Winning any race first-up is hard, so is it possible in The Everest?

Few have dared try it – and when they have it has hardly been a raging success – so is it possible to win a race as frenetic as The Everest without a lead-up run?

The $15 million sprint will have a different dimension this year, with two slot-holders taking a $600,000 gamble by entering the race first-up. The beautiful mystery of trying to decipher the form is just a little more peculiar now.

Defending champion Classique Legend has only raced once since his tearaway win in The Everest last year. He was shipped off to Hong Kong, failed in one start and was sent back to Les Bridge to ready him for another crack at the mega money on offer at Royal Randwick. Perhaps by necessity rather than design, Bridge has had to build him up and use barrier trials as his launching pad for The Everest.

Then there’s Libertini, the electric mare owned by great mates Gerry Harvey and John Singleton. Trainer Anthony Cummings took one look at her form, sold the first-up dream to a few slot-holders and got one to bite: Aquis said yes.

Ambition has never been lacking for the son of Bart: he has been happy running horses way out of their grade when the big money rolls around. But this one?

“I watched the old man get horses ready first-up for group 1 1200-metre [races] all my life,” Anthony said. “When I grew up, it was the norm. I was eight, nine, 10, 11 years old at school and those races were a bigger part of my life than school even. It was just normal. It didn’t matter what and where, that was the story.

“I just looked at her form. It was there to see. It didn’t take much thinking about really. Different horses can be prepared first-up and others not.”

Cummings is right. In five first-up runs in her career, Libertini has won twice. The last of those wins was in the Premiere Stakes in 2020, where she towelled up Classique Legend, no less. A fortnight later, Bridge’s grey speedster turned the tables in a furious race. The same coil in Libertini’s legs that got her into The Everest wasn’t there on the big day. She finished eighth.

“I watched the old man get horses ready first-up for group 1 1200-metre [races] all my life. When I grew up, it was the norm.”

Anthony Cummings

But he wouldn’t have wanted to flick through the short history of the race when he was making his first-up pitch this year.

Coolmore’s European sprinter, US Navy Flag, was the first of The Everest contenders to chase the race first-up, flagging in ninth behind Redzel in 2018. Kris Lees tried a similar approach with a fresh In Her Time (ninth) the following year, while another Coolmore import, Ten Sovereigns (12th), was similarly lacking in match practice in the same race.

So can The Everest really be conquered by a horse devoid of any race experience in the months prior, especially on a damp and testing track?

“All my life we’ve been getting them ready to do this sort of thing and, once you’ve been doing it, it just seems like normal,” Cummings said.

“The fact she’s run as well as she has first-up every single time [is encouraging]. She’s a big strong thing and she takes a bit of work, but if you give her a bit of time she’s pretty much like clockwork.

“She had a gallop on Tuesday, pulled up and she’d just about recovered by the time she came back to the trainers hut. That gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling, and she’s ready to go the races.”

Libertini ($34) won’t have the punter expectation of Classique Legend ($4.40), making Bridge’s assignment perhaps a little trickier. Bridge gave Classique Legend two lead-up runs before last year’s The Everest.

Not that this year’s unorthodox campaign is fazing jockey Kerrin McEvoy, who is gunning for a fourth win in the short history of The Everest after back-to-back successes on inaugural champion Redzel.

“At the end of the day it’s a 1200-metre race,” McEvoy said. “We’re relying on this horse’s brilliance, but we think he can do it. It would be a great story for Les if he could pull it off.”

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