I look at the result and see he won and was heart broken. Than I watched the replay and was quite impressed.

Entries have not been taken for the Derby.

The only way he will be in markets is if you ask your bookie to put him in.

And we all know they throw them in well unders when you do that.

Are you sure ?

What are the qualifying conditions ?

I know they take unraced horses and I am sure I have seen once raced horses.

If he's a gelding then take the HK offers next year as their Derbies are for Southern Hemisphere 4yo's  

Not sure if you read my whole post.

I know when I ask a bookie to add a horse it is nearly always at some shorter quote than I'd expected.

The rules have recently changed where a raced horse needs to receive a HK70 rating at least to qualify. This is at the discretion of the HK handicappers and sometimes to the frustration of myself lol. We recently had Traminer qualify for a 70 rating after one start one win but also had a UK horse knocked back with a record of 5 starts: 1 win, 2 placings.

The old rule was win a race worth at least $17k or something like that and you qualify. New rule was bought in to increase the quality of the raced horses entering HK but all I've noticed is they now cost more money lol.

That said is well and truly up for the race over 1600m or so at Benalla.

Ben Thompson is saying just now how good he is and how clean winded he is.

Mind you there's every chance the Derby won't have a full field.

Big lump of a lad too. Like his sire, would relish the Flemington Straight. 

Alessandro is rated higher than two who've made the field, and on face value he appears to have missed out because the other two have won more prizemoney.  Surely rating should the prime determinant?

Win or run a good race to increase prizemoney, or win or run a good race to lift rating, there's no difference in the purpose and intent.  And that's why class should ultimately prevail before prizemoney imo.

But over to others.

On the other hand, trainers are paid good money to care for their horses and to program races.  The failure to make the field is clearly the responsibility of the trainer rather than the system.

All of the horses above him came through city races or the Geelong Classic, the traditional lead-up for the Derby, so it is probably hard to make a case that whatever rating is obtained in a BM64 at Cranbourne or Benalla is sufficient to gain a start.

The filly Waka was good on Sale Cup day but she's drawn outside him.  

The favourite is Junipal from DKW who won his Donald maiden by 10 and was always wide and did tough at Caulfield behind Syd's Coin but he has a crook draw in 13. 

 

Sure there are other races later in the season but it only gets harder from here.   He'd have to travel for the ATC Derby which means Sydney colts at home plus it gets supplemented by NZ horses.  Then when he turns four he has to face hordes of Euros/imports in any decent staying race.

 

If I had a half decent staying 3yo I'd throw it in whatever needed to get a run in the Derby because it's the best chance most of them will ever get to win a million dollar race.

I don't know, but I am not sure Griffiths would have been content with $28,000 in the bank to get a Derby run if he had a viable alternative.  Reading between the lines it seems they ran out of time to get the horse right for the Derby.  He looked a run behind where he needed to be.

Today's race looked very winnable.  There must be an issue. 

 

Yes it seems could be he wasn't quite ready anyway.

 

What I meant more though was no backup plan after the Geelong Classic.  A top 8 finish there would have gotten him into the Derby.  But if he had to be scratched there then even a placing in any country race 2000m+ would have been sufficient. 

 

As it is he's now missed what was likely his best chance at a race worth that much.  Future staying contests won't only be full of local horses, half of whom will probably never run past 2000m again.

I am kind of glad he missed that slugfest and was not raced into the ground to get into the race.

Hopefully whatever caused his scratching today is not too big an issue.

 

There are "plenty of races", the thing is how many $2 million dollar races is he likely to be a realistic chance in over his career?  Unlike in decades past, once they hit 4 it's basically game over as they run into a heap of imported and European horses. 

 

See former useful 3yo Sir Charles Road as an example, 7th in the Cup on Tuesday at 100-1 that would have been a 2nd to Youngstar in a pre import era.  Even the Sydney Cup is a risk to attract overseas raiders at times, albeit they avoided it last season-SCR probably doesn't run 3rd in that vs decent European stayers.

 

For that type of horse Alessandro seems to be the Victoria Derby is about as good as it gets-locals only and many non stayers.

Possibly.