The thoughts of Terry Henderson
A week can be a long time in racing! But at the end of the last one we were greeted with the arrival of our international horses, who touched down on Friday evening and made their way across to Werribee’s quarantine facility.
All five of them have arrived in great condition, the reports have all been excellent from the trainers and their representatives so far, which is encouraging as it can be quite an experience for these horses so it’s great they’ve all handled the journey well.
We’re not allowed anywhere near the place. Normally we can get down there and look over the fence, watch them work and speak with connections, but it is, literally, an embargoed area at Werribee, because of Covid.
The horses are in very good shape. We’d be looking for True Self to gain a start in the Caulfield Cup, which at the moment looks touch and go. The weather here is predicted to be wet this week and wet next week. That may change our view of San Huberto, who really does not want a wet track. This may sway us to go to the Geelong Cup if Caulfield is heavy. We’d like to have both the horses in the Caulfield Cup, but if not, they’ll both go to Geelong.
Sound Of Cannons and Selino have both arrived in fantastic order. John O’Shea is delighted with Sound Of Cannons. They could head to one of the Cups, either Geelong, Bendigo or Moonee Valley.
This will basically depend on the way they’ve settled. They’ll all have a piece of work, either this Saturday or the following Tuesday, and from there we’ll make a decision on which races they go to.
They all have to get through a further stage with the vets at Racing Victoria, who are developing a reputation of being pretty tough. They’ve got a new CT scanner down there, and they’ll make sure that the horses are sound before they are allowed to compete. And they won’t hesitate to tell trainers that their horses are not up to scratch.
This year they also made sure that the horses were sound in Newmarket. They actually took one horse out of quarantine that was otherwise coming over here because they found that it wasn’t sound.
Given the fact that we have had far too many fatalities in the Melbourne Cup over the last seven to eight years and others that have gone amiss, I very much have sympathy with Racing Victoria’s wish to not put horses into the race that are going to be at greater risk than would be normal.
These horses are coming from tracks in Europe where, generally, the tracks are a lot softer, with a lot more cushioning than what was once the case at a track like Flemington. In fairness, I think that Flemington has had a change of curator in the last couple of years and I think the track is racing a lot kinder for horses than it used to.
OTI has a very aggressive approach to horse welfare and I think the authorities are right to take it seriously also. I think the whip is something that ultimately has to go as is the need to eradicate rock-hard tracks.
The industry has to be on the front foot about selling the aspects surrounding horse welfare that are good in racing, not just be on the defensive.
People have always raced horses since the time immemorial and they always will. So it’s a matter of showing people the really good things that we do and promote them. I’ve publicly offered some of the critics of racing the chance to come out and show them what happens at a stable and show them the care that these horses get. No one ever takes up that offer.
Our best chance of winning the Melbourne Cup year is with San Huberto who will be trained by Matt Cumani, and it was with his father, Luca, that OTI has come closest to winning the race when Bauer was agonizingly the runner-up in 2008.
He won the Geelong Cup to qualify for the field, which was fantastic, but he was an outsider for the Cup itself. He was 33-1 in the race and Luca had another horse, Mad Rush, who was highly fancied. Bauer had been a relatively nondescript kind of horse. But he liked top of the ground and the race really suited him.
The worst thing about it was that I thought we’d won. I knew Bauer’s backside was in front of the other horse, but Bart’s (Cummings) horse, Viewed, was about a foot longer and got his nose in front!
I’d won the Melbourne Cup in 1995 with Doriemus who then ran second in 1997 behind Might And Power, so I’d had a taste of what victory and defeat was like before. To an extent we were very disappointed in that first 30 seconds, but when the dust settled we were delighted to have run second with him because he had so far exceeded our expectations.
There are certainly shades of his father in Matt, but Matt is his own man, as he’s already shown by simply going over to Australia. He’s adapted to the Australian way. Luca himself said it would probably take him about ten years to adapt to the way of training in Australia, and Matt’s been able to do it in three or four.
What you’re dealing with, being Luca or Matt, is that you’re dealing with a very ethical operation. You always know where you stand and as a result of that you’ve got great confidence in introducing people into racing to have horses with them. And unfortunately in racing you can’t always say that.
Weekend runners
Gallic Chieftain – Herbert Power. The horse is racing extremely well. He’ll have the ideal conditions for the race as it’ll be wet. It will be a slightly weaker race than normal and I think he’s got a good chance of making it into the Caulfield Cup through that
Harbour Views & Gailo Chop – Caulfield Stakes. Harbour Views fell out of the barriers last time out which ruined his chances at the start, but he’s still in good order and we’d hope for a good run from him. Gailo Chop ran a super race last time to finish fourth. It looks like it’ll be a small field and clearly Russian Camelot looks very hard to beat but both of these deserve their place in the race
Yosemite – Thousand Guineas. She was a little bit disappointing last time out but she’ll find her way into the race and hopefully the extra furlong will help her