STAR CARRIES ON
Prebble on favourite’s extra weight
BEING slugged with an extra weight has stopped plenty of good horses, but Brett Prebble says boom galloper Incentivise has earned the weight impost he must carry as Melbourne Cup favourite.
After Incentivise’s rampaging Caulfield Cup win, Racing Victoria handicapper Greg Carpenter announced a 1.5kg penalty, which means the talk of Australian racing must carry 57kg in the Melbourne Cup.
Incentivise romped home in the Caulfield Cup carrying 55.5kg – Carpenter had previously said winning the Group 1 Makybe Diva Stakes had cost him a penalty of about 2kg in the Caulfield Cup.
The $2.30 Melbourne Cup favourite is looking for his 10th consecutive win and Prebble, who has ridden him to three Group 1 wins on the bounce, has no issues with the weight he has been asked to carry on the first Tuesday in November.
“In my book he has earned the weight, he has won three Group 1s and he is the Caulfield Cup winner,” he said.
“I know those wins have been compressed in a short space of time but it is what it is, most horses can’t win one of these races in their entire careers.
“He is winning by margins and he is running time. It is a decent task that he will face in the Melbourne Cup, but he has put his hand up to say he is a very serious horse.
“If he had carried a lesser weight in the Caulfield Cup he only would have won by further.
“I don’t think it (the Melbourne Cup weight) will be a huge issue for him, I don’t have any problems with the penalty he got.”
The race that stops a nation may not be far away but Prebble, enjoying a golden run and already with a bagful of five spring Group 1 wins, is not looking too far ahead.
He isn’t getting ahead of himself and says he will focus more on the Cup after Victoria Derby day next Saturday.
“I just concentrate on what I can, on what’s in front of me, and with the Cup I will really start focusing on that closer to the date,” Prebble said.
Incentivise is striving to become the 12th horse to win the Caulfield-melbourne Cup double and the first since Ethereal in 2001.
Since 1977 when Gold And Black carried 57kg to win the Cup for Bart Cummings, 68 horses have carried 57kg or more in the race and only Makybe Diva has been able to win.
The great mare carried 58kg in her famous third consecutive Cup win, in 2005.