Cup week runners: what our rated runs showed on six spring carnival names

Derby Day is this Saturday, 31 October, and the Melbourne Cup is on Tuesday, 3 November. Most of what you will read this week is about Flemington, the draw and the travel from overseas. Less of it is about the runs some of these horses put in at the meetings we measure every week.

We went looking. We checked the Caulfield Cup field SEN published on 12 October, and the list of 71 Melbourne Cup hopefuls that went around in late September, against the horses Horse Truth holds. Six names came up. Half Yours, Royal Supremacy, Asterix, Middle Earth and She's A Hustler were all in that Caulfield Cup field. Half Yours, Asterix and Middle Earth were also on the Melbourne Cup hopefuls list, along with Birdman. SEN also wrote in September about how winter form up north fed into both Cups, so we are not the first to notice the link. What we can add is what our own reads say.

One thing first, because it matters. Most of these reads rest on very few runs. Where it is one or two rated runs, we say so, and you should treat it as an early look and nothing more.

What Horse Truth saw

Half Yours

Half Yours has the deepest file of the six, with 3 rated runs, and it is the only one with its own Horse Truth page. Our read calls it a class horse: it beats good rivals and posts strong figures, with genuine ability on both lenses. Its form is holding steady. Its best rated run came at 2200 metres.

The part worth noticing is the attention flag. The read says Half Yours is a class horse racing below its best, and it is marked for review now. That is not a knock. It means the horse has shown more than its recent figures, and the gap is the thing to watch. Three runs is still low evidence, and we say that plainly on the page.

Birdman

Birdman reads the same way as Half Yours, on less evidence. It is a class horse on our numbers, beating good rivals and posting strong figures, and it is also flagged as racing below its best. Its form is holding. Its best rated run was at 2200 metres. The read rests on only 2 rated runs, so it is an early look.

Royal Supremacy and Middle Earth

These two came out with the same type. Our read calls each of them a grade specialist. That means it wins its grade but the raw figures stay modest. It beats rivals rather than the clock. Put another way, the read says each is better than its numbers say.

Both had their best rated run at 2200 metres and both are holding their form. Each read rests on just 1 rated run. That is as thin as our evidence gets, so read these as a first sketch, not a verdict.

Asterix and She's A Hustler

These two are the other side of the coin. Our read calls each of them a fast horse: quick on the clock, with class not yet proven against better company. So where Royal Supremacy and Middle Earth beat rivals more than the watch, these two have shown it on the clock first.

Asterix has 1 rated run with us and She's A Hustler has 2. Both are holding their form, and both had their best rated run at 2200 metres.

What it means for Cup week

Three patterns stand out.

The first is distance. All six had their best rated run with us at 2200 metres. That is a real middle distance run, and it is the trip these horses were asked to handle on our tracks.

The second is the split in type. Two horses read as class horses running below their best, two as grade specialists who beat rivals more than the clock, and two as fast horses whose class is still to be proven. When the big fields come together next week, those are different kinds of horse, and our reads say so in plain words.

The third is honesty about depth. Only Half Yours has three rated runs with us. The rest have one or two. We do not hold any stride measures for these six, so we make no claims about stride here. We will not stretch a thin file into a big claim.

Whether each one lines up next week is a matter for acceptances, and we make no call on how any of them will run. What we do is measure, seal our reads before races and keep every miss on the public record. If you want to see how the reads have held up so far, start there.

Half Yours has its own page with the full free teaser. The other five do not have their own page yet, so they are named here without a link. When they run again at a meeting we measure, their files will grow, and so will what we can tell you.