A distinct lack of a certain world’s best ever horse means that for the first time in a long time, Australia’s premiere weight-for-age contest looms as a wide-open affair.
The 2019 Cox Plate field is just about as good as it gets in racing. Our best, going up against some of the world’s best and for the vast majority of us, the opportunity to have a ripper day on the punt.
My 2019 Cox Plate tips can be found below.
Suggested Bets
- 3 Units straight out #9 Lys Gracieux
- Boxed Trifecta of the selections below
Typically, I don’t like to follow the enormous hype around an international horse before they do it out here, but since hearing everyone talk about this horse, I have taken myself off to YouTube and I could not be more onboard. Lys Gracieux does not know how to run a bad race, and the three performances that she has mustered this year have been enormous, particularly her win in the Group 1 Takarazuka (2200m). She is as tough as they come so I am actually not concerned about the barrier at all and rarely has a Japanese horse been brought to Australia and not impressed.
Danceteria was scratched from the Caulfield Stakes field a fortnight ago and will subsequently take his place in the Cox Plate field fresh, but I think he will still take a power of beating. The five-year-old son of Redoute’s Choice has recorded three wins from five starts in 2019, including a dominant win in the Group 1 Dallmayr (2000m) in Germany most recently. His fresh form is good and he can slot in somewhere behind the pace before calling on his turn of foot.
I’m keen to keen to keep the dream alive with Mystic Journey in the 2019 Cox Plate. I am more than confident that we haven’t seen the best of her in spring; she won the PB Lawrence first-up on class and I actually don’t think that she has been nearly as wound up as everyone thought in either of her two subsequent runs. She’s drawn a peach and I think that we could be set for an Adam Trinder masterclass at The Valley on Saturday. You don’t need me to tell what she’s won again, either!
The international contingent in this year’s Cox Plate is particularly strong and it is pretty hard to look past a progeny of Galileo, ridden by Ryan Moore and trained by Aidan O’Brien. It is a combination that has delivered around 1 million Group 1 features and I think that it is every chance of saluting again. Magic Wand doesn’t win out of turn, but she also rarely runs a bad race and has finished second in a pair of Group 1 races recently, including the Irish Champion Stakes behind Magical. Pretty bloody good form.