One Melbourne Cup dream came alive and another fell flat as Ibicenco reversed his trainers’ fortunes to win Wednesday’s Group Three Geelong Cup.
The win breathed new life into Ibicenco’s previously non-existent chances of gaining a Cup start, and his trainer Peter Moody did his best to talk up the narrow victory in the hope of encouraging the handicapper to impose the heaviest penalty possible.
Ibicenco winning the Geelong Cup at Geelong - photo by Race Horse Photos Australia (Steven Dowden)
“He probably needs a couple of kilos to get into the field,” Moody said.
“So let’s hope the handicapper was impressed enough with the horse under unsuitable conditions to get him into the Cup.”
Moody also did his best to draw attention to Ibicenco’s two wins
Ibicenco is 42nd in the order of Melbourne Cup entry and needs at least 1.5kg to give himself the chance Moody says he deserves.
“One thing about him is you know he’ll run two miles so that puts him in the first ten because you know 14 of them won’t stay,” he said.
For Moody, Melbourne’s leading trainer for the past four years, feature-race wins have been hard to come by this season.
And he doesn’t see the situation changing any time soon.
While he is in fourth place on the national trainers’ table, Moody hasn’t had a city winner in 70 runners, the most recent being Lidari at Caulfield on August 31.
“We made a good start to the season, but we had to,” he said.
“I knew we had nothing coming along for September and October.”
Ibicenco’s neck win over Verdant at least gave him hope of getting into the Cup, but for the English visitor and race favourite Forgotten Voice the prospect vanished with his fifth placing.
Jockey Brett Prebble said the horse had travelled like a winner to the 900m but failed to handle the downhill run from that point to the home turn.
“After that his energy levels went down and my confidence levels went lower,” Prebble said.
As rare as Ibicenco’s win may have been for Moody, it maintained the good form of his owners, the OTI syndicate headed by former Test cricketer Simon O’Donnell who earlier this month won the Cranbourne Cup with Pakal.
Moody said he wouldn’t run Ibicenco again in an attempt to make certain of a Melbourne Cup start.
