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McEvoy eyeing ‘life-changing’ Melbourne Cup win with Half Yours
Trevor Marshallsea
ANZ News
Far from feeling the pressure, the weight of millions of expectant eyes that comes with having the favourite in Australia’s greatest race, trainer Tony McEvoy will take Half Yours (St Jean) into the Melbourne Cup (Gr 1, 3200m) feeling like “we’ve got a tailwind behind us”.
He has no doubts about the five-year-old going 800 metres further than he’s ever been, no fears of the burden of history as Half Yours strives to become only the 13th Cups double winner. He’s delighted by drawing barrier eight and is further buoyed by the likelihood of rain.
And the more he thinks of the Caulfield Cup, the more the jovial, well-liked 64-year-old believes he could be about to achieve a dream he’s had since he was five - of winning the race that stops the nation, and changes people’s lives.
Half Yours, bought in a daring online raid on Inglis Digital 16 days after last year’s Melbourne Cup for $305,000, was on Sunday a $6.50 favourite for the 165th running of Australia’s biggest and most enduring cultural institution.
McEvoy and his co-trainer son Calvin bought the gelding with long-term associate Wayne Mitchell and Damon Gabbedy’s Belmont Bloodstock, in a dispersal following the death of owner Colin McKenna, who bred Half Yours in tandem with Ciaron Maher, the horse’s original trainer.
Maher, who’d prepared Half Yours to win two of his first five starts, was the underbidder. He’s had to watch in the 12 months since as he's blossomed into a potentially special racehorse, one McEvoy feels will become a weight-for-age star worthy of another feature which will next year also be run at Flemington - the Cox Plate (Gr 1, 2040m).
McEvoy told ANZ News on Sunday he’d been delighted with Half Yours’ progress since his Caulfield Cup win, which was even better than it may have looked.
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The former jockey, who’s had four previous Melbourne Cup runners for a best of fifth with Hug’s Dancer (Cadeaux Genereux) at $17 in 2004, said he felt no extra burden through having the Cup starter who’ll likely carry more people’s money than any other when the country stops what it’s doing at 3pm on Tuesday.
“No, not at all,” he said. “I think it’s a privilege to have the favourite. It’s a nicer feeling than going in with a 50-1 shot, I can tell you that much.
“The horse is in great order. He’s his normal self. He hasn’t changed. He’s a happy horse, very fit, very sound. He’s just normal, which is all we’ve asked him to be.
“We’ve just been doing maintenance work with him since the Caulfield Cup. He was 515 kilos when he won that, and he’s 508 kilos now, so his weight’s about right. We just didn’t want him to gain weight after Caulfield.
“He’s eating a maximum feed, and he seems perfect.”
Of course the $64,000 question in the $10 million race concerns the entrants’ ability to stay 3200 metres.
Half Yours hasn’t been beyond the 2400 metres of the Caulfield Cup and July’s Listed Caloundra Cup where, regardless of the relatively low grade, he announced himself with a paralysing 4.45-length romp.
He’s certainly bred to stay. He’s by St Jean - a son of Teofilo (Galileo), who’s sired three of the past seven Melbourne Cup winners in Cross Counter, Twilight Payment and Without A Fight. And he’s out of a mare by Desert King (Danehill), sire of no less a stayer than the only triple Melbourne Cup winner, Makybe Diva.
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St Jean himself never went past 2400 metres, at which he won Ellerslie’s Avondale Cup (Gr 2, 2400m), but he never had the chance. His career was restricted to 19 starts by injury and by being tangled in an ibuprofen mishap at a Victorian rehabilitation farm, which sidelined him for two years and eventually led connections to run him in New Zealand.
The 15-year-old Irish import stands at Victoria’s Brackley Park, where he covered 26 mares in the past four years for $3,300. Thanks to Half Yours’ emergence, he’s now standing for $11,000 (inc GST).
“I’m really relaxed about it,” McEvoy said of the two mile question, joking that Half Yours could probably run in a certain 4600-metre event at Warrnambool, let alone Flemington’s highlight.
“If you go through his pedigree, he’s probably bred to run a Jericho Cup.
“St Jean could stay all day, and there’s so much depth of staying pedigree in the family, I would be amazed if he didn’t stay the tip.
“Ash Morgan said he couldn’t pull him up after the Caloundra Cup. Jamie Melham said he didn’t want to stop after the Caulfield Cup. He’s got an incredible capacity, and I don’t think the two miles will worry him at all.”
The weather bureau is forecasting a 100 per cent chance of rain for Flemington on Monday, and an 85 per cent chance for Tuesday - music to McEvoy’s ears. Half Yours has won three from eight on good tracks, three from five on soft, and one from one on heavy - a 3.43-length stroll in an 1800-metre Rosehill benchmark 78, en route to Queensland in May.
“Bring on the rain,” the trainer said. “It’s another box ticked for him if it rains. He’s actually better on soft.”
The luck also went Half Yours’ way at the barrier draw.
“Gate eight is beautiful,” McEvoy said. “It just allows Jamie to come out and relax on his neck, not have to make any decision.
