Father-son training combination Tony and Calvin McEvoy acknowledge the significant challenge presented to Half Yours as the horse aims for a second consecutive Caulfield Cup title.
Having carried a comparatively light weight to victory in last year’s Cup, Half Yours is now assigned topweight for the 150th running of the prestigious 2400-metre handicap this Saturday.
Calvin McEvoy indicated that the strong historical performance of topweighted horses in the Caulfield Cup provides the training team with confidence that Half Yours can once again be a major player on Saturday.
Half Yours will escalate his weight from 52.5kg to 57.5kg for Saturday’s contest, a notable increase from the 53kg he carried to win the Melbourne Cup last year.
“The history of the Caulfield Cup shows that it can be won by a topweight and that gives us confidence,” McEvoy said.
“Comparing that to the Melbourne Cup, it is a much more difficult task, but at the end of the day we have an elite stayer that is great at 2400 and 3200 metres.
“If we’re too scared to run with big weights, we’ll be leaving him at home in the box.
“We have to attack the challenge head on, and we have good faith in the horse that he can do it.”
Despite not having finished in front in his six starts since last year’s Melbourne Cup triumph, Half Yours has pleased his trainers with his recent runs.
His last start saw him finish 6-½ lengths behind the winner in a fiercely contested Turnbull Stakes (2000m), a race that proved too taxing for many of the other runners.
However, that run is believed to have brought Half Yours on, and a gallop during the week should have the stayer in prime condition for Saturday.
“It was a pass mark last start,” McEvoy said.
“It was brutally run and he was second-up.
“I don’t think any of us trainers that have been training our horses to peak on Saturday saw that tempo coming and it brought a few unstuck.
“The main thing about those hard contests is it’s not how the run affected them but on how your horses come through them.
“He’s bounced through it and derived a lot of benefit along with another good strong gallop.”
Jamie Melham, who partnered Half Yours to his Cup double last year, is unavailable as he is in Sydney to ride in The Everest.
Mark Zahra will take over the mount, and importantly, Half Yours has drawn favourably.
“It takes a lot of the guess work out of it,” McEvoy said.
“In these high-pressure big handicaps, drawing wide dictates what you have to do.
“We were lucky last year in that he drew very well in the Caulfield Cup and the Melbourne Cup, and he has been unlucky since then drawing, although a few small fields, the outside which has dictated our plans.
“The draw will allow Mark Zahra to switch him off, conserve his energy, which is an asset that he has, and all stayers have, and then get the luck at the right time.
“Mark galloped him on the course-proper at Flemington on Tuesday morning and really liked him.
“He’s a lovely horse and he is easy to like.”
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