Surprise Baby has been penalised 1kg in the Melbourne Cup following his win in The Bart Cummings. This takes him from 52.5kg to 53.5kg.


Almandin received the same penalty in 2016. He was given an Official Handicap Rating of 99 following the 2016 Bart Cummings. In the Cup he carried 52kg (though he was originally given 51kg, the field shifted up 1kg so that the topweight was at least 57kg - the rule at the time).

Surprise Baby now has a current Official Handicap Rating of 104 - only going up 1 rating point following his win. ...which says something about Saturday's opposition, I suppose. That accounts for the 5 rating point/2.5kg difference between what he's now set to carry vs what Almandin was supposed to carry in 2016.

For comparison's sake, Almandin's Bart Cummings victory was in 2'37.47s (35.27s last 600m), lumping 55kg. Surprise Baby did it in 2'38.66s (35.18s) with 57kg; so about two lengths slower with the weight discrepancy taken into account. It was also the 10th race in both of their careers: for Almandin it was preceded by 4 Australian runs, in which his overseas handicap actually came down (so it wasn't like they had guessed his standard horribly wrong).

Almandin would go on to win the 2016 Melbourne Cup, of course, just 0.1 lengths ahead of Heartbreak City, but 4.45 lengths ahead of 3rd. In that respect it seems a pretty sporting penalty for Surprise Baby, particularly given that he's already shown he can comfortably run 2 miles in his Adelaide Cup victory earlier this year.

The problem is that Cross Counter, for example, has a 118 handicap and is also quite handy over 3200m. Assuming rough equivalence between British and Australian official ratings, there should be a 7kg difference between what Cross Counter carries (57.5kg) and Surprise Baby (now 53.5kg) does: there's only 4kg (or 8 lengths over 3200m, as Greg Carpenter has it). Even worse is Master of Reality, also with 118 from Irish Racing but only carrying 55.5kg.

In that regard, Surprise Baby has had few favours when compared to some overseas raiders. Then again, the ratings get a little wibbly-wobbly over longer races, so it's all a matter of interpretation...

Following his Bart Cummings win Surprise Baby was briefly the Cup favourite. At $9. Which was a huge overreaction... Presumably following his penalty he's now out to $13 and it's Finche that has moved into favouritism at $8.

Both Finche and Surprise Baby were ranked highly per 'the system', which I posted ahead of Saturday's racing, so hopefully that prompted people to get on before their odds were slashed - if they were going to anyway.

I stupidly tried to multi Surprise Baby in the Bart Cummings and Melbourne Cup futures. It's not in my pending bets so I presume that it wasn't accepted due to them being related events. I just didn't see it complain obviously enough about it at the time.