Racing: Distance only question

Only one question hovers over Xcellent's head: Can he successfully manage the 3200m of the A$5 million Melbourne Cup.

Xcellent's greatest asset, his phenomenal sprint, is almost the reason many want to say he won't manage the extreme distance.

Rider Michael Coleman and managing owner Paul Moroney believe that's wrong.

Obviously, to win a Melbourne Cup you need stamina, but the race has become so much more difficult to win in the last decade that a horse also needs a decent sprint.

Take Makybe Diva.

She has won the last two Melbourne Cups with dramatic sprints at the leaders from the 400m.

But even the great mare's sprint, good enough to win her Saturday's weight-for-age A$500,000 Underwood Stakes, is nowhere near as stunning as Xcellent's.

There is one other factor.

Sprinting at the end of a Melbourne Cup is not like sprinting in the final stages of just any 3200m race.

The Melbourne Cup is a brutal race run at such a high cruising speed that it can take the sprint out of a horse.

It is why so many of the early European horses that arrived in Melbourne could not cope.

They were used to hand-cantering the first half of their races.

There will not be another Melbourne Cup winner who does not deserve the trophy. It takes a special horse to dodge traffic then quicken down the fearsome Flemington home straight to get over the top of what is these days world-class opposition.

Michael Coleman knows he is on the right horse.

"He's a push-button horse. He'll relax on any speed then pick it up exactly when you need him to."

There is another issue: the Cox Plate and the Melbourne Cup in the same year.

The two races have become such specialty events that it is difficult to imagine the winning double, yet here we are with two horses in the one year, Makybe Diva and Xcellent, who are capable of it.

The Cox Plate used to be a stayer's lead-up to the Cup, but in recent decades it is a race for which a horse has to be set specifically.

Sunline and Northerly, who dominated the Cox Plate, and last year's winner Savabeel, are horses that you could never have thought about running in a Melbourne Cup.

Makybe Diva can sprint quickly and stay forever.

Xcellent can sprint quicker and stay 2400m. We are about to find out if he can sprint and stay 3200m.

"I'd love to see him come off the back of Makybe Diva in Melbourne," says Paul Moroney.

"If he's cruising up to them at the 300m in the Melbourne Cup, they'll have to sprint pretty quickly to keep him out."

Xcellent is going to have one huge advantage over most Kiwi raiders of the Melbourne Cup.

Instead of going into rented quarters he will become part of the Mike Moroney team at Flemington.

With Brew's 2000 victory behind him, Mike Moroney knows how to win a Melbourne Cup.

And he has never had the material behind him he will have when Xcellent arrives in Australia tomorrow week.