If Bart Cummings is to win a 13th Melbourne Cup, it is likely that Precedence is the sort of horse he’d like to do it with.
Whether the seven-year-old is good enough is debatable, but after his return to form in the Adapt Australia Handicap (1600m) at Moonee Valley on Saturday, there could at least be one more feature race in the seven-year-old.
If Bart Cummings is to win a 13th Melbourne Cup, it is likely that Precedence is the sort of horse he'd like to do it with. - Photo by Sarah Ebbett
Precedence established himself as something of a Valley specialist with the victory, his fourth at the track and one which took his racetrack earnings beyond $1 million.
The win was also timely, coming two years after his last success and on a day when the feature race at Moonee Valley is named after his part-owner, Malaysian businessman and long-time Cummings client Dato Tan Chin Nam.
For Cummings, every win for the Dato is special.
The Malaysian businessman played a pivotal role in keeping Cummings afloat when his Cups King syndication scheme collapsed in the late 1980s, leaving him heavily in debt.
Since then the Dato, who was a part-owner of dual Cup winner Think Big, has won Melbourne Cups with Saintly and Viewed and has also been blessed with international champion So You Think among scores of other winners.
A veteran of two Cup previous campaigns, Precedence will be among the Cummings’ prospects this year, although his priority may well be the Caulfield Cup.
Dato Tan’s racing manager Duncan Ramage said Precedence may have had his Melbourne Cup chance.
“I think he’s probably a better 2400-metre horse than a two-miler,” Ramage said.
“But we’ll leave it to Bart, he’s the boss.”
As well as being an esteemed member of the Cummings stable, Precedence has the distinction of being owned by the nobility of three nations – Dato Tan, New Zealand’s racing knight Sir Patrick Hogan and the Dowager Duchess of Bedford, who is a relative of the Queen.
