FINAL WORD

What the jockeys said after the Cox Plate Chad Schofield (Shamus Award) 1st: ‘‘I was confident the horse would run well. I had a couple of looks in the last hundred metres and I could see Happy Trails flying. I wasn’t sure but Michael Rodd pointed out the camera which was on me.’’ Dwayne Dunn (Happy Trails) 2nd: ‘‘Another great effort . . . just missed.’’ Blake Shinn (Fiorente) 3rd: ‘‘A fantastic run. I thought I was the winner at the 500 (metres) but the winner with the weight pull was just a little bit stronger. It was a great Melbourne Cup trial.’’ Craig Newitt (Foreteller) 4th: ‘‘Great run. It’s as good as he goes. I’m sure he’ll win more Group Ones.’’ Corey Brown (Super Cool) 5th: ‘‘He ran really good. He had to work from a wide gate and didn’t have a lot of luck until we got down near the mile.’’ Craig Williams (Side Glance) 6th: ‘‘He was so keen. He’s done an amazing job to be so aggressive the whole race to still run sixth in our best weight-forage race. Excellent effort.’’ Hugh Bowman (Seville) 7th: ‘‘Very happy.’’ James McDonald (It’s A Dundeel) 8th: ‘‘We had to have a crack. We weren’t going to win by going back. It just never panned out. There’s always another year.’’ Brett Prebble (Green Moon) 9th (dead-heat): ‘‘Ran super. Had no hope because the race was way too slow.’’ Kerrin McEvoy (Long John) 9th (dead-heat): ‘‘We got into a nice spot. He just couldn’t handle the Valley and the class of race.’’ Steven Arnold (Mull Of Killough) 11th: ‘‘Even run. Just got shuffled back down the side. He probably would have been better off if he was outside the leader.’’ Ben Melham (Puissance De Lune) 12th: ‘‘He didn’t let go at all. He had a good run throughout but he didn’t fire a shot for whatever reason.’’ Michael Rodd (Masked Marvel) 13th: ‘‘He’s going good for two miles.’’ Mark Zahra (Rekindled Interest) Last: ‘‘No good.’’