Willie Mullins has endured years of frustration in the Melbourne Cup but will hope for better fortune in another of Australia’s most famous races when Absurde lines up in Saturday’s Caulfield Cup.
The Aus$5 million (€2.8 million) mile and a half handicap is the first leg of Australia’s famed ‘spring treble’ and no Irish-trained horse has ever won it. Mullins tried before in 2017 when Wicklow Brave was out of the money but goes again with another doughty dual-purpose performer.
Absurde has finished fifth and seventh in the last two editions of the Melbourne Cup and is on course to try again at Flemington on the first Tuesday in November.
First, though, the former Ebor and County Hurdle winner will try the shorter test around Caulfield’s tight bends. Mullins has engaged local jockey Ben Allen, who rode Thomas Hobson into sixth for Mullins in the 2017 Melbourne Cup.
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That old link proved important for the rider, although it was vintage enough to make contact with the Irish team less than straightforward.
“I asked my manager to give them a call and see if the ride was available, but we only had an old number for them, and it was disconnected,” Allen told local media in Australia.
Mullins’s assistant David Casey is in Melbourne for what is by now an almost annual trip and reported: “He rode in the Melbourne Cup for us and I think he was an apprentice at the time. He got the call-up after Joao Moreira had a fall. He didn’t do a lot wrong that day, so we are happy to have him.”
Absurde last ran in August’s Leger Trial at the Curragh and is one of the topweights for Saturday’s test, although Casey is hopeful of a big run.
“It’s actually a race that would really suit him as well and its obviously worth winning,” he said. “An extra race in between will suit him for a Melbourne Cup, but we’d love to win on Saturday. We are not going in half-cocked. We think we have a good chance.”
The Caulfield Cup kicks off a bonanza of valuable high-profile races in Victoria’s spring programme. The following Saturday sees the Cox Plate at Moonee Valley, with the third leg coming in the Melbourne Cup itself.
Tuesday’s latest acceptance stage for the Aus$10 million (€5.6 million) ‘race that stops a nation’ saw Absurde joined by Joseph O’Brien’s pair Al Riffa and Goodie Two Shoes in a potential Irish challenge. The latter is set to be owner JP McManus’s first runner in Australia.
The English-trained Taufan’s Melody was the first European based winner of the Caulfield Cup in 1998, five years after Vintage Crop’s pioneering success in the biggest Australian race of all. Godolphin have won it twice with All The Good (2008) and Best Solution (2018), while the French hope Dunaden (2012) won it a year after having landed the Melbourne Cup.
Just one horse, Rising Fast in 1954, has ever completed the ‘spring treble’ hat-trick in a single year. Might And Power won the three between 1997 and 1998.
Absurde will encounter some familiar faces on Saturday, including his old stable companion Vauban. Other ex-Irish horses in the race include Valiant King, Buckaroo and Adelaide River.
Mullins’s flat interests this weekend are also likely to extend to Leopardstown on Saturday, where his highly rated two-year-old Thread Of Gold holds Group Three entries in both the Eyrefield and Killavullan Stakes.
Thread Of Gold was bought by the US-based Team Valor operation after an impressive debut victory at the Curragh in August. Another horse holding entries in both races is Dorset, the Ballydoyle colt that landed the Goffs Million at the Curragh.
A total of 17 entries remain in Sunday’s jumps feature at Limerick, the Boylesports JT McNamara Munster National, with Buddy One and French Dynamite topping the weights.
A pair of Grade Three contests feature in Wednesday’s Punchestown action, which unusually has no Mullins runner.
That can pay off for Gordon Elliott whose Galway Plate winner Western Fold faces a task on ratings against the Ryanair runner Heart Wood, but may prove too strong a stayer for his rival. Birdie Or Bust also faces a task on figures against King Of Kingsfield in the novice chase but can also appreciate the trip more.
