Valiant King is on 51 kilos. River of Stars is down there too. That is eight kilos and seven and a half kilos he has to give away, and it all gets paid in the last 150 metres. It has been a long time since a horse did that here. Think Big carried 58 and a half for his second win, and before that Rainlover might have carried 60 in 1969. In the Irish St Leger the second horse, who had won six from six, carried 58, so there was only about three kilos in it. That is a very different task to this one. He ticks every other box for me. Weight is the one that does not tick.

So he is on my shortlist and he stays there. But at what he is in the market, the class and the weight already cancel each other out, and there is nothing left over for me to bet into. No value, no bet. That is the whole call.

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More from Kingsley

• How Much Does Weight Really Matter in a Melbourne Cup?
• Why Extra Bets in a Race Wreck Your Profit
• "Did You Let Emotion Take Over in the Melbourne Cup?"

From the full video: My $1,000,000 Melbourne Cup Bet

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