“Those who’ve drawn wide have to either go forward or back. All we’ve got to do is come and just relax, and just ride him to run the trip - get him nice and relaxed, and make sure he’s breathing.”
Half Yours jumped from gate two in the Caulfield Cup, settling midfield, before coming wide entering the straight and holding on to win by 0.46 lengths over the fast-finishing River Of Stars (Sea The Stars) and Valiant King (Roaring Lion), who are at $17 and $8 for Tuesday.
Aside from Half Yours being full of running after the post, Melham reported he’d been hampered for most of the race by Meydaan (Frankel), who finished a meritorious ninth after travelling wide, and is at $15 in the Melbourne Cup.
“We had a good run in the race, but we got laid on for a mile-and-a-quarter of the mile-and-a-half by Meydaan,” McEvoy said. “Jamie said he was just getting put off balance the whole time.
“Valiant King was a very good run, but he just sat back last and came through the inside, and finished fabulous.
“River Of Stars had a magnificent run, then popped out and ran second. They were very good runs, but they had perfect runs in transit too.
“I don’t think there were any better runs in the Caulfield Cup than ours, to be honest.”
What probably presents more fears for McEvoy are the lesser known opponents, such as topweight Al Riffa (Wootton Bassett), Australian Bloodstock’s $9 chance.
Coming from back-to-back wins in the Curragh Cup (Gr 2, 1m 6f) and Irish St Leger (Gr 1, 1m 6f), the six-year-old entire will try to raise Irish trainer Joseph O’Brien’s third Cup success after Rekindling (High Chaparral) in 2017 and Twilight Payment (Teofilo) in 2020.
“It’s the new wave of horses - the ones we haven’t seen and we don’t know, that you wonder about,” McEvoy said. “Al Riffa’s obviously a star, but he’s got to carry 59 kilos, so he’s going to need to be a star.”
Star quality was what the McEvoys knew they had after taking the then lightly-raced four-year-old Half Yours to the tail end of Queensland’s winter carnival.
“I wanted to take him away to grow him up a little bit,” McEvoy recalled. “He was very immature, a bit of a juvenile thinker with his brain; he was bouncy and pushy.
“So we travelled him, and probably the Caloundra Cup was the one where we thought, ‘Wow’.”
The McEvoys set a plan for Half Yours to run in Randwick’s The Metropolitan (Gr 1, 2400m) on October 4, before the Caulfield Cup on October 18, with a lead-up in the set weights Kingstown Town Stakes (Gr 3, 2000m) on September 20.
They floated their stayer from Queensland to Sydney, but when he only made second emergency for the Kingston Town, the McEvoys entered him for Caulfield’s Naturalism Stakes (Gr 3, 2000m) on the same day. He was still only first emergency for that quality handicap.
“We sat and waited, and when Chris Waller decided to run [eventual winner] Birdman in the Kingston Town, we put Half Yours on a float from Sydney to Melbourne to run in the Naturalism. Thankfully, we got a run, and we went from there,” McEvoy said.
Under 54.5kg, Half Yours demolished the Naturalism field by 3.5 lengths as $2.60 favourite, before going to the Turnbull Stakes (Gr 1, 2000m). McEvoy didn’t expect him to threaten a star-studded field under the set weights scale there, but he finished a 2.67-length fourth, just a neck behind Horse of the Year Via Sistina (Fastnet Rock).
“What a trial that was,” McEvoy said. “To be finishing alongside Via Sistina was incredible. What that showed me is he’ll actually be a weight-for-age horse next year. He’ll run in the Cox Plate at Flemington next year.”
The rest has been history, with more beckoning.
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Half Yours is seeking to become just the 13th Cups doubles winner since the Caulfield Cup’s inception in 1879. That stat doesn’t daunt McEvoy - notwithstanding that Half Yours would be the second to do it in only three years, after Without A Fight.
“I look forward, not back,” he said. “We’re just playing with what we’ve got in front of us. We’ve had a magnificent prep, and even the barrier draw showed we’ve got a bit of momentum.
“We feel like we’ve got a bit of a tailwind.”
And what would success mean to McEvoy?
Among the majors, he’s trained a Cox Plate winner in Fields Of Omagh (Rubiton), and now a Caulfield Cup winner.
In his years working for Lindsay Park, he was associated with three Melbourne Cup victors. He was riding work when Beldale Ball (Nashua) won it in 1980, and was a stable foreman when At Talaq (Roberto) and Jeune (Kalaglow) won in 1986 and in 1994.
But he hasn’t yet managed a victory in the grand handicap in his own right.
“It’s the one race on our calendar that’s actually life-changing,” McEvoy said.
“It’s the one race where everybody stops and watches, and the names of Melbourne Cup winners are etched in everyone’s minds, and I think it’s very special.
“I was there with the Lindsay Park stable for Beldale Ball, At Talaq and Jeune. They were amazing. What they did with their wins, it just lifted the whole place, lifted everyone’s spirits. It’s why we do what we do. It’s the big race. It’s the big one.
“When I was five, six, seven, I used to burn around on my pony on the farm wanting to ride the winner of the Melbourne Cup.
“That never eventuated, but now I’ve got an opportunity to train a winner of the Melbourne Cup. It’s quite amazing.”
