"Would You Back a Horse That Hasn't Run the Distance?"

Recorded September 2025 for Who Will Win the 2025 Melbourne Cup?. Any figures mentioned are from that time.

Every staying race throws up horses that have never been beyond a certain trip, and the easy thing to do is cross them out. I don't think that's right. I put the question to Adam, and his answer was simple. The distance query on its own tells you very little. What tells you something is how the horse goes about its racing, and then where it draws.

Does a distance query rule a horse out

No. Look at last year. Plenty of people said the winner couldn't run the trip, and that was enough for them to leave it out. If you had been going on the trainer's history with the race instead, you were on it. Anthony Freedman came up with his brother Lee when they all trained together, and they trained a lot of cup winners. They followed the Bart Cummings formula, nearly 10,000 metres in the legs before the race. So the horse had never gone that far, but the preparation was built to get it there. That is a different thing to an untested horse being thrown at the distance with no groundwork behind it.

It cuts the other way too. A few years back a horse arrived from Europe and went to a trainer who had only had it a few weeks. Great trainer, no question about the ability. But he was preparing a horse he had just got, and I think it might have been his first go at the race. That is a fair reason to be careful, and it has nothing to do with the distance on the page.

How the horse relaxes in its races

This is the first thing Adam looks at. You want a horse that really relaxes. Settle midfield, sit in the sweet spot, get a bit of cover, then have a turn of foot when the gaps come. That horse will get the distance because it isn't spending anything getting there. Anything that over-races, that fights the rider early, is the one that stops, and the trip gets the blame.

We don't know the pace yet, but it is usually average to above average. If that's the case, I don't want to be too far back either. Cutting the corner and charging home can work, and we have seen winners do it. But the safer profile is the relaxed one in the sweet spot. Leaders are hard to find over 3,200 metres. Might and Power did it, Twilight Payment did it, and there have been a few others, but not many. Usually it takes a strong bias, like the year the inside was on fire and the placegetters all came from close to the speed.

Why the barrier matters so much

Once you know a horse needs to relax, the gate becomes the whole story. Buckaroo is the example Adam gave. That horse needs a soft run in transit and a good barrier to be any chance. Draw him badly and he either gets caught wide or gets shuffled back, and either way the trip becomes a real question. Draw him well, let him settle, and the query looks a lot smaller.

So don't cross a horse out because of a number next to its name. Look at how it relaxes, look at who has prepared it and whether they have done it before, and then wait for the barriers before you make up your mind.

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From the full video: Who Will Win the 2025 Melbourne Cup?

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