Racing: Kelso delighted with Envoy

While Makybe Diva's connections were in seventh heaven after her Melbourne Cup win, Matamata trainer Ken Kelso was chuffed about Envoy's run for seventh.

Australian commentators had maligned Envoy's chances after his run for 11th in the Saab Quality the previous Saturday. He started as $201 chance with Melbourne bookmakers after being at $300 the day before.

"Hearing them on Racing Retro (Australian racing television programme) say he shouldn't be in the field didn't make me feel too good," Kelso said.

"But I feel good now. He's gone enormous and to run seventh in the Melbourne Cup is a big thrill."

Kelso said jockey Peter Mertens rode his horse superbly.

"He got a beautiful trip back on the fence and just lobbed along the whole way.

"He was angled out at the top of the straight and ran up to second but they just swamped him late."

Kelso said it was a big call to run the horse in the cup and was glad it was vindicated.

He was happy to get $A110,000 ($119,000) for seventh placing too.

"That's a nice present."

It wasn't such a happy result for Bazelle's connections.

After a six month campaign in Australia, she was up on the pace early but started to drift back at the 600m and finished 22nd of the 24 runners.

Paul Jenkins said: "From the draw (22) we had to either go forward or drop right out of the race.

"We decided there was not a real pacemaker there and so we elected to go forward and got caught wide and that told in the end.

"It's been a long and hard campaign, but if we hadn't come over to Australia when we did we wouldn't have got here today."

New Zealand-owned mare Vouvray finished 15th after being well back all the way, while Portland Singa, trained by expatriate Kiwi Neville McBurney, ran a good race for sixth.