It's a fact that in the last 10 years the race has been won by a stallion eight times with three of those winners finding a well-received place at stud, which is giving some lie to the thought that breeders in this part of world will not support such horses.
The eight winners starting from 2006 are Delta Blues, Viewed, Shocking,
Americain, Dunaden, Green Moon, Fiorente and Protectionist.Shocking was retired to Rich Hill Stud in New Zealand and in his first five seasons served books of 154, 90, 74, 74 and 63.
Despite a bit of a waning in the numbers recently nobody would expect anything of any of them until they were three-year-olds, and Shocking's first crop produced a NZ Oaks winner in Fanatic.
He's getting consistent winners too and if he can bag another couple of majors among the staying races he'll be impossible to ignore for breeders in that bracket.
Americain was retired to Swettenham Stud where he has served books of 155, 133 and 89.
Like Shocking, his service fee and yearling sale results had the "time factor" built into them but he's had more than enough support to give him the numbers for a genuine shot at success on the racetrack which is all a new stallion can ask for.
Fiorente is at Sun Stud, formerly Eliza Park, since he retired three years ago
and his first two books numbered 186 and 123, so he's another that's going to
get more than his fair crack.Importantly to this point they've had the support to have been commercially viable and if they show they can produce classic winners and big money winning stayers there'll surely be a growing niche in the market prepared to breed to these horses and wait.
So what of this year? Can this recent trend help us find the winner?
There's still 35 stallions left in the race but why not try to find a pattern and see if we can do better.
The most obvious is that all eight winners listed above were six years of age or less, it's no place for the oldies apparently
If they were international runners just for that year they had raced here beforehand, and if they were based in Australia they were either already Group One winners or at the least in good form in good races prior.
The 35 become 28 based on the age factor and it becomes 18 if you knock out the
horses not on the first international flight due at Werribee. The second flight's
passengers won't be released from quarantine until two days before the race.We put a fairly lenient line through the horses that just haven't been good enough in their recent appearances and it soon gets to 11 which is time to name names: Exosphere, Grey Lion, Hi World, Howard Be Thy Name, Preferment, Raw Impulse, Storm The Stars, Tally, Tarzino, The Bandit and Tosen Stardom.
However if you want to get fair dinkum on the score of proven class, or something that looks like it might have a realistic chance of being a genuine topliner, it comes to just four: Exosphere, Grey Lion, Preferment and Tarzino.
It's not for now to split them any further, we've just narrowed 123 down to four after all! But we should make mention of Grey Lion.
He's on the first flight with the plan of a lead up race in the Geelong Cup. If he wins it he captures the imagination, into the Cup surely as one of the favourites and ticks every box as we've just pointed out.
Pedigree wise he's by Galileo out of a Danehill mare and is a full-brother to superstar French Oaks and Thousand Guineas winner Golden Lilac.
Did we mention he's $151 in the market at the moment?
What's not to like? We've all had worse bets. Good luck.
