Melbourne Cup speed guide: 22 horses wiped out in 60 seconds

We’ve crunched the numbers to find the winner of this year’s Melbourne Cup and it will take you one minute to work it out.

James Dampney

3 min read

November 5, 2024 - 12:27PM

22 Cup horses wiped out of Melbourne Cup contention

If you stare blankly at Melbourne Cup form guides and don’t know your fillies from your furlongs, fear not, we’ve got a simple way to help you choose a horse to back in the main event — and it’ll be over in 60 seconds.

The biggest thing to take note of is the late scratching of the John O’Shea trained runner Athabascan.

There are a range of trends and hoodoos over the great race’s long history that mean a number of horses can quickly be ruled out of contention.

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First up, we can cast aside the outsiders. Just three horses in the past three decades — Twilight Payment ($27 in 2020), Prince Of Penzance ($101 in 2015) and Viewed ($41 in 2008) — have won the race at odds higher than $20.

That means you could feel relatively comfortable ruling out CIRCLE OF FIRE ($34),

WARP SPEED ($26), KOVALICA ($21), SHARP ‘N’ SMART ($71), JUST FINE ($51), KNIGHT’S CHOICE ($101), OKITA SOUSHI ($21), VALIANT KING ($71), FANCY MAN ($71), MANZOICE ($71), MOSTLY CLOUDY ($101),

POSITIVITY ($101), SAINT GEORGE ($31), THE MAP ($51) and TRUST IN YOU ($101).

ATHABASCAN ($51) is out of the running after being withdrawn on the eve of the race because of cardiac arrhythmia found in a final vet inspection on Monday.

Trainer John O’Shea was furious with the decision by VRC vets, and continued to criticise the decision on Tuesday morning.

Speaking on Sky Sports Radio, O’Shea was scathing of Racing Victoria stewards and even hinted he will prioritise taking his horses to race in NSW in future.

“It’s a pretty hollow feeling. It was really, really disappointing to say the least.”

Tommy Berry riding Athabascan. Photo by Jeremy Ng/Getty Images.

He said his team had done all due diligence in assessing the horses’ condition and was confident the runner was fit for the race.

“To say that it’s confusing is an understatement. That’s why NSW has gained so much traction in this area because there’s no consistency (in Victoria). People now, and us included, we’re just running in NSW.

“I think it was very naughty of them to diagnose it as cardiac arrhythmia because one of the guides for cardiac arrhythmia, is you do a blood test which is called a component test, so we actually did that yesterday. If you have a horse with cardiac arrhythmia, the component levels will be out of normal.”

He went on to say: “He passed all the tests. We did all the due diligence. All the things a normal vet would require.”

Athabascan, who finished runner-up in the 2024 Sydney Cup and was to by Zac Lloyd, was rated a $67 chance at the time of his scratching.

Chris Waller (right) has five runners in this year’s race. (Photo by George Sal/Racing Photos via Getty Images)

Dave Casey riding Vauban during trackwork at Werribee Racecourse. (Photo by Pat Scala/Racing Photos via Getty Images)

That brings us back to the rest of the field.

Sitting at $19 at the time of writing, we’re also going to add LAND LEGEND and James Cummings’ ZARDOZI to that mix.

Just like that, we’ve deducted 18 runners from the field, or exactly three-quarters of this year’s entrants, leaving us with just six horses.

Excuse the sexism, but we usually rule out female horses here as only 16 times — roughly once every 10 Melbourne Cups — has it been won by a female horse, but the six remaining entrants are all male.

Fear not, we’re not done with just yet.

Next up, out of the 163 winners in the long history of the great race, only a tiny 14 have been seven years or older.

Absurde doesn’t quite make our cut. (Photo by Pat Scala/Racing Photos via Getty Images)

And that leaves one … Sea King! (Photo by Pat Scala/Racing Photos via Getty Images)

Apologies ONESMOOTHOPERATOR ($8), INTERPRETATION ($17), ABSURDE ($11) and VAUBAN ($7), you’re strong contenders but that knocks all of you out.

So, drumroll please, that leaves us with only two horses, odds-on favourite BUCKAROO ($6) and the Harry Eustace trained British gelding, SEA KING ($9).

Whether you back our version of science and scenarios is up to you, but this is our system and we’re sticking by it.

Full Melbourne Cup field

1 – VAUBAN (Trainer: Willie Mullins; Jockey: William Buick) 55.5kg

2 – BUCKAROO (Chris Waller; Joao Moreira) 54.5kg

3 – CIRCLE OF FIRE (Ciaron Maher, Mark Zahra) 54.5kg

4 – WARP SPEED (Noboru Takagi; Akira Sugawara) 54kg

5 – KOVALICA (Chris Waller, Damian Lane) 53.5kg

6 – SHARP ‘N’ SMART (Graeme & Deborah Rogerson, Michael Dee) 53.5kg

7 – JUST FINE (Gai Waterhouse & Adrian Bott; Jye McNeill) 53kg

8 – LAND LEGEND (Chris Waller; Zac Purton) 53kg

9 – ABSURDE (Willie Mullins; Kerrin McEvoy) 52.5kg

11 – KNIGHT’S CHOICE (John Symons & Sheila Laxon; Robbie Dolan) 51.5kg