Red Cadeaux may stay in training next year after his extraordinary run behind Fiorente in the Melbourne Cup Tuesday.
Ed Dunlop’s globe-trotting gelding was the first of four horses trained in Europe to finish behind Gai Waterhouse’s winner at Flemington.
It was the second time he had finished as the runner-up, after losing to Dunaden in the 2011 event, and he improved on his eighth-place effort 12 months ago despite carrying the heaviest weight of any of his three runs in the two-mile handicap.
Before the race, Dunlop suggested that Red Cadeaux, who was second in the Dubai World Cup in March, was on his “zimmer-frame tour” as the seven-year-old gelding looked on the downgrade after labouring in September’s Irish St Leger.
“He loves it here, and dare I say it, we might come again,” Dunlop told TVN, the Australian racing channel. “We keep on breaking all the rules. Not many people gave him a chance. He’s not the best horse I have trained, but he has the biggest heart.”
Alongside the Melbourne Cup and the Dubai World Cup, Red Cadeaux has also finished second in the Group 1 Coronation Cup at Epsom. After running in the Melbourne Cup last year, he finished sixth in the Japan Cup before adding the Hong Kong Vase.
Red Cadeaux has accumulated Dh22.4 million in prize money during his 41-race career, and Dunlop said that trips to Japan and Hong Kong are being considered.
Fiorente handed Waterhouse her first win in the contest billed as “the race that stops a nation”.
Waterhouse is among a growing list of women trainers who hit the mark recently, including Kathy Rivto, who saddled Mucho Macho Man to win the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Santa Anita on Sunday, and Criquette Head-Maarek, who sent out Treve to win the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in Paris last month.
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