Racing: Basaltico now Cup hope

The Melbourne Cup hopes of Luca Cumani have taken a battering in the past week but the English trainer is still hopeful Basaltico can make the field.

However, he is resigned to Cima De Triomphe missing out and that horse will now head to the Mackinnon Stakes on Saturday week.

The Cumani team was perplexed by Cima De Triomphe's unplaced Caulfield Cup run and said blinkers would be applied to try to get him back in form.

"We are baffled by Cima's run," a report on Cumani's website said.

"He had been training well and we had very high hopes of a good run, but he ran very disappointingly and was one of the first beaten after struggling to make any inroads from a position in midfield.

"In some respects, Basaltico ran something of an eye-catching trial for the Melbourne Cup at Geelong but we went there with the intention of winning the race so as his weight would go up and he would be guaranteed a place at Flemington.

"Unfortunately, that plan went out of the window when he was slow to break and his rider elected to drop in at the back of the big field and try and make his run from last place.

"If he does line up at Flemington he will have a different jockey as Damien Oliver can't do the weight."

The Cumani-trained Purple Moon ran second in the 2007 Melbourne Cup while stablemate Bauer was runner-up last year after winning the Geelong Cup.

Basaltico ran seventh in Wednesday's Geelong Cup won by the Darren Weir-trained Leica Ding.

- AAP