Wall Of Fire needs to recover

TRAINER Hugo Palmer will bypass the Caulfield Cup with Wall Of Fire, forfeiting the chance to cement a Melbourne Cup berth.

The English trainer is confident his stayer will gain a Melbourne Cup start despite being 30th in the order of entry because of the natural attrition rate.

His calculated risk is based on programming with a preference for a three-week gap between runs over backing up in the $3 million Caulfield Cup.

Aware victory or a placing in the Caulfield Cup would secure a berth, the Palmer stable has opted to give Wall Of Fire as much time as possible to recover from his surging second to Lord Fandango in the Herbert Power Stakes (2400m) at Caulfield last Saturday.

“We’ll just go quietly for the next week or so and then start ramping things up for the Melbourne Cup but we’re going to wait for that race and fingers crossed we get in,” stable representative Rob Archibald said.

“He pleased us with the way he ran but we had to make a decision a week out whether we were going to go Caulfield Cup or Herbert Power.

“He needs a bit of space between races so that’s why we went for the Herbert Power, just to give him an extra week.

“To back him up, it would be too much. It was a seriously run hard race and he had to sustain that for a long time.

“We were really pleased with what he did.”

Archibald took Wall Of Fire and Mask Of Time to the beach yesterday along with Jane Chapple-Hyam’s Kaspersky and William Haggas’s Fastnet Tempest.