The anticipation ahead of the Victoria Cup is palpable.
Park Melton will be the grand stage next Saturday night as 12 genuine top-liners compete for summer Group 1 glory, with $400,000 on the line over 2240 metres.
Barring any eleventh-hour misfortunes, the general consensus is 9 of the 12 Victoria Cup spots have been locked away and the remaining 3 holes will be filled with runners from a group of five contenders.
You can’t fit five horses into three spots, so there will be at least two hard-luck stories when the final field is revealed ahead of the barrier draw on Tuesday morning.
And there will almost certainly be a host of other horses who in previous years would be lining up in the Victoria Cup but will this year miss out.
The locks are said to be Guaranteed ($4.50), Philadelphia Man ($5.5), Beautide ($5.5), Adore Me ($7), Christen Me ($6), Terror To Love ($8), Im Corzin Terror ($51), For A Reason ($26) and David Hercules ($26).
The lineball runners are believed to be Franco Ledger ($18), Suave Stuey Lombo ($51), Avonova ($41), Lennytheshark ($10) and Restrepo ($26).
And finally tier three – let’s say these horses are the ‘others’ – are Chilli Palmer ($51), Arden Rooney ($101), Bit Of A Legend ($101), Flaming Flutter ($101), Blazin N Cullen ($201), Chancellor Cullen ($201), Cold Major ($201), Easy On The Eye ($201), Mach Alert ($201) and Monifieth ($201).
There will be much debate all week about just where this field stacks up in the list of all-time great Victoria Cup fields. However, when you consider the quality and form of the runners who will miss a start in the race should all be deemed fit and raring to go Tuesday morning, it’s not hard to mount an argument that this race has the makings of an absolute classic; a once-in-a-generation event that will have the purists salivating and even those who don’t know much about our sport intrigued.
Let the debate about who should get into the field and why begin – and let the countdown to the field of dreams continue.
This is going to be fun.