There is really only one place where Red Cadeaux shouldn’t be backed.
At home.
Anywhere else he’s a winning chance.
“He just loves being away from home,” said trainer Ed Dunlop.
As a result, he spends as little time as possible in England, and even Ireland is proving too close to home for one of the racing world’s greatest travellers.
Red Cadeaux
Red Cadeaux is on his third trip to Melbourne, the destination that is his favourite, and next Tuesday will run in his third Melbourne Cup.
“He loves it here,” Dunlop said after inspecting the gelding at Werribee on Thursday.
“You can see it in everything he does – he looks better, he’s happier and he’s run well both times I’ve bought him here.”
For Dunlop and owner Ronnie Arculli, Red Cadeaux’s first trip to Melbourne was also his first outside Europe and it almost made him an icon of Australian racing.
In the closest Melbourne Cup finish ever, Red Cadeaux failed by a nose to beat the French runner Dunaden.
He then finished third to the same horse in the Hong Kong Vase (2400m) the following month, and became a confirmed wanderer.
Red Cadeaux is a 40-1 chance in the Cup and Dunlop believes that, with some luck, he can win it.
And if he hadn’t miscalculated at the horse’s latest start in the Irish St Leger, he would be tipping Red Cadeaux with confidence.
“If I hadn’t run him in the Irish St Leger we would be really fancying ourselves again this year in the Melbourne Cup,” he said.
“It wasn’t the race for him, but you never really know that at the time.”
Red Cadeaux finished fourth in the St Leger, 11 lengths behind another Cup runner Voleuse De Couers in the race at the Curragh on September 15.
“In hindsight it would have been better to come straight here,” Dunlop said.
Which would have been a change for Red Cadeaux, a horse who rarely stops off somewhere along the way for a race.
In one spell between last November and May this year he raced six times in five different countries, beginning with the Melbourne Cup.
The tour, which included a win in the Hong Kong Vase and second place in the Dubai World Cup, earned more than $3.5 million.
“It was a fabulous run, but this is the last big tour,” Dunlop said.
The trainer is naturally keen for Red Cadeaux’s third Melbourne Cup to produce a trophy, and although he acknowledges the odds are against it, there is a chance.
“He is in very good order, there’s been no issues and we’re very pleased,” he said.
“If he gets a good barrier and a good pace, then he’s in it with a chance.
“But he’s been a marvellous horse, a really wonderful horse, and he always does his best for us.”
Red Cadeaux will do is final piece of serious pre-Cup work at Werribee on Friday.
