Mongolian Khan on the mend, aiming for $1.6m Sydney Cup

Jockey Opie Bosson riding Mongolian Khan. Photo / Getty Images

Mongolian Khan is out of danger and expected home in Cambridge in a fortnight.

The champion four-year-old stayer, knocked out of the Melbourne Cup by illness, will be given a spell before beginning a preparation aimed at the A$1.6m Sydney Cup in the autumn, trainer Murray Baker today told the Herald.

The $4 million earner is likely to leave the Werribee Vet Clinic in Victoria this weekend. He was taken to the clinic after he was struck down by colic five days before the Melbourne Cup.

Baker said the horse hadn't required surgery. There was some scouring for four days after which he had gradually picked up. He was now eating up well, Baker said.

The Caulfield Cup winner was third favourite in the cup and possibly the best chance a New Zealand-trained horse had of capturing the race since Ethereal in 2001.

"It was just one of those things, Baker said today. "When you are a horse trainer you get all sorts of ups and downs."

The term 'colic' is a general one, and can be anything from where a horse suffers an short abdominal pain episode to a twisted bowel that would require urgent surgery.

Mongolian Khan had an intestinal infection but Baker said they were unlikely to ever know how he got it.

"It could be from drinking dirty pool water - he was in the pool each day - but you could ask yourself a hundred times and you wouldn't know."

The horse hadn't previously had a sick day in his life, "but that's horse racing".