The $3m Big Dance at Royal Randwick is more disco than tango
This welcome addition to the racing calendar is an excitingly unpredictable contest.
What happens when you decide to establish a multimillion-dollar horse race in Sydney on Melbourne Cup Day and declare it has nothing to do with diminishing the race that stops the nation? A one-time Melbourne Cup contender not only runs in it but is the favourite. That’s racing.
Cepheus, a six-year-old British gelding named after a constellation named after a mythological Greek king, was purchased for $600,000 in late 2020 soon after winning an elite race over 2500m in France.
The buyer was OTI Racing, the Australian thoroughbred syndication group founded by businessman Terry Henderson and former Test cricketer Simon O’Donnell.
The plan was to run the chestnut in the 2021 Melbourne Cup over the exacting 3200m, or two miles as it’s called in his homeland. However, he bowed a tendon and was out of racing for 12 months.
He returned, under the care of Murwillumbah, NSW-based trainer Matt Dunn, as a different horse, and not only because he had the ultimate gear change of being gelded. He is meant to be a Melbourne Cup stayer but he can put himself into sprint races,’’ Dunn said in a recent interview. “He has a turn of foot that most don’t.’’
The bookmakers agree and have installed the topweight Cepheus as favourite for the $3m Big Dance to be run over 1600m at Sydney’s Royal Randwick racecourse on November 7.
It’s the second instalment of this race on the first Tuesday of November that, to quote the unofficial advertising slogan, “brings Cup Day to Randwick not Flemington”. It is run 40 minutes before the famous endurance test at Melbourne’s racing headquarters.
When Racing NSW chief executive Peter V’landys unveiled the Big Dance, he emphasised it was not an attempt to take the gloss off the Melbourne Cup. It was a different race, run over half the distance, that would be a Sydney complement to Melbourne’s big day.
That remains true, even with a one-time Cup hopeful in the mix. Though in characteristic fashion, V’landys has upped the Big Dance prize purse by a neat $1m. The 2023 race is worth $3m. If that rate continues, it won’t be long before it’s worth more than the $8.4m Melbourne Cup, now in its 163rd year.
The broad aim of the Big Dance is to bring metropolitan Sydney and NSW country closer together. To gain a spot in the race, a horse must run first or second in 25 selected country cups run over the previous 12 months.
The opening qualifying race was the Goulburn Cup in October 2022 and the closing one was the Coonamble Cup almost a year later. Then there was a last-straw, city-based qualifier, the Big Dance Wild Card, at Randwick on October 21.
In between, there were cups across NSW, from Albury to Wellington. For the second year in a row, race clubs reported higher crowd figures at their once-a-year cup meetings. And, for the second year in a row, leading Sydney trainers hit the track to Gundagai and elsewhere in pursuit of some rural silverware and automatic qualification for the $3m Big Dance.
‘He is meant to be a Melbourne Cup stayer but he can put himself into sprint races. He has a turn of foot hat most don’t’
– Matt Dunn, Trainer, on favourite Cepheus
The result of names such as Chris Waller and Gai Waterhouse heading bush is not hard to work out.
“The country cups are hard to win,’’ Newcastle-based trainer Kris Lees said in a recent interview. Lees speaks from experience. In the inaugural Big Dance, he – or more accurately his five-year-old bay gelding Rustic Steel – held off the Sydney brigade to win the prize.
Twelve months later, he does not have a runner in the even richer Big Dance. He remains a dedicated supporter of the race that offers “NSW owners Lotto-style payouts’’.
Dunn, trainer of the favourite, agrees. “If he (Cepheus) wins the Big Dance, it will be my biggest win moneywise.”
The first place cheque is $1.56m, which, as it happens, is almost exactly how much the talented horse has won in his 27-race career to date.
The capacity field of 20, with four emergencies in the event of scratchings, is divided fairly evenly between city and country trainers.
With four entries, Warwick Farm-based Bjorn Baker is doing his best not to be a wallflower at the Big Dance. He has the second favourite Iknowastar, who won the Dubbo Cup, along with Wategos, Hollywood Hero and Highlights.
Fellow Sydney trainer Chris Waller, who trains the most winners in Australia, has the Irish import Wicklow, winner of the Wagga Cup.
Cepheus, Iknowastar, King Of The Castle and Wicklow were the only runners priced under $10 at the time of writing.
Canberra-based veteran Barbara Joseph, who trains in partnership with brothers Paul and Matt Jones, has two entrants: Super Helpful and the 150-1 shot Manderboss.
Joseph is one of four female trainers with a ticket to the Big Dance. Gai Waterhouse is a noticeable absentee.
Wyong-based Kim Waugh, wife of, to continue the cricket connection, Mark Waugh, has the longshot Camaguey; Kembla Grange-based Theresa Bateup has the even longer shot Crackalacka; and Sara Ryan has Attractable, who is firm in the market.
If Ryan’s horse wins, it will be quite a story, as she’s a 27-year-old rookie trainer who started out in showjumping and event riding.
It will also have a loose Melbourne Cup connection as she runs the Domeland training establishment on the NSW central coast, which was established in the 1980s by political cartoonist and turf aficionado (i.e. punter) Larry Pickering.
Pickering, who died in 2018, did have a crack at training and almost pulled off the impossible when his horse Rising Fear, part-owned by John Singleton, came second in the 1986 Melbourne Cup.
Who will win the Big Dance? For what it’s worth, I think it’s between the favourites Cepheus and Iknowastar.
Cepheus has to lug 64kg and they say weight will stop a train. But he doesn’t know that. What will stop him, however, is any rain, as he’s a duffer in the wet. My longshot, who does like soft ground, is Camaguey.
Yet as the odds suggest, this dance is more disco than tango. The winner could rock up from anywhere.
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