Champion trainer Chris Waller is as delighted as anyone to see Vow And Declare win the Melbourne Cup and hopes it may lead to more locally bred winners.
After victories by Viewed in 2008 and Shocking in 2009, internationally bred horses took the next nine Cups until Vow And Declare’s win on Tuesday.
After the early spring domination of Japanese horses in the Caulfield Cup, won by Mer De Glace, and Lys Gracieux in the Cox Plate, Waller was thinking he would need to investigate that market for a potential Cups contender.
But those thoughts have been tempered following Vow And Declare’s success.
“Tuesday was great,” Waller said.
“The first thing you do is you see the Japanese horses win the Caulfield Cup and the Cox Plate and everyone wants to talk about how can we get these Japanese horses.
“Now that we’ve had an Australian Cup winner again it will put everything into perspective that we do breed really good horses here in Australia from sprinters, to middle distance, which we’ve seen the best in world with Winx, and now a Melbourne Cup winner.
“We should give ourselves a pat on the back because we know that we can do it.
“We’ve got the trainers, jockeys, breeders, owners, its a full complement of worlds best racing.”
Waller said what it took to produce the right Cups horse was time.
He said any horse showing staying potential is often rushed towards firstly the Champagne Stakes in Sydney as an autumn two-year-old, then the Victoria Derby in the spring.
Waller claimed Thursday’s TCL TV Stakes at Flemington with Pancho, the same race Vow And Declare won 12 months earlier.
Vow And Declare returned for an autumn campaign, eventually finishing second in the Queensland Derby then winning the Tatt’s Cup over 3000m at Eagle Farm on June 22.
While Pancho is likely to be set on a Rosehill Guineas campaign, Waller said the Tatt’s Cup was a race he would consider for a potential Cups contender.
“I look at patterns and that is one that is interesting,” Waller said.
“That race may suit a horse that is racing at that time and then it could follow a similar Cup campaign.”
