Surprise Baby
5yo B/BR Gelding
Shocking (AUS) - Bula Baby (NZ) [By Kaapstad (NZ)]
10s: 5-1-1
Surprise Baby is the great local hope in the 2019 Melbourne Cup. Forgive for the moment that he is New Zealand-bred; that's close enough! The Europeans have had it too much their own way, lately. Though is that any wonder given the dire local programming of endurance races and the focus on breeding early-maturing sprinters in Australia?
New Zealand isn't quite as enamoured by the shorter races. Still though, his sire Shocking - the 2009 Melbourne Cup winner - stands at Rich Hill Stud in Waikato, NZ and his coverage fee is a comparatively paltry $NZ8500. A price that was actually dropped from $10,000 the year before! Bred to Bula Baby, who predominately raced over the mile to mile and a quarter - their progeny was so unappealing it was passed in at auction: twice.
Eventually his breeders listed him on gavelhorse.com, a site where you can buy a horse for as little as a few hundred dollars. Surprise Baby's sale price was $NZ5500. His current winnings are over $700,000.
Had he not sold, Rich Hill Stud would have run him themselves. They could be upset about it all (not to mention having also sold his dam in the meantime) but are doubtless feeling positive about Shocking become a more popular sire (he has several progeny for sale in the upcoming Ready To Run Sale in late November, which should be a fair indication of change in market sentiment).
Shocking has sired 153 runners thus far; of those there has only been one Group 1 winner: Fanatic, who narrowly won the 2016 New Zealand Oaks (a 3yo race over 2400m at Trentham). His progeny predominately contest 1200-2000m, though those who are tested at the Cup distance seem to do reasonably well: 6 individual runners share 3 wins and 2 places over 12 attempts.
While he impressively pulled away to win by two lengths (as a 72-rater in a Group 2 race), even his jockey stated that it "wasn't the strongest Adelaide Cup ever". Perhaps more should be made of the win though, considering that it was only his 6th start and he leapt 1200m further than his last, after he missed a lead-up run on account of being scratching due to barrier manners. In his favour for the Cup, he showed that he has a very nice turn of foot.
So: Adelaide Cup winner. Big deal, right? After all, the previous winners never seemed to go on to greatness, did they? (The 2018 winner was his "brother" Fanatic, in what turned out to be his final Australian race). What was different this year was that another Melbourne Cup ballot exemption race had been added to the calendar: the Andrew Ramsden.
Surprise Baby's target became this race. On the way he placed in a Flemington 2600m handicap, despite being severley inconvenienced by Belgravia, who was injured and sadly had to be euthanised. His final 800m was the fastest in the field but was left a little too much to do, finishing 0.4 lengths from the winner Steel Prince. There was a 6kg difference in the Prince's favour.
In the Andrew Ramsden, Surprise Baby and Steel Prince had a ding-dong battle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YsfrIGsXys. The result went to a photo with Steel Prince just taking the win and earning a ticket into the Melbourne Cup.
Surprise Baby spelled and returned over 1600m with a middling effort, before his win in the Bart Cummings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P66NyCL9tEA, earning the Cup exemption that he had just missed out on earlier this year.
He again showed that he was likely to race midfield or worse before unleashing a fierce, sustained finishing burst. Encouragingly he did this despite being weighted higher than those he overhauled. The query is whether he will be able to do this against far higher standard competitors....
Surprise Baby's Dosage Profile is (1-14-19-0-0) with a DI of 2.58 and CD of 0.47. That would indicate his best is at around is at about 2200m.
His Conduit Mare Profile is (4-6-5-6-11) with Speed 10, Stamina 17 , Index of 0.58, and Triads (15-17-22) which seems to imply a little longer. The bulk of that profile is in the Professional category, after all, so perhaps around 2600-2800m is his best distance. That Stamina figure of 17 has seemed to be the magic number for Melbourne Cup winners the past few years, with 10 of the past 11 winners having the same. This year only 10 of the remaining candidates have such, and only 5 of those are in the top 24 per the current Order of Entry.
His win saw him briefly become the race favourite before a 1kg penalty was announced. He's now the second favourite, somewhere between $9.50 and $11.00, depending on the bookie.
I like this horse a lot. But I would feel far more confident were he carrying less than 53.5kg. The encouraging thing is that he's only 10 races into his career, so the handicapper might not quite have a bead on him yet. As it stands though, he has a 104 handicap rating and Master of Reality, for example, is rated at 118. They should be 7kg apart in the weights, but there's only a 2kg difference. 5 kilos/10 lengths is a whole lot of distance to make up given that the bulk of that is likely to occur in the final straight of a 3200m against hardened Group1 winners...
While things could certainly fall in his favour and he may take victory, I'm inclined to think that he'll be a Top 5 finisher and fall just short. This is the '17 Stamina' horse that should win but has been set a very difficult and weighty task. This might break the run....