Puissance De Lune won the 2012 Queen Elizabeth II Stakes like a horse possessed. Punters couldn’t believe it, and neither could jockey Glen Boss.
It was a dominant five length win, and it dominated racing talk for a month. Boss immediately said ‘PDL’ would win the Melbourne Cup, and bookmakers followed suit, installing the big grey stallion as immediate favourite.
His single run in the autumn, in the Group 2 2013 Blamey Stakes was strong – a dead-heat, coming from the tail of the field. It wasn’t enormous, but it was damn good for a first-up run at shorter than ideal distance.
Then came the spring. Pundits and commentators gave their opinions of how to manage the horse. One that stuck in my mind was to give him just one or two lead-up runs ahead of the Cup. He clearly goes well fresh, so keep the focus.
But Darren Weir and connections elected to start him early. August 17th, in fact – 80 days before the Melbourne Cup, in the P.B Lawrence Stakes over 1400m. He duly won. But the PB Lawrence is no Cup lead-up.
The last time a Lawrence winner even ran in the Melbourne Cup was in 1992, when Subzero finished sixth.
Far worse – none of the 64 winners of the Lawrence Stakes, which was first run in 1949 as the J.J. Liston Stakes, have gone on to win the Melbourne Cup later in their campaign.
Horse Racing has been competitive enough and have enough history that the record books are a strong guide.
Why was Puissance De Lune running about then, if the Melbourne Cup was his focus?
Ultimately, I’m reminded of So You Think, when he went to the UK. It took master trainer Aidan O’Brien until the end of his career to figure out he trained and ran So You Think too long, too hard and too often.
They ran Puissance too early, too hard, and too often. And now, the $3.6 million dollar winner’s cheque will go elsewhere.
I was challenged when putting this piece together that Fiorente has been on a similar path. But there are just enough differences. Gai Waterhouse started his Spring campaign two weeks later, in the Memsie Stakes. Green Moon was fifth in the Memsie in 2012, before winning the Melbourne Cup – proof that it can be a perfect springboard.
The major difference is that Fiorente has had one less run than Puissance – the grey running twice in September in the Makybe Diva (September 7th) and Underwood Stakes (September 21st), while Fiorente was only taken to the races for the Dato’tan Chin Nam, before they went head to head in the Turnbull.
Perhaps I’m being overly harsh – Puissance suffered an untimely injury and judgments are difficult to make from afar, and possibly foolish. But the way the mighty grey overraced early in the Cox Plate suggests either something was amiss or he’d had enough for the Spring.
The overwhelming feeling is that PDL could’ve won, if he’d been given a Cup only focus.
balanced
Guest
Ridiculous post. The Liston these days is such a poor race that it was no more arduous than fiorente having two barrier trials before it started. Plenty of so called experts were saying GW had wound up Fiorente too early. I'm inclined to think that both Darren Weir and Gai Waterhouse have a fair idea what they're doing. PDL got injured, it happens. The real problem was people going gaga over PDL winning the QE and thinking it was the next Makybe Diva. And after the blamey in the autumn it was makybe diva and black caviar combined. As the carnival showed this year and last, forming opinions on horses based on off-peak Melbourne racing is the quickest way to the poorhouse.
kv joef
Guest
Cardoo what was the difference in the racing preparations between Pussy De Loon this year and Green Moon last year other than an early soft win?
kv joef
Guest
Excellent advice Drew :)
Will Sinclair
Roar Guru
If nothing else, the story of PDL is another cautionary tale in the argument against pre-post betting! He was shorter in the 2013 Melbourne Cup market in November 2012 than in October 2013...
Drew H
Guest
I have a theory. It comes from being a keen owner, albeit with limited success. If your horse is sore, cover it up. Less vet checking is better. If your horse bleeds, cover it up quickly with any rag you can find. Vet checks add no horsepower. If the media want to photograph the horse or create a story, hide it. Give them some rhetoric. "Prose" is the word. The only thing that adds to a horse's ability (outside of good training) is a keen and loving owner that can whisper sweet nothings.
Jason Cave
Guest
Do you think the pressure of being Melbourne Cup favourite for nearly a year might have got to PDL and its connections? What was the point of PDL running in the JJ Liston Stakes, when it would've been better off starting its long-awaited Cup campaign in the Turnbull-the official launch of the spring carnival?
Alfred Chan
Expert
"10,000 miles/kilometres" - Those poor horses...
sheek
Roar Guru
Cardoo, Today's racehorses are whimps, that's for sure. Bart Cummings used to argue that a horse needed a minimum 10,000 miles/kilometres in his legs before Cup day. And Bart should know! So work it out - that's say 1 x 2400m plus 3 x 2000m plus 1 x 1600m. When I started following horse racing in the mid/late 60s, very few horses went into the Cup with fewer than five starts minimum. Indeed the Liston/Lawrence was the first spring start for many horses. Winning wasn't the aim, but getting that first "loosener" out of the way. For me, genuine potential Cup winners start performing on Turnbull/Metropolitan Saturday. But that also means they should already have one/two runs under their belt. The internationals have shown that Bart's mantra no longer holds true, that you can get away with just one pre-Cup start. But that might also have been the result of a few flukes. Our thoroughbreds aren't what they used to be. The overall standard has been dumbed down. Where once you needed the kilometres in the legs to outlast the opposition, today they run the big race with much fewer starts under their belt. Frankly, what happened to PDL is the constant companion of thoroughbred racing - injury.
STEVO
Guest
Maybe you could have started your article with the first phrase of your penultimate paragraph.....