Gold Trip will have a shot at history when he lines up at Flemington as the defending champion. Last year, his connections feared he would never be allowed to race in Victoria.
So just on the NSW side of the border, on a wet mid-winter morning, with the grass near bottomless, Gold Trip went looking for salvation.
In a desperate attempt to prove he was fine, Gold Trip’s connections had floated their horse to Albury - just over the border - for a barrier trial. “I think the landscape has changed since,” Australian Bloodstock director Jamie Lovett says. “We’ve all got to a point with that where we understand where we’ve got to be with the protocols.
But as he drags horse training into a new era, Maher still thinks old school. For the second successive year, Gold Trip will start in all three Melbourne majors - the Caulfield Cup, the Cox Plate and the Melbourne Cup. Only one other horse, Humidor, has done that in the last decade. It’s so far from the modern-day, wrapped-in-cotton-wool, less-is-more approach, it’s almost refreshing.
He’s picked up the ride on Gold Trip because last year’s winning jockey, Mark Zahra, chose to stick with Caulfield Cup winner Without A Fight. McDonald just smiles.
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