The strappers arrived at the stable in a limousine having travelled from England with their horses in a private plane.
The mighty Godolphin racing corporation made its stylish, almost annual reappearance in town on Monday, its hopes of winning a Melbourne Cup undaunted by more than 20 disappointments.
Lost In The Moment and Modun are the latest runners who will carry the royal blue Godolphin colours in a race that has frustrated and eluded the world’s biggest racing operation.
The Dubai-based Godolphin stable made its first bid to win Australia’s greatest race in 1998 and has had runners in all but three of the Cups since, its best results the second placings of Central Park in 1999, Give The Slip in 2001 and Crime Scene last year.
The stable’s greatest Australian success came with All The Good’s Caulfield Cup win of three years ago.
On paper, the pick of the 2011 challengers looks to be Modun, a last start winner of the Group Three September Stakes (2400m) at Kempton and the winner of two other races, both over 2000m.
Godolphin’s head lad Tommy Strang, a veteran of numerous Melbourne Cup campaigns for Godolphin, rated Modun the perfect candidate to give the stable its breakthrough win.
“He’s an ideal horse for the race,” Strang said.
“Very straightforward, he’s got speed and he looks like he’ll stick on.”
Modun also has some form around fellow English raider Moyenne Corniche who finished third in the Herbert Power Stakes at Caulfield last Saturday week, having finished a close fourth to the same horse in the Ebor at York in August.
As the Godolphin runners have shown in previous years, it can often be the second string that performs best and Lost In The Moment fits well into that bracket.
A $41 chance in current markets, Lost In The Moment earned his Melbourne Cup entry with his close second in the Goodwood Cup (3200m) in July, a race in which the Cup prospects Fox Hunt, Manighar and Red Cadeaux all finished behind him.
The best of his two runs since was a last start fourth in a Group Three race over 2400m at Ascot on October 1.
The arrival of the Godolphin pair brings to 13 the number of foreign-trained runners in Melbourne Cup contention, plus the German gallopers Illo who is yet to run for his new trainer Bart Cummings and Lucas Cranach who finished fifth in the Caulfield Cup in his first Australian start.
Among those, Bauer and Dunaden run in Wednesday’s Geelong Cup in a bid to ensure a start.
AAP TURF
