A lack of suitable options in the second half of the season for Vow And Declare is a key factor in the 2019 Melbourne Cup winner being set to make an appearance at Caulfield this Saturday.
The seven-year-old $6 million earner is one of 13 nominations for the $750,000 Group 2 Zipping Classic (2400m).
Vow And Declare is joined by Without A Fight as the members of this year’s Melbourne Cup field entered for the weight-for-age contest and Danny O’Brien said it was too good an opportunity to pass up, especially given the likelihood of a Good track.
“He’s a bit of a hard horse to place in the autumn in that we just don’t have those mile-and-a-half options and the ones that we do are in Sydney and likely to be on soft ground,” O’Brien said.
“We have been really pleased with him since the Melbourne Cup and we’re looking likely of getting back on top of the ground there on Saturday on a Good 4, so it looks a race that he can effective in.”
Vow And Declare ran 10th in the Melbourne Cup, three spots higher than Without A Fight, in what was the fifth run in his first campaign since suffering a tendon injury in September last year.
He finished sixth, beaten less than two lengths, in the $5 million Group 1 Caulfield Cup (2400m) at his previous start.
“We’ve had an open mind about him all prep, we didn’t even know if he’d get to the races this prep, but he has and he’s raced very consistently,” O’Brien said.
“He’s turned up for us every time we’ve gone to the races and this is a decent step back from the Caulfield and Melbourne Cups, which are his last two runs, so we’d be expecting him to be really competitive.”
Vow And Declare went up $5 equal favourite with Group 3 Queen’s Cup (2600m) runner-up Luncies in TAB’s all-in Zipping Classic market with Desert Icon, Persan, Without A Fight and Sound, the winner of the past two editions, sharing the $7 second line.
