Right on brother. A race that rewards intimate knowledge of each runner. We have half the field to cross out like you say and untold mountains of random money thrown at the pools. Wouldn't mind the odd pacemaker but then Flemington is wonderfully fair so can't be too critical.
The weights are a mess of course - it's Carpenters little annual little-hitler project. There is for sure a room in his house filled with clippings of all the headlines he creates just for the sake of it. You know he loves it.
“We have put forward a proposal to Racing Australia to change the allowances under the Australian Rules Of Racing and the weight-for-age scale so that northern hemisphere three-year-olds are not more generously treated here in Australia than they would be if they were actually racing on the same day over the same distance in Europe,” he said.
“For example, a 3200-metre race on the first Tuesday of November we were giving them a four kilogram allowance against the older horses, which is the equivalent of eight pounds 10 ounces, and they were getting only seven pounds in the English scale.
“So, what we’ve done is we’ve amended the benchmark weight for northern hemisphere three-year-olds in the Melbourne Cup from 55-1/2-(kilograms) to 56-1/2. So instead of getting four kilos off the older horses, they will now get three.” (link)
1kg hardly worth worrying about. They are still 6 months bigger and stronger. I would have thought the fair thing to do would be to give them the midpoint of the 3yo and 4yo allowance.
Might start a thread to record building up an antepost book on the race this year, have been meaning to do more pre-November research for once.
