Vauban is on track for the Cup

Jamie Lovett director of Australian Bloodstock comments, “He’s a world class horse, but he’s been to Australian into our great race twice and failed.”

The three-time Grade 1-winning hurdler transferred ownership and into the stable of Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott last year, winning the Group 3 Sky High Stakes (2000m) at his first start for the new stable.

“Gai and Adrian spent a lot of time with that horse the last 12 months” says Lovett, “we’re hoping that now, acclimatized to Australia that we’ll see a better performance come Melbourne Cup day, if he were to get that far.”

Adrain Bott explains that “it’s obviously different here in Australia to how they’ve been racing and how they’ve been trained previously” but he thinks that it all seems to be resonating well with Vauban.

They didn’t have much of a plan for Vauban in the initial campaign aside fromgetting him into the build up of spring racing and ready for The Lexus Melbourne Cup.

“If he failed in the Autumn we’d be scratching our head” Lovett remarks, “but the fact that we’ve seen him here, he won first time out, he was terrific… tells me that we’re in play”

There’s no doubt that Vauban is champion material, with a total of seven group one wins in his career, along with wins across the board including the 2022 Grade 1 Champion Four-Year-Old Hurdle (3219m) at Punchestown, the 2023 Copper Horse Handicap (2816m) at Royal Ascot, and the group 3 Sky High Stakes (2000m) at Rosehill earlier this year.

“He just now needs everything to go right and he’s a live hope for the Melbourne Cup” says Lovett.