The exceptional 4yr-old has been the long-time race favourite, even though a second-line draw could mean she loses that mantle to stablemate Titan Banner on the tote tomorrow. Trainer-driver Mark Purdon is not worried, suggesting the fact Dream About Me is following out good beginners negates the damage. That aside, she has the breeding, the group 1 record, the track stats, the X-factor and is in the perfect stable to win an Auckland Cup. But while she may be on the way to becoming a champion mare, that last part should be reason for concern. Mares have a worse record in the Auckland Cup than just about any other major race. The last mare to win the cup was Flight South in 2000 and she paid $108, while the only other mare to win it in the last 33 years is Kate’s First.
New Zealand Cup winners Adore Me, Mainland Banner and Kym’s Girl have all tried and failed. Add to that the fact Dream About Me is still only 4, has had only one serious open-class start for a luckless sixth in the New Zealand Free-For-All plus that pesky draw and she starts to look a false favourite, or at least too short.
Purdon has openly compared her to Adore Me but she might need to be every bit as good as her close relation to win tomorrow. For most of the week she has been around the $2.20 quote, but punters will want $2.80 or even $3 to be getting real value and that will probably not occur. Aiding her chances of ending the girl-power drought is the fact this is hardly a deep Auckland Cup, with plenty of very good horses but not many great ones, the obvious exception being Dream About Me’s older half-brother, Christen Me. He has nothing left to prove in his career, which is just as well, because he looks a two or three-length inferior horse to what he was when he won this race two seasons ago.
Others such as Hughie Green, Hug The Wind, Tara Tiger, obviously Chase The Dream and even No Doctor Needed have shown enough to suggest they have blowout hopes but the horse who ticks almost all the boxes is Titan Banner. He has been amazing in the last month, overcoming two brutally hard runs to win both the Summer and Franklin Cups and was a brave third in Lazarus’s New Zealand Cup.
Titan Banner looks happy and healthy, has good standing-start manners and is a natural stayer. If he can get to the front without having to do anything silly, it is going to take a huge performance to run him down. While standing-start manners and luck in the running always have a role to play in 3200m cups, the markets and recent wins suggest those factors will not be as important in tomorrow’s other big races.
Ultimate Machete seems to have too much strength for his rivals in the $200,000 Sales Series Pace but he is so short, he is really only of use to punters as a multi anchor. The same could be said for Spanish Armada in the Sires’ Stakes Fillies Championship, although the best version of Delightful Memphis can always test her. And anybody who saw Marcoola put nearly 12 lengths on his rivals at Cambridge last Saturday will be reluctant to back against him in the $80,000 National Trot. The tactics of his trainer-driver, Clint Ford, will be interesting as he probably can not risk going forward hard at the start so he may have to settle the horse before looping the field in the middle stages. If he can do that and wrest the front he looks home. If he has to sit parked, then being a 4yr-old over a 2700m mobile, he could be slightly vulnerable. Bordeaux and Quite A Moment have the stamina to suggest they could cause an upset if the favourite has a tough night.
