Speed Gifted - Lee Freedman

Herald Sun
2/10/09

SPEED Gifted, the best Melbourne Cup contender Lee Freedman has had since Makybe Diva, wasn't part of his latest and most far-fetched plan to win the great race, but he was a bi-product of it.

If Speed Gifted can win The Metropolitan at Randwick tomorrow, qualify for the Melbourne Cup, then win it, it would prove one or two things about the modern Cup and how the big local stables best think they can win it.

More and more of our trainers are using the world as their market place.

This time last year Freedman's team invited about 100 rich clients and their mates to lunch at a fancy city restaurant.

The pitch was that the well-to-do's scrounge up $1 million between them. Freedman's brother Anthony, stable vet Johnny Walker and one or two others would grab the cash and take it to the October Tattersalls horses in training sale at Newmarket in England.

The theory was that the hardiest, most Aussie-like, affordable European stayers were a safer gamble than forking out the same amount for untried, possibly hopeless, yearlings here.

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The pitch struck a chord with businessmen who'd become field shy with the risks of the yearling market, but saw a clear bottom line with horses who'd already proven they could gallop, albeit half a world away.

"The margin for error was less for these guys than buying a Zabeel at the sales and waiting three years to find out it was no good," Freedman said.

"Some blokes like a bit more surety with what they're buying. These horses we ended up buying might not have been world-beaters but at least they knew what they were buying."

The budget was set and so was the number -- six. The criteria was strict.

"They had to vet well, had to have good feet. We weren't looking for frail wet track English horses," Freedman said.

The sale was tricky with the horses only brought into the complex on the day itself.

"There were over a thousand of them," said Freedman, who did not make the trip.

The team bought six horses and spent the $1 million. It's at this time that Speed Gifted entered the scene.

He was too well performed to be on the Freedman shopping list and wasn't even for sale.

But the owner, who raced the horse with Luca Cumani and had caught Cumani's Melbourne Cup itch, transferred Speed Gifted to Freedman and he became the seventh member of the team.

The home trip was character building.

"If they could have talked they'd have said 'what the hell's going on here?' Freedman said.

"They cut off our extremities (gelded), took us out of the snow and dumped us somewhere where it's 125C. That's kind of how we came up with the Ball and Chain Syndicate. It seemed to fit. They must have thought they were convicts."

Bar for Speed Gifted, Freedman does not believe the rest of the squad will measure up to the spring cups, at least not this year.

But he has been impressed with their form, pleased with the exercise. Four of the six have won - Timetable, Trenchtown, Sound Of Nature and Woodcutter - another, Mastercraft, "ran a blinder" at his first run here.

Tomitoul Flyer, the most expensive (about $100,000), is injured.

"It will be a quantum leap for any of them to become Caulfield or Melbourne Cup horses but you really never know. Races like the Adelaide Cup are possible for sure," he said.

The Ball And Chain Syndicate reassemble for lunch today, at the Emerald Hotel in South Melbourne.

"It's a bit like one of those evangelical conferences - come yourself and bring a friend!" Freedman said.

The pitch will be the same as last year, with more room to move at the other end.

"We're still hoping to raise $1 million, but the money's worth more at the other end because the exchange rate has improved," Freedman said.

Freedman hasn't had a Melbourne Cup runner since Makybe Diva's three-peat win in 2005. "Who knows, my next might end up being one of these convict horses," he said.