Speed Gifted

Currently, Speed Gifted is the $9 second favourite for the Caulfield Cup but has not passed the first elimination clause for the race and is equal 83rd in line for a start in the 18-horse field. Win today, and he sits with the Makybe Diva Stakes winner of 14 days ago Vigor, as exempt from the ballot and at the top of the betting for the $2.5 million handicap.

Freedman, who has won four Caulfield Cups and five Melbourne Cups but has struggled to have a runner in either race over the last few years, said yesterday that it was one thing to have a good opportunity and another to take it. ''It's a great chance to get into a race like a Caulfield Cup with a nice weight and I think the race is a terrific idea. But you've still got to win it,'' he said yesterday.

''I am concerned of course about the start [barrier 18] but there is a good 400-metre run to the first turn and if he can park somewhere he'll have his chance if he's good enough.''

Speed Gifted, who began his racing career in the UK, can today give Freedman his best chance at the major cups since the 2005 Melbourne Cup win of three-time champion Makybe Diva. He has just 51 kilograms in the Caulfield Cup, where a top-five placing would lift him beyond the first ballot clause for the Melbourne Cup.

The six-year-old has won at both starts in Melbourne since arriving from the UK and goes into the spring as one of the carnival's wildcards. At best, he can measure up into being a Melbourne Cup horse. ''He was considered a good 2400-metre horse in Europe, so you'd think 3200 metres on a flat track [Flemington] shouldn't be a bother.''

As a back-up in case Speed Gifted does not earn an automatic Caulfield Cup start, he will run the horse in the group 1 Metropolitan (2400 metres) in Sydney on October 3 where the horse would be certain of attracting a penalty that would lift him into the field for the Caulfield Cup.