Melbourne Cup favourite Jan Brueghel arrived at Werribee safe and sound last Saturday night with no idea of the task ahead of him come the first Tuesday in November.
Aidan O’Brien, head trainer of Ballydoyle Stables, may not have had a better chance to win his first Melbourne Cup, with Jan Brueghel a possibility to start shorter than any of his other 17 Cup runners, and by all accounts the inexperienced colt has settled into Werribee well, according to travelling foreman Kieran Murphy.
“He travelled over great, exercised on the track yesterday and again this morning. He’s eating and drinking, and we couldn’t be happier,” Murphy told the VRC.
“He’s still a young horse with only four runs, but the way he won the Leger shows he can get the trip. We’re hoping he’ll stay the extra two furlongs.”
For a northern hemisphere three-year-old with just four starts to his name, the colt by Galileo, who’s progeny will have accounted for two thirds (12 of 18) of Adian O’Brien’s 2024 Melbourne Cup runners, has made an instant impact on the track.
No horse has ever won the Melbourne Cup at such an early point in their career with fellow northern hemisphere three-year-old Cross Counter at just his eighth start the earliest in modern times.
That O’Brien opts to bring Jan Breughel over should speak volumes of his opinion of the horse, and conveniently we don’t have to probe far to find one that makes for easy comparisons.
Tiger Moth, also trained by O’Brien, came to Flemington in 2020 with four starts under his belt and started a $6.50 slight second elect, carrying 52.5kg, which some felt at the time was a harsh impost for a horse of his age and limited exposure.
That proved false as although the horse didn’t win, he went within a neck of becoming Aidan’s first Melbourne Cup winner at his 17th attempt to do so.
European trainers started to realise around ten years ago that a lightly raced three-year-old ‘beat the handicapper’ in a Melbourne Cup, and Aidan has sent over six in search of winning one of the few worldwide majors to elude him- here’s their record, including their Timeform rating leading in.
*Had run well below best at two runs leading into Flemington.
For comparison, Jan Brueghel is rated 120 by Timeform off his last start win in the St Leger at Doncaster, beating the 118 rated stablemate Illinois, who has since won the Group 2 Prix Chaudenay at Longchamp nicely.
Meanwhile, the two northern hemisphere colts to have come to Flemington and won the Melbourne Cup, Cross Counter (51kg) and Rekindling (51.5kg), were rated 124 and 121 respectively by Timeform coming over.
All that said, Jan Brueghel has a big task ahead of him. He’s a very good, but not elite three-year-old in Europe, and with the weights catching up to these types, 54kg ensures he’ll almost certainly have to run a new peak to win.
Tiger Moth came over four starts under his belt rated 120, improved again at Flemington and was beaten, but my feel is that Jan Brueghel is the better horse, and the way he’s been campaigned, and the fact he’s unbeaten, would suggest that.
He is a genuine, grinding stayer who won’t burst forward with a turn of foot. Instead, he’ll be scrubbed along from at least the 800m mark, which typically hasn’t been conducive to Australian racing.
In his favour however is the man on top. In this (and almost every) scenario, Ryan Moore is the only jockey you’d want riding Jan Brueghel- he will know the pace must be on from the outset, and that he mustn’t ride to quicken. It will be ugly yet beautiful.
He’ll need to be every bit as good as he’s promised to be, but in a year that appears to lack those genuine 120+ rated horses, Aidan O’Brien and the punters would, and should fancy their chances of Jan Brueghel painting a winning picture come the first Tuesday in November.
