International trainers have their 'Cup' say

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Luca Cumani remembers last year's Melbourne Cup with pain.

The English trainer, then on his second trip down under for the Cup, was thrilled to see his horse Purple Moon in the lead with 50 metres to go, only to be downed by Efficient, storming home from the back of the field.

"It was soul destroying when Efficient came from the clouds and beat us," Cumani recalled yesterday at Sandown, where his two contenders this year, Mad Rush and Bauer, are stabled.

The Melbourne Cup has now become a quest for him and he hopes he has the right horse in Mad Rush to take out the $A5.5 million Cup on Tuesday.

Mad Rush moved into favouritism at $5 yesterday, eclipsing the Irish visitor Septimus ($5.50), on the back of talk from trainer Aidan O'Brien's camp that Septimus would not run if the Flemington track was too hard. Rain yesterday and forecast showers today should avert that crisis.

Cumani has freely admitted he brought the wrong horses (Glistening and Soulacroix) to the Cup in 2006 and he has also learned that it is better to employ local jockeys, with the reputation of some European hoops suffering in the wake of unruly navigation skills in past Cups.

Mad Rush surged to the forefront of betting markets after his unlucky run for fourth in the Caulfield Cup on October 18. He finished off the race impressively after having trouble clearing traffic early in the straight.

Cumani said Mad Rush was a similar horse to Purple Moon and had a similar race to him in the Caulfield Cup.

"Purple Moon was a good mile and a half (2400m) horse and had never run two miles (3200m) before the Melbourne Cup. Mad Rush gets 1½ to 1-3/4 miles well, so I hope he gets two miles as well."

Cumani, long one of England's best trainers, has a second string in Bauer in Tuesday's Cup. New Zealander Gerard Peterson has a share in the galloper, who won the Geelong Cup easily last month.

"Sarah my wife rode him yesterday and was very impressed with his condition," Cumani said.

Many are picking the Australians not to figure in tomorrow's finish, with New Zealander Nom Du Jeu, trained by father and son combo Murray and Bjorn Baker, of Cambridge, to be the one to fight it out with the European guns, Mad Rush, Septimus and Profound Beauty.

Nom Du Jeu and Profound Beauty were joint third favourites at $9 yesterday, with bookies having slashed the Irish mare's price in from $17 in the past week on the back of a brilliant track gallop.

Profound Beauty is trained by Dermot Weld, who produced Vintage Crop (1993) and Media Puzzle (2002) to win the Cup. He is the only European to have trained a Cup winner.

He arrived in Melbourne yesterday from Ireland, in time to see Profound Beauty work and said he was impressed with what he saw.

He warned she had not shown she could run 3200m yet and she did not have a staying pedigree.

"I'm very happy with her and I expect her to run a good race, but I think Septimus and Mad Rush, the first and second favourites, are going to be very hard to beat."

Jockey Glen Boss said he liked what he felt when riding Profound Beauty in trackwork.

He said she was a 2400m horse, "with a brilliant turn of foot", but whether that translated to 3200m winning form remained to be seen.

Cumani chimed in later that he had no doubt that Profound Beauty would "get two miles".

He thought it was the best Melbourne Cup field ever and warned that Septimus was a "tremendous stayer". He thought Aidan O'Brien's second strings, Honolulu and Alessandro Volta, were inferior to Septimus, but still very good horses.

And was he confident that Mad Rush could beat them all?

"I am never confident because it is a horse race, but I am high on the hopeful scale."

SELECTIONS: Nom Du Jeu, Mad Rush, Honolulu.

-NZPA